Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
LinkedIn: An Introduction (first in a series of articles)
© 2008 by Richard Kirby, CPC, CCC
Are you ready to make connections into desirable companies or find a better job? If you are a US or UK business person then linkedin.com may be just what you need.
LinkedIn.com is lumped into the broad category of “social networking” web sites. While facebook.com boasts 70 million users and myspace.com has over 100 million, the value of linkedin.com is that it is the leading social networking site for serious business users
LinkedIn.com is an undeniable internet phenomenon. It interested me enough to grow my network from 350 to 3,000+ connections in the past year! Here’s why I did this:
- Most users are young, motivated, high achievers (my client type!)
- It has gained me quality clients
- It provides networking value to my clients
- It is FREE!
Why Link In?
As an experienced business person, you are likely to get requests to join colleagues on several social networking sites. Based upon my extensive experience with a wide range of social networking sites I believe that linkedin.com offers the superior way to
- Attract clients and make new friends
- Connect with people, jobs, and employers
- Become visible to 28 million current users
- Appear to be “with it” – even if you aren’t 
My linkedin experiences over the past 4+ years have been very positive. Over the past few months I have connected with people in the market for my services (and landed some clients!), discovered new business development technologies for my business, given help to others, and received help from others. All on my own terms and controlled by my own parameters.
If it sounds like linkedin could be beneficial to you, I suggest you stick your toe in the water and become more active for a while. Then, you can judge for yourself.
*Richard Kirby has over 25 years of diversified professional management experience in sales, marketing, HR and engineering. This experience was gained in a wide range of employers that included a pre-IPO venture capital funded start up, an $8B Fortune100™ and an $6B multinational conglomerate. Since 2002 he has been a full time career consultant and coach serving professionals and executives in a wide range of professions and industries.
Posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 9:12 am and is filed under Business, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
