LinkedIn and Networking in the Digital Age

The article below is from the March 2010 edition of my Buzz Bulletin eNewsletter (free signup on my website):

“Networking is getting what you want by helping others get what they want.” - Zig Ziglar

I’m surprised to meet so many savvy business people who either aren’t on LinkedIn, the most popular networking website for professionals with more than 60 million active users, or fail to leverage its powerful features. When I ask people why, I hear things like “I just don’t see the value.” It’s an unfortunate point of view because LinkedIn provides tremendous advantages:

Staying Connected

LinkedIn is an ideal complement for real world networking activities. Before LinkedIn, I would meet interesting people and not have a simple way to keep in touch. Now, when I meet someone with a LinkedIn profile it’s simple to follow up with an email or personal card saying how much I enjoyed meeting them and how I hope to stay connected via LinkedIn. For former clients and people I see rarely yet with whom I want to maintain ties, I’ve discovered that LinkedIn is an easy way to share my activities and learn about what they’re doing since LinkedIn sends me regular updates of what’s going on with my network. Also, LinkedIn is the primary way I stay in touch with folks from my high school, college, graduate school and professional organizations. All have LinkedIn groups which I’ve joined and use to reconnect with old friends.

Building Relationships

It takes me less than a minute to write testimonials for people in my LinkedIn network. After I write a recommendation, the recipient gets to approve it before posting it to his or her profile page. Whenever I’ve recommended somebody via LinkedIn, I’ve always gotten an enthusiastic “thank you” in return. And, I’ve discovered that many people who have received recommendations from me will provide me with a testimonial even though I haven’t requested one.

Leveraging Relationships

My favorite LinkedIn feature is the “Network Statistics” section found in the pull-down menu below “Contacts” on the home page. Currently, I have 248 friends and colleagues in my LinkedIn network. Two degrees away (friends of friends and colleagues), I have approximately 62,000 contacts. Three degrees away (people I can reach through my contacts or one of their contacts), my network expands to about 4.5 million people. If I want to target a specific company, I type it into the search bar on the top of any page. This provides me with my personal list of first to third degree contacts who either work or worked for the targeted company. Now, instead of having to make a cold call, I can get a warm introduction into the company or I can use my network to gain insight into what’s going on behind the scenes.

Providing Insight

Now that my LinkedIn profile is 100% complete, it provides anybody interested in my services with the best insight into my background and qualifications. Furthermore, it contains material about me which can’t be found elsewhere like personal recommendations. Just recently, on my LinkedIn profile page, I posted a high-definition YouTube video demonstrating my expertise in a speech that I gave on “Marketing Without Advertising” (easy to do using the plug-in for Google Documents available on LinkedIn). My LinkedIn profile is so complete that I’ve posted a link to it in the signature section of my outbound email messages so people can learn more about me and my services.

If you’ve found an interesting way to use LinkedIn, please share it with others by posting a comment below. Good luck in all your networking activities and I hope to see you on LinkedIn or at a networking event soon!

Comments

[Joy Matkowski]

Join appropriate LinkedIn groups in your line of work. Some of my groups post open jobs; some have stimulating discussions.

[Patrick Galvin]

Joy, I couldn't agree with you more. Groups are certainly one of the most effective yet underutilized ways of leveraging the value of LinkedIn. Some of my friends have told me that starting a group can even be better than joining an existing one. Good luck with all your networking endeavors.