WHAT IT IS

• A good way to find people
• A way to remind people that you’re relevant in their industry or business community
• Job hunting tool
• Self promotional
• Evolving

WHAT IT ISN'T

• A competition to connect to the most people
• An alternative to direct communication channels
• A social hub

 
WHAT IT COULD OR SHOULD BE...

• LinkedIn provides a way to maintain meaningful relationships, using:
  • Better tools to filter information you want to share with specific people
  • Superior integration with useful business applications sharing selected calendar information
• It is also a pool of trusted peers that can provide referrals, references and resources, in turn helping you to:
  • Conveniently connect buyers and sellers of professional services
  • Let people know what you’re currently interested in and help make those connections
• Foster engagement over recruitment and self promotion using their tools and metrics

WHY YOU CARE
LinkedIn is part of a wave of social networking applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, that are changing the established channels of communication.  At the same time, these applications are eroding barriers that used to protect established people and companies against competition.

WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING
Sign-up for an account, get involved with an interesting industry social network and commit to learning how to make it work for you.  Start to think about how this might affect your business, products, marketing, clients and your industry...It's the future and it's already here.

To learn more about leveraging social networks, send me an email at Tpenichter@tgpassociates.com.