LinkedIn is often cited as the preferred social network for business professionals. Of course like all opinions, this is not a unanimous position, but I think it's safe to say that it is one of the networks that business owners in general find most attractive for building relationships.
For those people already enjoying LinkedIn, they've added some integration between address books and profiles. "Starting today, you should be able to add and edit key information to your address book directly from your connections’ profiles," says Chris Richman on the LinkedIn blog. "Imagine the robust database of connections you’ll be building through this feature - one connection at a time."
You can find the widget that allows you to do this on your profile page right below the "How you're connected to me" widget in the right sidebar.
You can also bring up your address book from here by clicking "view/edit contact info."
Speaking of LinkedIn, Small Business Trends has a good video up showing something of a walkthrough for setting up a LinkedIn profile and using it for business purposes. Those of you who are already familiar with the service, probably won't gain much from it, but newbies might find it pretty interesting. The feedback they've received on it has been pretty positive.
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Not great for small businesses
I was fascinated to read you connecting LinkedIn with "small business" and "business owners" because I don't imagine there are many of either on LinkedIn. Given that the thing that fuelled its growth was corporate job-hoppers reconnecting with former work buddies, most of the connections there are non business owners but staff, and their connections other staff not customers or suppliers. For small business owners, there just isn't the righ quality of people there.
LinkedIn also offers very little for the small business owner to help grow their network to include valuable new connections with people who may want what they offer. The search tools are mainly people focused and LinkedIn actively discourages members from accepting connections from people they don't know. I've never seen a greater inhibitor to business networking.
And if I am right this feature seems to suggest that YOU somplete full contact details for each one of your connections, one at a time, before you then presumably export that to Outlook or your PDA/Blackberry/iPhone? Why not get your contacts doing that for you? That way you only need edit one profile rather than, in my case, 300.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz