The Advantages of Having LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media website people often use for business and professional purposes. LinkedIn pages often include information about their educational and professional backgrounds. Through LinkedIn, people often communicate with others about more professional topics than they do on other social media websites, such as Facebook, Myspace or Twitter. You can use the website to find individuals you knew in high school, college or another setting. Having a LinkedIn page allows you to connect with and talk to people who could help you achieve your professional goals.
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Networking
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Having a LinkedIn page allows you to network with friends, acquaintances or colleagues, as well as individuals within your chosen industry. Through LinkedIn, you can become their friends, send messages to them, read information about them or get messages from them. Knowing someone in your industry could help you to know of jobs, internships or other opportunities that are available. Through the website, you could also talk to individuals about advances and problems within your industry. If you need to get in touch with someone for your job, especially if you are a publicist or journalist, LinkedIn could help you to reach that person or find out more information about him so you are better able to reach him.
Marketing
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Many companies and individuals use the LinkedIn website to promote their businesses. On their LinkedIn pages, they often provide information about their companies, including their companies' backgrounds and purposes; some provide links to their businesses' websites. LinkedIn provides you with a website to let other professionals know about your business. This could help you to get potential customers, employees or business partners. LinkedIn also allows companies, individuals and groups to post information about their events for others to see. Through event postings, you can increase attendance to your events or further market your company to others.
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Advice and Information
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Through the LinkedIn website, you can get a great deal of information about your career path, the process of job seeking, your industry or competitors within your industry. On LinkedIn, you can develop a network through which you find out information about companies or individuals within your industry or communicate with others within your industry. Having a network allows you to reach individuals who can help answer professional-level questions you may have, especially if you are starting out in the industry. They could help answer questions about how to start out, be successful, avoid failure or get and keep jobs within your chosen field. If you are a professional, LinkedIn allows you to give industry-related advice to others.
Job Hunting
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LinkedIn features a directory that allows you to look for jobs within your field. The directory breaks down jobs by major cities, countries or continents and by experience level, but it allows you to do specialized searches of jobs close to your area. Many of the jobs on the site are professional-level jobs with opportunities for advancement. The website also provides a platform for employers to look for individuals that would be good matches for their companies. A potential employer could find you through LinkedIn and offer you an interview or a position based upon your credentials. LinkedIn allows you to look up a company or individual that is interested in hiring you to see if the company or person's background, goals and methods fit with yours.
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References
- LinkedIn: What Is LinkedIn?
- BNet; How to Use LinkedIn; Jake Swearingen; September 2008
- WSI Internet Marketing; The 3 Main Advantages of LinkedIn; Kimberly Nichols; October 2010
- Medical Sales Recruiter; Advantages of Linked-In for Job Seekers; April 2010
- Tech Republic; Five Benefits of LinkedIn for Organizations (and IT Pros); Rick Vanover; May 2009
- The Adler Group; 10 Great Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find the Best Passive Candidates on the Planet; Lou Adler; January 2008
