LinkedIn’s latest announcement means that users will be able to segment their network of contacts in a variety of new, more granular ways. Though similar sites are being created every day, it is one of the original mainstream social networks and there are still many ways to use it to make networking more valuable, succinct and most importantly – successful. The following is the last of three sequential articles that respectively cover creating your LinkedIn presence, developing your network and then utilising it.

Part 3: Utilising Your LinkedIn Network

While LinkedIn serves as a virtual representation of a business network, the site also offers many possibilities around the theme of crowdsourcing information. Moreover, once a network is developed, in many ways it is far more effective than a traditional, physical networking forum in terms of delivering high-calibre, relevant and useful information quickly.

1. Business Advice – Most obviously, LinkedIn is a terrific source of commercially-useful advice – from finding a pay-as-you-go conference call service, to looking to find a professional services specialist, such as a lawyer.

2. Sourcing Jobs – LinkedIn is a highly fertile forum for finding jobs, not least because it’s all based on word-of-mouth. It offers a simple means of passing jobs on and by participating in this, even if the user is not actually looking, at some point they may well be grateful of this service. As with all networking, helpful networkers are always the first to be helped when they’re looking for it.

3. Surveys – LinkedIn provides a great way to canvas a network’s opinion quickly through its polling feature. Unless connections number in the tens of thousands – and for reasons mentioned previously, that’s highly unlikely – then the survey is far more likely to be qualitative than quantitative. But nevertheless, it’s potentially extremely useful market intelligence that can be used for any number of commercial purposes, such as to support sales or marketing documents, for example.

4. Additional Route of Contact – As every email user knows, sometimes email simply doesn’t work. Whether a specific web-service is down, a mail-server is being problematic or a spam filter has been over sensitive in blocking a specific email address, having the contact in LinkedIn affords the user another route to contact.

5. Manage Events and Schedule Meetings – Utilise LinkedIn’s event management function to invite the network to forthcoming events or meetings directly, thereby keeping the relationships in the real world, in addition to maintaining the virtual connection.

6. Distribute Sales & Marketing Collaterals – Through features such as the White Paper tool, marketing collaterals can be either distributed generally, directly to an individual or indeed roadtested before mass distribution through other channels.

There is no doubt that LinkedIn is one of the most commercially effective social networks. The connections are typically based on real-world relationships and therefore the site simply carries more weight, particularly in terms of communications between two businesses, than other social sites. Moreover, based on the last few months being extremely active for LinkedIn, with the launch of new apps, an outlook toolbar, a commercial relationship with Twitter, it looks as though the site is gearing up to push further ahead as a leader in the space throughout 2010.

Pete is MD of Punch Communications. For more information regarding LinkedIn or any other aspect of social media outreach please contact him on 01858 411600, follow on Twitter or connect with him via LinkedIn.