With all the hype surrounding Twitter at the moment, it’s easy for people to overlook some of the other very useful sites out there. Especially if you’re new to business and/or social networking
One I’m determined to start making more use of is LinkedIn. They have this to say about themselves:
LinkedIn has over 46 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful
They have a video on their “about us” page that is a little bit waffly for my liking, but it gives a good idea of what it’s all about.
The key thing for me about LinkedIn is finding out the best way to contact someone I don’t know.
Let’s say I want to speak to someone at BigCo about a potential business deal. I can search LinkedIn for people from BigCo and see if I know someone that knows someone there – and if I do then I can request an introduction. It takes things to the third degree too – so whilst no one I know happens to know anyone at BigCo – they may know someone that does and I can get introduced through that path. Nice.
It does suffer a fatal flaw like Twitter, Facebook, etc in that it shows how many ‘connections’ (replace with ‘friends’, ‘followers’, etc) you have. So some people add connections to as many people as possible, even if they’ve hardly ever dealt with the person, just to inflate their egos and look important. Not much use when it comes to an introduction.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has taken out one of the “premium” paid-for subscriptions from LinkedIn and found it worhtwhile. Their site isn’t doing a great job of selling me onthe benefits of it.
If you’re a web developer looking for a start-up idea, you could take the LinkedIn concept and extend it to include degrees of trust. I started a discussion about this 3 years ago on UKBF. Someone even kindly started working on the maths. I still think it’s a goer.
UKBF is a very good site to get involved with if you’re interested in networking with others in business.
4Networking seems to really be going places, especially with the off-line meetups they organise. I retract my comments from when they first started, calling them “4Not-working” : )
WeCanDoBiz seems to be more slanted towards referals and leads than networking, but still worth checking out.
Ecademy is an odd one. I never got anywhere with it personally and I found it to be full of life coaches, emotional millionaires and people who wear cardigans (nothing against life coaches or cardigan wearers in moderation!) But I know some people who swear by it.
Any other business networking sites that you can recommend?
![[Post to Twitter]](http://blog.kashflow.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://blog.kashflow.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Digg]](http://blog.kashflow.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-digg-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to StumbleUpon]](http://blog.kashflow.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-su-micro3.png){kind=icon}
Tags: ecademy, linkedin, networking, Twitter, UKBF, wecandobiz
This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 10:09 am and is filed under Small Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Thanks for the mention Duane.
We’re certainly known for sales leads and referrals, mainly because those things are hard to get elsewhere, but we also help you network.
You can sign straight in using a Twitter ID (others supported) to get:
My Local Group – other business owners near you (https://www.wecando.biz/my_networks.php?tab=3)
My Industry Group – network with your peers (https://www.wecando.biz/my_networks.php?tab=4)
Networking event search (http://www.wecando.biz/search.php?tab=4)
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I must agree that LinkedIn is a “good” networking site for business – and may have to check out WeCanDo, Ian!
Beyond that, one of the problems is that there are so many networking sites, profile, portfolio systems and lord knows what else out there – a near infinite number of directories, too.
Keep the list you visit to a minimum (whichever ones they are) and focus on using them properly. 100 incomplete profiles will do you no good at all!
Interesting – I am working out whether this sort of online networking is right for me and my business. My first impressions are that there seems to be much more broadcasting than reading, and this is really done for the benefit of Google.
My other concern relates back to a recent blog of yours regarding the risk of referring someone that you haven’t had first experience of working with.
For me, that is why 4Networking is the network that I am investing my time and energy into, online and offline – really get the chance to interact
Ecademy has been of real benefit to me over the last 3 years. I don’t recognise your description of the majority of members Duanne. Having said that I accept it’s an acquired taste.
Those people who join and expect to get business simply by pushing and promoting themselves will be disappointed. It’s all about online engagement, sharing and collaborating. There are plenty of success stories but also plenty of people who don’t ‘get it’. There’s no point in joining and hoping for a ‘quick win’. It’s about building relationships – both online and offline at events, both locality or interest driven (there are thousands of special interest clubs/groups).
Main target membership are solpreneurs, consultants and home workers. Equally I run a club for accountants on Ecademy and we have approaching 200 members.
I’m not a life coach or an emotional millionaire and I don’t own a cardigan. But I am an active member of ecademy and your description doesn’t seem a true reflection IMHO.
I’ve been a member since December 2007 and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the journey so far. It’s been an education for me. It’s engaging, we share useful content and collaborate with UK/ worldwide business people. It’s just what I wanted from a business network. The new improvements to the site will no doubt make it even better.
Shame you had such a poor experience Duanne. How long were you active on ecademy?
@Aron @Mark Lee,
I’ve tried a few times to get into ecademy, but the sheer amount of random life coaches and the like messaging me out of the blue really put me off and I didn’t stay active on there for long.
But it’s comments like those above that make me try it again every now and then. Perhaps I’ll try again some time soon.
Duane
I have had incredible success on LinkedIn. I think it is mostly because of the scale. None of these other sites even begin to approach it in terms of volumes of users and groups.
Meetup.com is another great place to get together with some like-minded individuals and maybe ease into a target audience group or two as well!
Cheers!
Plaxo is another one which is used by my own own social networking contacts (and now myself).
Has anyone else used it?