Inside the Suitcase

What is Social Media? An Intro to LinkedIn. (2 of 6) / December 28, 2009

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social network that connects you to business contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas and opportunities with a broad network of professionals. Your profile helps you find and be found by former and current colleagues, clients and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect with you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections connections and the people they know – linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

We recommend you start your social media odyssey with LinkedIn.  Simply upload your bio and photo and youre ready to get connected.  Once youve gotten comfortable connecting to business professionals you know, meet others by joining LinkedIn groups, updating your status and using applications.

The benefits of LinkedIn:

• Get introduced to professionals through people you know and trust
• Build your professional reputation
• Give partners and potential clients your background information
• Discover connections to land jobs and close deals
• Recommend and be recommended
• Post, distribute and search job listings
• Recruit key employees
• Find high-quality passive candidates
• Link to thousands of qualified professionals

LinkedIn Best Practices:

• Connect with existing contacts
• Connect with potential/new business contacts
• Add a picture so people can easily find and recognize you
• Answer user questions to demonstrate thought leadership
• Add a LinkedIn button on your website
• Update your status regularly
• Join industry groups
• Recommend and ask to be recommended
• Use keywords that will likely be used in searches
• Add your LinkedIn profile page to your email signature

Have questions about how to get started with social media in general or LinkedIn in particular? to see how we can help you.

Check out previous articles in this series:

• Intro to Social Media

Posted by Rachel

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