LinkedIn is a popular professional social networking site that is centered around an online resume. Users "connect" to other users that they know and can recommend other people they have worked with, worked for, or hired.
Most profiles are public, so I can search for all of the people who work at a company I'm trying to get an introduction to, find out that my good friend Bob knows the VP of Marketing, and get him to introduce me.
I keep my profile up to date with every employer and organization.
LinkedIn encourages you to connect with other people you might know at companies and organizations you've worked at in the past. By filling in your complete profile, you increase the chance that people will find you and can be sure that you are the person they are looking for. My LinkedIn profile includes my first job as a grocery bagger in high school. I usually update it promptly when something changes.
I let my connections browse through the list of my other connections.
One of the easiest ways to find more people to connect with on LinkedIn is to browse the connections of your connections (in Facebook terms, "friends of friends"). LinkedIn gives you a choice about whether or not to let your connections see the list of your other connections. By default this is turned on, but many people turn it off. I guess they are afraid that people will "steal" their contacts. But LinkedIn does a good job of policing the users against trying to connect to people you don't really know so I'm not so worried about it being abused.
I want to be a hub that my connections use to find each other
I'm more excited about the idea that people come to me to find other interesting people. I like the idea of being a conduit and think that the benefits of that far outweigh any risks of other people stealing my contacts (this idea of the pros of sharing something publicly outweighing the cons will be a common theme in the next few posts).
I search LinkedIn to find people at companies that I want to do business with
This can be really handy for business development. It's always better to get introduced by a mutual acquaintance than to cold call someone. I rarely will request an introduction unless the person I want to reach is directly connected to one of my connections.
The goal with connections is quality, not quantity
Some people think the point of LinkedIn is to get as many connections as possible. I don't. I think the value of my LinkedIn network is dependent on the quality of the connections, not the quantity. If I have too many connections, then the various newsfeeds and other functions of LinkedIn become less useful because there is too much noise.
My general rule of thumb on LinkedIn is to only accept connections from people that I actually know. For me, that means that we have corresponded over email, phone or in person and I would probably recognize you if I saw you. If I'm having lunch with someone for the first time, I will usually look them up on LinkedIn first but I won't request to connect until after we have had lunch and gotten to know each other a bit. This is just a rule of thumb, there are always exceptions. But please don't be offended if I don't accept your request to connect - it's just a sign that I don't know you well, not that I don't want to!
I don't accept connection requests "to grow my network." If you'd like to add me to your network, invite me out to lunch or come and meet me at Bootstrap Austin, Austin on Rails, Social Media Club, High Tech Happy Hour, or another Austin event that I attend regularly.
Also keep in mind that you don't need to be connected on LinkedIn to send messages to each other. If you want to ask me about something specific, feel free to send me a message even if we're not connected.
How do you use LinkedIn? What should I be doing differently?
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