Good Evening. Welcome to the party. Imagine you ring the doorbell at this house that on the outside looks like a small ranch, but when you walk in the front door it is like the scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the Quidditch world cup in the Weasley's tent. A small looking regular tent on the outside, but inside is six rooms, a full kitchen, a basement, a game room, maybe a bowling alley, and definitely a movie theater.
This is the place to be for anyone who is anyone and for anyone who wants to meet anyone. You walk in timidly because you have never seen anything like this before, you look around and thankfully you see one of your good friends but unfortunately they are surrounded by their co-workers. You keep looking around at the other groups of people. Then you see someone you worked with whom you were friendly, but never called to hang out. You approach them because you remember their email address or they remember working with you briefly.
After the exchange of pleasantries you start listening in to the group around you to see if you can add anything important and sound educated at the same time. The people in this group, however, are talking about the osmosis of the microbial in the ink of an octopus. Not for you. You move on, feeling more confident since you hit up the open bar that always has the "answers".
People are looking at you now, saying hi, trying to connect because they recognize you, or someone that looks like you, or they had an Aunt with the same last name... You are polite and accept one in every three people's connection attempts. As you approach your tenth group, you hear them ring the last call bell, and you realize that you should pay them to keep the party going so you can keep connecting and joining groups. After you rethink dropping some money to set yourself aside from the person you were 15 minutes ago, you decide to sign out and leave the party for that day. Leaving the groups you made an impact on waiting for your return, you know how influential you were this week. Top 3 definitely.
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This lengthy analogy is my description of a useful professional social media outlet. I love LinkedIn. I wish it was what I depicted in reality, all the different people dressed up, talking about their professions and how they got where they are now. The aspect I like most about LinkedIn are the people who are LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers). These people don't care who they connect with, their goal is to connect with everyone around. These people are the smartest people, or at least the most useful people. The issue with being a LION is that it takes away from LinkedIn's uniquity, what sets it aside from Facebook and Google+.
LinkedIn's purpose is to connect professionals to one another, the catch is that they need to know you, have worked with you, had some sort of conversation with you in order to divulge some information, at least their e-mail address, with you. Not having this information tidbit of information should stop the connector from attempting to spam the connectee.
The point of this is to help introduce people who may no know just how useful LinkedIn is. Remember a few things when using LinkedIn:
Don't walk into the party like the drunk college student arriving fashionably late. You don't want the negative attention and association attached to your name. Stop, Look, and Listen. Not to cross the street, (well, continue to do this in that scenario. Safety First!) Stop to think about which groups to enter, questions to answer, or status to post. Look at what is being written, add something thoughtful/ thought provoking. Listen to the tone of the conversations going on, and mimic this in your posts.
Example:
Your group on Looney Tunes is discussing the unfairness of Wyle E. Coyote's all consuming homicidle urge for the Road Runner. Your response should be more than, "Give up already". Something you could say is "After so many long years of attempting to enjoy a feast, how has Wyle E. Coyote survived? Maybe he should stick to that route and lull the Road Runner into a false sense of security.
The later post would be thought provoking and entertaining, and you would be recognized for it with an influx of connection requests and your weekly influence meter would go up. It's the way you win at LinkedIn.
I hope this article is at least a little entertaining, if not informational. It was entertaining to write.
