Are we Linkedin, or are we only halfway there?
What is LinkedIn?
According to the official blab, ~ LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, with over 60 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.
So what does this mean?
Let’s compare it with Facebook, which most people are familiar with. Facebook is people connecting with friends and hooking up with long-lost school buddies in a reasonably informal; anything (and yes, everything sometimes) goes.
Linkedin is a social platform designed to connect business people to other business people via their past and present work experience in a much more formal manner, i.e. only a few pictures of last night’s drink fest or weekend getaway. Basically, it’s your CV or résumé online for the entire world to become aware of.
However, like many things in life, many people do not have a completed or up-to-date CV… why would we? Unless we are thinking of ditching our current work and going elsewhere. So Linkedin is only as good as the information you have posted on it. The nice thing they integrate is a percentage counter telling you how complete your profile is. Getting that to 100% takes considerable time and effort.
So now you have a 100% profile, what can you do with it?
Like Facebook, you can use it to keep up to date with colleagues and friends, but that would be the basic.
The real strength of Linkedin comes with using it to find experts and ideas or exploring network connections. Or people can find you for your expertise. Linkedin is precisely that.
You are exploring a connected or linked network asking for introductions (i.e., online handshakes) from trusted colleagues to find people who can help you in your business or career venture.
For example, you need to find someone to come in and help your business understand and use social media better. (Can you see where this is going?)
If we needed to find an excellent Asian restaurant, we would ask a trusted friend who would tell us, “I don’t know, I don’t like different cuisines. I am all meat and potatoes, but my buddy’s buddy is rooming with an exchange student from the college who was raving about a new place; I will link you up”.
You do the same on Linkedin. You can search for a social media expert, which gives you a path of connections to people in your networks to talk to that person. (i.e. You happen to know someone who knows Jessica Samuels, who happens to know a great guy by the name of Scott Davis and could get you in contact to come over and help you)
Joining groups on LinkedIn is an underutilized feature.
Conclusion
Before going places, log in to some big social media players and type in your destination. You may be surprised how much information you can discover.
You also get some candid reviews, and people are willing to answer any questions you may have.
Most of what you get will be consumer-generated and may show or talk about some of the things in a much more honest way than the official hotel site.