Last Updated on April 20, 2020
I discovered LinkedIn a short while after I discovered blogging, and I thought it was such a cool idea, that I’ve started to build my LinkedIn profile right away.
For those of you who don’t know, LinkedIn is a place where you can connect with people all over the world, a sort of who’s who, where everybody can have a presentation page for free. In order to get connected to other people, you have to have something in common: a school you’ve both attended, a workplace where you both worked, or a person who is connected to both of you.
Another way of getting in touch with people is to answer their questions. There’s a special place on LinkedIn, where members can ask questions, then read and evaluate the responses they get from other members. It was like a game, and I got addicted for a while, so a few people gave me good ratings and we became contacts to each other.
Then I discovered that if I fill in all the places I’ve worked in, I might be able to find some of my former colleagues in there. So I did, and I found one colleague, who was now living in another country. I was so happy, I started to write him a message, then…
… I stopped just before sending it out, as I realized that he’d never guess who that message was from, because I used my pen name, and not my real one, when I built my profile.
Being the lazy person I am, I didn’t bother to start building another profile on my real name, but I still see LinkedIn as a cool place to meet people you’ve once known and forgot about them, a place to start building new connections, and why not, a place to check on your potential bosses or partners.
Besides, LinkedIn has an Yahoo group called LinkedIn Bloggers, which is very active, and where hot issues blogging-related are discussed.
This is my contribution to the Social Media Mega Project, for the LinkedIn section, hosted on AlphaBlogs.
If you want, you can contribute, too. We are all waiting for your articles on social media.
its funny that LinkedIn is the only network that works best with your real names… I have an account with them but haven’t logged in months! So many networks, so many groups – its becoming harder and harder to keep track of all.. glad you reminded me of this one
Yes, I’ve also forgotten about LinkedIn, but I remembered with the occasion of our group project. As nobody wants links and traffic from us, I started to write posts, to submit them to each of you.
Thanks so much for that post, Simonne! I really need to go to LinkedIn Bloggers and see what they’re up to.
See, something learned already 🙂
You are welcome, Isabella. You’ll find some fine people there, I hope.
Well, the plus of LinkedIn is also its minus to me. The fact that you have to have something in common like school and workplace to be connected, that’s rather restrictive.
Yes, Katir, but you can make connections also by answering questions. It works. However, I stopped using it a while ago, as I didn’t see too much of a benefit in it for me.