Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

As the Online Marketing Manager of IdeaStar, it is part of my job to join every new social site that comes along to assess the potential for online marketing opportunities. Today I would like to focus on the business networking site known as LinkedIn.

I have had a profile on LinkedIn for a long time now. At first, I didn’t do a whole lot with it. I had added a few people from my current job who had profiles there and I got a few recommendations from them in order to make my profile 100% complete. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I really started paying attention to LinkedIn. I started doing searches for colleagues from past jobs and I was amazed to find out not only how many people were on LinkedIn, but how many I knew. I have now worked my profile up to 124 connections and 12 recommendations at the time of this post.

So now to my question. Is LinkedIn a good business networking tool? Or is it just good for recruiting?

For the last few months I have gotten at least three calls a week from recruiting firms looking for potential candidates to fill open positions. I just want to point out that I have no resumes active online anywhere, yet I still get three calls a week. Every voicemail I get or call I answer starts with “I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I think you might be a fit for……”. What is even more amazing to me is that they call me at my place of business as that is the only phone number I have on my LinkedIn profile.

Now I see how recruiters can use this to their advantage, but what about for a real business? It was not fully apparent to me how powerful LinkedIn could be for a business until recently. I have many old colleagues from past work experiences on my profile and one recently contacted me to catch up. It turns out that she has taken a different position in the company now and she is in need of some Web 2.0 work. After many conversations with her, we are now working together on a potential project.

In my opinion, everyone in business should be on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to keep up with old colleagues and at the same time form some potential new business partnerships. Just beware of the recruiting calls!!

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