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5 commentsTuesday, November 11, 2008

Why and How LinkedIn Works for Business Professionals

Tips and Data

4 Comments

By used alfa romeo 147 (WPN reader) - Fri, 04/03/2009 - 17:08

"The great thing about only

"The great thing about only connecting to people you know, trust, and have experience working with, is that when you need to find that expert, get that answer, reference check a potentially great hire, get that introduction, then the trusted network of people you’ve proactively created on LinkedIn can help you out," writes Crane. "I find that a simple but useful analogy is a tapestry. The stronger and tighter the individual threads, the stronger the overall piece of cloth becomes."

By Ian Hendry (WPN reader) - Tue, 11/11/2008 - 01:40

It has flaws

Do you know, it would be nice to read one day someone looking at what LinkedIn doesn't offer before leaping on he bandwagon of encouraging everyone to blindly run towards LinkedIn.

For example, I read very little of the futility of connecting again to people you already know. Or of unloading your resume if you are actually hapy in what you do. Or the time it takes to trawl the questions section and contribute, only for someone to shoot you down so they can prove they know more than you. Or the way those sections are abused for other forms of self promotion. Or of how few tools there are for brokering valuable new relationshps with people who may actually want what you market. Or how odd it is that a "business network" punishes you with account restrictions if you attempt to connect to people not already known to you.

Does no-one question these things and start to expect a little more from the time they give so-called professional social networks?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.linkedin.com

By Chris Crum - Tue, 11/11/2008 - 08:10

RE: It has flaws.

I'm not trying to encourage everyone to "run blindly" toward LinkedIn. I'm happy for you to expose any flaws, because I want readers to be as informed as possible. If you have any other issues with the network, please feel free to vent them here. That goes for the rest of you too.

So you clearly don't care for LinkedIn much. What social networks do you recommend for business professionals and why?

By Paul (WPN reader) - Tue, 11/11/2008 - 16:14