"Are You Linked In?" by Ken Bernhardt Taylor E. Little Jr. Professor of Marketing and Special Assistant to the Dean Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - October 3, 2008 My last column in Atlanta Business Chronicle was on the importance of relationships. If you are like me, over the past several years you have been receiving periodic requests to join someone's network on LinkedIn. I have always resisted, not seeing any benefit to doing this and was afraid of receiving even more emails than now from friends of friends looking for a job or wanting something else. So I either ignored the request or sent an email explaining why I was not accepting their request to "be connected." But as I read more and more about the rise of social networks, I decided to join LinkedIn and see what all the fuss was about. Those of you who are power users of LinkedIn may want to skip the rest of this column, but for those of you like me who are relatively new to LinkedIn or just curious about it, I'll describe some of the potential uses of this business tool. LinkedIn now has more than 25 million members and has been growing at a rate of 1.3 million per month. All of the Fortune 500 companies and over 150 industries are represented, almost all with senior-level executives. Most users are white collar workers ages 30 to 55 with an average age of 41 (48% are over 45) and an average income of $109,000. In other words, LinkedIn has a very different profile from Facebook or MySpace, two other widely used social networks. It has been designed for business connections, not social ones. One source described it as MySpace for grown ups. When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional and educational background together with contact information. You control how much of this is made public vs. only to people you have agreed to be connected to. Talking to people and some reading have identified the following uses for LinkedIn: It enables registered users to maintain a list of contact details for people they know and trust; the people are called "Connections." Thus, you have your Rolodex available any time you have access to a computer, and a mobile phone version is also available. Your information stays current as people update their profiles. Beyond just contact information, you can see their backgrounds including current job, previous jobs, where they went to college, etc. There is a feature called LinkedIn Answers where you can post questions or answer questions posted by others. As opposed to other similar services, the questions are business-oriented, and you can determine the identity (and credibility) of the people asking or answering the questions. There is a search function where you can identify users from groups such as your alma mater, high school, company, industry, or professional or other groups. This makes it easy to connect with friends from current or previous jobs, colleges, etc. You can build your own network and/or access the network of your friends and colleagues. You can see who your friends are connected to and ask to be connected directly to them if you know them or ask your friends to make an introduction. This is all done very easily. It has a "Recommended" function where you can recommend others or receive recommendations from your business connections. It is a great way to check out potential clients before contacting them or calling on them. You can see their profile so you can know a lot about them ahead of time, including who they know that you know, making it easier to establish rapport more quickly. If you are interviewing for a job, you can find people you know who work in that company or industry and can help you get the inside track or information about the company that will give you an edge in getting the job. There are new features being added regularly, although I haven't tried any of them yet. Through a partnership LinkedIn has with BusinessWeek, users can view their professional contacts at companies featured in BusinessWeek.com articles. There is a function called LinkedIn Jobs to identify job opportunities. LinkedIn News delivers news about a member's company, industry or competitors. If you decide to join the 25 million users, be sure to use the tool properly. That means personalizing your invitations rather than just using the very impersonal default message, filling out your profile as completely as you are comfortable with (enabling more of your friends and colleagues to find you), and proactively looking for friends and asking to become linked. Millions of users access LinkedIn each month, and it has been growing rapidly. It's equivalent to the time you finally heard enough people say "can you fax it to me" that you decided to go buy a fax machine. It has reached critical mass, making it worthwhile to put your toe in the water and "get connected."