Some weeks ago I was moaned at by a colleague, Manoj Ranaweera, who spotted I'd registered on the popular social networking service LinkedIn and done nothing with it. It was on my things to do list, and so last week, actually prompted by Euan Semple, I decided to start putting some effort in to making connections (please feel free to connect up with me). LinkedIn allows you to put on all of your expertise, interests and employment history in a sort of online CV, and then connect together with business partners, friends and colleagues and automate the process of networking and making connections. You could use it to facilitate business deals, find business partners, be found for opportunities, or help in your job search. My profile is only partially formed, with a few connections at the moment, but you can also add things like this to your blog:
As so often happens when you start an initiative like this a few coincidences occur. Today social networking and blogging made the BBC news. In the early World Report they had an expert on who made a reasonable stab at explaining the business benefits of blogging. A little later in the business section of BBC's breakfast news they talked about social networking again, referencing Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace. They had a different expert this time, and they did a pretty inept job - the average listener would have come away none the wiser on what the real potential is, which is really frustrating when you know how useful these tools can be for business.
One more coincidence is that I joined two specific social networks created with a tool called Ning. I'd heard a lot of Buzz about the product from the Social Media Collective, but I hadn't taken enough notice. This allows you to create a comprehensive social media site of your own, for your own community, with no special expertise. If you want to find out more you can read what Giga Om, TechCrunch and Scoble have to say.
The last part of the jigsaw is that I watched a video presentation, which I've now lost, on Zoominfo at one of the recent Silicone Valley events. This is a free service that does semantic search of the web, with "crawlers" using a combination of artificial intelligence and natural language techniques, to connect together companies, people and information published about them. It's not perfect, because unless you've got a pretty unique name, some strange and incorrect connections can be made. However, it can be invaluable as a search tool.
Last week I had a meeting with the French CFO of an HR software company. Had I searched for him on Zoominfo and Linkedin before the meeting in just a few seconds to find him, and then a few minutes reading I would have discovered what university he went to, the subject of his degree and where he did his MBA. I would have had his recent employment history and found out what he did before joining the software industry, as well as how long he had been with the current outfit. I could have read the press release announcing his appointment. I could have known about some of the things he's interested in, and where he was born and brought up. This is the sort of profiling that could have been done a few years ago, but with some significant cost and effort. Today it's just a few minutes when I've got an Internet connection.
I knew Guy Kawasaki would have something to say about Linkedin, so here are his 10 Ways to use Linkedin (although there are actually 11!). When I looked, his mini poll on the post has been taken by 7,378 people, and 69.4% of them said they'd found LinkedIn useful. Combine it with Zoominfo, and no matter what connections it helps you make, you'll be better prepared for the next meeting.
