LinkedIn: The Business Professional’s Myspace

10 September 2007 Ken Yeung View Comments

Since the social networking revolution of the 21st century, we find ourselves with plenty of social media but all targeted towards different niches. What do I mean by that? Well loookat a Myspace. It used to be aimed at teenagers and college students, but has now grown to include adults. It’s now an adult network site (not to be confused with adult themed sites). Facebook is now the de facto website for young adults, but soon will change to include adults and be very much like Myspace. Friendster is…well…it’s Friendster and should not be bundled up in this category.

Nevertheless, you have social network sites for the advertising industry, online industry, and just for the overall business professional, you have LinkedIn. Why am I focusing on LinkedIn? Well because I think in every professional blog or article where someone is mentioned, instead of including their e-mail address, to help the networking site foster, we should all link to their profile pages instead of their e-mail address.

Think about it, you read an article and there’s a link called “John Doe”. The article is on John Doe, but you want to learn more about John Doe, but you don’t know how to form a rapport with the guy, so what do you do? Well if that link was to John’s webpage, you might find some more information about his portfolio, experience, etc., but how hard would it be to find the information? Chances are that if a professional web guy did it, then not that difficult, but there’s always that small chance of site navigation inefficiency. So why not link to the guy’s LinkedIn page?

But what if they don’t have a LinkedIn page, then the guy is missing out on some great networking opportunities – if you’re going to be in the business, then you’d have better be playing all the games and that includes signing up for all the social networking sites and getting a better understanding.

But I digress…a LinkedIn page will give you all the information that you’ll need about the guy: their CV, social clubs/activities, education, interests, etc. More than enough to get in contact with the guy and chat up some questions. Research always pays off and thus begins the true form of online networking.