Who uses LinkedIn?

[Kat Haylock]

After many years of neglect, UK Business Forums now has a brand new page on LinkedIn - you can give us a follow here if you're interested: I'll be using it to post threads, great bits of advice, editorials etc.

Up to this point, LinkedIn has been the one social site I've never really bothered with (@JEREMY HAWKE summed up my feelings perfectly when he said "I have been active on Linkedin for years and, to be quite honest, I could not tell you what the hell goes on. Oh yes, there’s one thing - it tells you who is a member of Linkedin") but I'm interested to hear what you think.

What do you use it for? Is there some kind of hidden benefit I've yet to discover?

 

[MikeJ]

I do a bit on a couple of the technical groups, but only when I'm trying to avoid doing proper work. I've used to to make contact with people a few times, and it's been useful when people have moved job and I needed to reach them again.

 

[myfairworld]

I'm a member but have never been able to fully understand how it works. It's an oddity that on LinkedIn people can recommend you (that's not the phrase used on LinkedIn but I can't recall what it is) as having specific business skills. I find that I'm recommended as having skills I don't possess while the ones I do possess are mostly ignored - the result inevitably is that I assume that the recommendations given to others are just rubbish and should be ignored.

 

[MikeJ]

As an aside, I ignored Linkedin for ages as I thought it was an Edinburgh based site. Link Edin.

Even now, I'll refer to it as linkeydin.

 

[Ashley_Price]

I am on Linkedin but like many people, if I am honest, just use it for promoting my products and service.

I believe probably more than half the people on it, signed up, completed their profile, sent and accepted a few invites and that's it, they've never done anything since. So, while it may still be good for headhunters and those searching for a new job, I doubt many people get a lot from it.

Can you use Linkedin for prospecting? Well, possibly, but only if your prospects have kept their profiles up to date. The previous owner of Pavilion, for example, still has her current role as Founder of Pavilion even though she then went into full time employment in September 2015 and is now on maternity leave.

I do try to keep in regular contact with my connections (all 239) and send them personalised messages, as opposed to just round robins. I last did this at Christmas to wish each and every one a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. There was no sales pitch, I just asked them something about their business. I think less than a third replied.

But then, I guess like every marketing opportunity, you will get people who will swear by Linkedin and will tell you how much business they get from it on a regular basis.

 

[ffox]

Yes, I use LinkedIn. In my days as an IT contractor it was an invaluable resource. It works in the manner of a large network system, in that any comment or observation you make is immediately visible to all of the contacts you have links with. If any of them decide to comment on your comment, observation or article, it immediately becomes available to all of their linked contacts.
In order to get any return from it participation is necessary.
There are special interest groups and special news groups, but the main activity for me was always researching where the skills shortfalls were in my industry and linking with people who may be looking for my skill set.
It's a good tool for discovering what people in industry actually 'know' about a subject and placing yourself in likely places where certain skills are being sought.

 

[Nochexman]

Tend to use for identifying people who want to contact me; and identifying sales prospects. Discussion forums seem to be places where people cut and past links to articles.

 

[Clinton]

I use LinkedIn extensively. If anyone has any questions about LinkedIn, fire away, I'll probably be able to answer them. I also write for LinkedIn Pulse (their blog). Here's my latest article.

@myfairworld , yes people can endorse you for a skill.... and "endorsements" are filled with nonsense. However, people can also "recommend" you. And that can be very valuable. For example, if you visit my LinkedIn profile via my signature, you'll see numerous recommendations - a paragraph or two from each referee.

In my case, the recommendations are from MDs of investment banks and Corporate Finance houses, famous business authors etc. It's impossible to explain how much they add to my credibility when I'm speaking with potential new clients. The great thing with recommendations is that you can visit the profiles of the referees to see if they are real people and you can form an opinion on the value of their recommendation based on who they are.

But the most important part for me is that I cleaned my connection list of all the people who post Facebook type stuff and I now get a fantastic feed of all the best news in my industry and my feed also leads me to interesting articles, interesting people, interesting opportunities.

 

[Mr D]

I am on LinkedIn, set up there some years ago. At one time was touting for employment and had a few enquiries from companies looking for particular skillsets. Back when I was a professional the capacity to move to a better organisation or to improve career was useful. Though the downside was the number of requests to do work for free (which were many) or on commission (I had major issues with doing that).

Mostly these days I use it for a few groups whose emails I get every few days plus occasionally logging in to see what is happening in those groups.
Plus two of my best friends from school (many years ago) use LinkedIn to message back and forth with me every few months to a couple of years.
I use it probably less than an hour a month in total. And rarely update it.

 

[MarkTaylor1968]

I have been using it regularly since 2008 and found it very good as a means of presenting credentials - a kind of online CV and this seems to have helped secure work, but I have never won business directly from it...

 

[Kat Haylock]

Thanks for your replies everyone - really interesting to get your viewpoints.

But the most important part for me is that I cleaned my connection list of all the people who post Facebook type stuff and I now get a fantastic feed of all the best news in my industry and my feed also leads me to interesting articles, interesting people, interesting opportunities.

This is a great point. The fact I treated Linkedin as a sort of Facebook is probably why my news feed was always filled with irrelevant rubbish.

 

[Clinton]

You need to be ruthless in removing connections in your feed. Don't worry, people won't know you've removed them (and you'll still actually be "connected" to them, you just won't get their stuff in your feed)!

A well respected person in my industry recently started sharing and liking posts about Donald Trump. Day after day I was getting all kinds of low quality discussions/arguments about Trump in my feed (and some racist stuff as well). I disconnected from this lady to stop further contamination of my feed. I also remove people who have the audacity to spam me in LinkedIn, who add my email address to their company's mailing list etc. The "Your a Genius if you can answer this" crowd are the worst. Absolutely, positively, put them in the bin!

If you look at my profile you'll find I'm connected to 1500+ people. My feed gets data from fewer than 200 of them.

 

[Ashley_Price]

There are special interest groups and special news groups,

How do you find it now? I am/was in several groups, but there seemed to be little conversation, just people promoting themselves or linking to blogs or articles they had written.

 

[ffox]

How do you find it now? I am/was in several groups, but there seemed to be little conversation, just people promoting themselves or linking to blogs or articles they had written.

The groups I'm in are mainly Microsoft Product related. There is some self and own business promotion, but there are also plenty of items which give insight into new and revised functionality. Lots of items relating to personal and/or company experience with recently released elements. This is especially useful with Office 365 and SharePoint on-line as these are developing at such a pace it's sometimes hard to keep up.
It's always useful to hear what other are doing.

 

[Barry Sharf]

I have been using LinkedIn regularly.