Gaining a Competitive Edge in Professional Networking Via LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site that is geared specifically towards professional networking. Launched in May of 2003, has grown to support more than 100 million registered users and boasts over 21.4 million U.S. visitors on a monthly basis and over 47.6 million visitors worldwide. There are solid reasons for its gain in popularity as a valuable business-networking tool.

Social networking via LinkedIn offers some definite advantages to establishing yourself in your chosen career field. First, it can help develop and promote your professional profile while you maintain more control over what information is available. LinkedIn gives you the upper hand in determining how people see you online by even having the potential of appearing first in Google search results when your name is typed in and submitted via a search query. Second, LinkedIn easily allows you to stay in touch with your professional connections. Colleagues may change jobs, addresses, or phone numbers, but with LinkedIn you don’t have to worry about re-locating them since LinkedIn keeps everything up to date for you as people change their profile information. Your LinkedIn contacts simply need to update their contact information and you’ll have instant access to it. Third, you can utilize fellow professional’s assistance and ideas in the Answers and Groups sections of LinkedIn. This can be very helpful when you need a new perspective or advice on something you are working on and, has the added bonus of potentially expanding your professional network. Last, LinkedIn does more than keep you connected with your contacts. It can also generate more leads, put you in touch with future business partners, and help you seek out a new career opportunity.

It is important to remember the difference between LinkedIn and other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. It is considered acceptable to be more candid with your thoughts and posts on sites like Facebook and MySpace, but LinkedIn needs to remain a purely professional outlet for you. An established or potential contact on LinkedIn is not interested in hearing about how wasted you were the previous evening. However, it is important not to confuse this requirement of reservation with adding some personality to your profile and in your connections. Human robots are not a viable connection for anyone in the professional world. This is the benefit of utilizing the groups that are available to share your professional expertise in any given area.

Remember as always, that spamming not an option in the professional world. If your goal is to gain, expand, or better your social reputation with LinkedIn, don’t use it as a blatant sales tool. Providing constant links and incessantly spewing your sales pitch won’t win you any friends or career opportunities especially. Changing your outlook on social networking sites from seeing potential dollar signs to seeing the potential to establish meaningful and long-lasting professional relationships is worth a million bucks, and is guaranteed to propel you much further than any frenzied sales scheme you might cook up. It is imperative to utilize purely for professional purposes and to network professionally. If you utilize the tool smartly, you can gain a competitive edge on the competition for potential career opportunities.