LinkedIn is positioned as a social media site geared towards working professionals around the world. Anyone who is serious about a professional image in the twenty-first century has a professional profile on LinkedIn. Though its credibility is established worldwide, it has over 300 million members, some people still question if LinkedIn is a time waster or a time saver.’
LinkedIn Promoting Success
LinkedIn promotes success through multiple on-line networking tools. Members have access to no-cost to industry helps, career options, updates, informative news, and more. While it does take time to understand how to best market your skills and set up an eye-catching profile, LinkedIn has proven to be worth the time in the long run.
Professional Snapshot
When setting up a profile, consider it a snapshot of a professional career. This site is lucrative for sales and marketing professionals, and anyone wanting to establish a respected on-line presence. LinkedIn, because of it how it’s marketed, is not a site to see how many friends can be collected. Savvy professionals make meaningful connections and used them to expand their network of colleagues.
Branding and LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an additional on-line media to establish a personal brand. It is an effective way to showcase credentials that go far beyond a business card.
- Members can highlight profiles by adding PowerPoint presentations, and using links to videos and marketing messages at significant landing pages on websites.
- Members can add newsletters, industry invites, and update information to always keeping it fresh and current, are simple changes that are easy to make.
- Companies are requesting their employees join LinkedIn. It’s another way to keep a business imprint fresh, and to expose it to more contacts, thereby possibly generating new clients.
Smart media networkers are familiar with all the tools that LinkedIn has to offer. All this comes with a no-cost membership, although, LinkedIn offers a premium membership for a service fee.
Networking
A great networking tool is when members align themselves with groups within their industry. These professional groups attract business executives to small entrepreneurs; high end book publishers to freelance writers. Of course, the most popular groups are those which are human resource and career focused.
The great thing about LinkedIn is that it employers often look for qualified candidates by browsing member profiles and typically initiate the first contact.
Putting career prospecting aside, LinkedIn also provides interesting industry insight on a number of professions and even hobbies. People choosing to go this route for information know exactly who is it coming from. Often members share valuable information, answer questions, and provide excellent platforms for learning industry secrets in a comfortable environment.
Work-At-Home Professionals
For those that work at home and do not share the social aspect of being in an office, LinkedIn provides an excellent way to keep in touch with other experts. These groups support their members in very tangible ways by providing insight to an industry that only those with actual experience can relate to it in a practical way. This is a niche market that LinkedIn has the ability to service in a tangible way.
So, is LinkedIn a time waster or a time saver? Here is the deal, it does take a decent amount of time to join, set up a profile, locate the right industry groups, and search for people that you know. Thankfully, using your e-mail will make finding people a little easier. But this is brand awareness and marketing in a very technologically savvy community of professionals.
Nowadays, LinkedIn has become an important medium for SMO functions where companies, with a professional assistance of internet marketing agencies such as Digital Next AU, run their social media campaigns for fruitful publicity.
