Why I’m warming up to LinkedIn

A lot of my posts so far have related to social media: Facebook, Squidoo, Hubpages and now, LinkedIn. I enjoy researching social media and utilizing it in my personal time (nurturing my Facebook addiction, and more recently jumping on the Twitter bandwagon). But, I am a bit of a social media skeptic at times. I’m not one to follow fads in fashion just for the sake of it, and neither do I follow tech trends just because. So I’d like to think that I can spot useful and not so useful social media tactics because of my resistance to jump on anything with “social” attached to it.

So, for quite some time, I’ve been less than impressed with LinkedIn. I found it clunky at first and spare with opportunities to truly connect. But as I’ve used LinkedIn more, I’ve warmed to its functionality, and new features have cropped  up that make me more excited about the “Professional’s Facebook”.

If you don’t know, LinkedIn is a social network geared towards professionals. It’s based around the resume model: place your name, work experience, current job and any other career accolades you’ve earned. For a while, most people really only used this offering of LinkedIn, a virtual space for a resume. Now, though the other features are being used more and more as the professional sector catches wind of social media for business. People who considered social media to be child’s play are changing their tune and using LinkedIn to scope candidates, investigate companies and check out who is earning good job reviews.

Yes, that’s a facet of LinkedIn, the good old consumer review. Reviews have been online for decades, but getting your work performance reviewed for all recruiters and companies to see is newer, and quite effective. Check out Briana’s post on the power of user-generated reviews.
The next feature to be involved in is the groups. You can join groups related to your industry and join discussions and receive email blasts updating you on the group’s happenings. More than once I’ve found really interesting discussions within these groups. I attribute the quality to the fact that truly mostly career-oriented people seem to be on LinkedIn so the contributions are usually worthwhile.

LinkedIn has even taken a cue from Facebook and incorporated status updates, and a news feed. These features help with digital networking, as you can see which companies, employees and groups are adding friends, posting updates and discussing.
Another interesting facet: incorporation of your WordPress blog. I’ve only seen one instance of this, and am not sure how this will pan out, but it’s just another way to share your experience via LinkedIn. Just make sure the blog you sync up is professional. No one wants to read about your birthday party on your virtual resume.

So my feeling on LinkedIn is that it’s evolving into a useful platform for networking. Unlike Myspace, which can’t quite gain back its relevance, LinkedIn is growing with the times. Its incorporating what is working in the social sphere, and I feel like it has a fighting chance of remaining on of the important social sites in the next few years.

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