You know that feeling when you uncover an object from your past and memories begin flooding into your mind? I had this experience while visiting my childhood home recently. I uncovered an old friend in the form of a Nokia 3390 wireless phone I picked up in 2001. Nokia then marketed it as the next generation device designed to reflect your lifestyle. Your lifestyle was showcased in the form of custom ringtones, Snake 2, and interchangeable front/back covers. I chose the champagne gold color, a true statement 12 years ago. I loved that phone! Predictive text and a monochrome, 84 x 48 display was all we knew then.
In 12 short years our devices are more powerful than ever. Innovation kicked into high gear. In 2003, Blackberry gained considerable market share in mobile by concentrating on email. Staying connected while on the go became the norm. Later, in 2007, Steve Jobs raised the bar with the iPhone. The “There’s an app for that,” pop culture tagline played a huge role in Apple’s marketing initiatives as well as a role into our thinking.
That thinking has increased our electronic connectivity even further today. Internet companies emerged, one of which has changed the business landscape, LinkedIn. LinkedIn has nearly a quarter billion users, 75 million of those located in the United States.
LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool, but it’s also a good place to find prospects. And my job is to do just that – vet possible leads. So I use it every day to research prospects and field leads. Needless to say, I’ve seen my fair share of profiles – done both wrong and right. And I’ve learned the etiquette of LinkedIn.
1) Be sure to get a LinkedIn premium profile. If you’re vetting leads, this is the only way you should go. There are so many perks to having the premium profile – the Open Link network, deeper search criteria, profile organizers, and introductions. Users also get a deeper understanding of who’s viewed their profiles.
2) Complete your profile with a picture, titles, dates, descriptions, accolades, etc. of all your work history. This is your virtual first impression. No one wants to see half of your friends head from that Spring Break and an incomplete profile. These only help in your search process and make you look more credible and a lot less like spam. LinkedIn is, like I stated earlier, your first impression. Make it a good one.
3) The true power of LinkedIn comes when you utilized the Team Link function. If I want to speak to a specific company you’re looking to work for or get in contact with, and my colleague is connected to them, I’ll ask for an introduction rather than going in cold. This helps build credibility and offers a chance to speak on a more personal level.
LinkedIn will be much more than just a networking and job searching tool in the future. CEO, Jeff Weiner, plans to revamp profile pages for small and medium sized businesses. Weiner also mentions the company building a Yammer-like communication tool. And third, he wants to launch and economic graph driven by LinkedIn’s data. Picture every company, college and a majority of workers around the world defining what the world’s economy might look like. “The people in jobs need to have the right access to information,” said Weiner.