“How do you use LinkedIn?”

This morning I fielded a question from Frank Riordan, Founder and President of DMC , regarding my use of LinkedIn.  Frank is a client of mine as well as a friend and colleague from Entrepreneur’s Organization, and his company provides “high-caliber engineering and software development services for manufacturing, testing, and product development organizations in the Chicago area and throughout the world. “ 

Frank writes:

Adam –

I have a couple of questions regarding LinkedIn/networking.  What are the top two or three ways that you use LinkedIn?  What are the benefits you see to being a “LION” vs. having a group of people that you truly know?  What other online tools have you found to be effective?

Thanks,

Frank

With Frank’s permission, I have reposted my answer to his questions with the goal of sharing some insight into how I use LinkedIn to build my businesses and keep a leg up on the competition.  [If you're not familiar with the term "LION," it stands for LinkedIn Open Networker and is a self-selected designation that means you will "accept" all invites to connect that are sent your way.  This approach to LinkedIn has the obvious effect of dilluting the strength of your connections on a per capita basis, but increases the size of your network by leaps and bounds - literally overnight.]

Frank,

I use LinkedIn to conduct market reasearch as well as recruiting. The power of LinkedIn as a research tool is unparalleled. For example, let’s say I want to create an org chart of my biggest competitor, to see how they’re built. The first thing I do is go to LinkedIn and search the company by name. Typically, people link up with co-workers, so it’s all there for the taking.  This approach works just as well for building recruiting contacts.

For me, the benefits of LinkedIn are related to the number of direct contacts that I have. As you probably know, you can only “see” people’s networks if you’re a first degree contact (usually). For that reason, I choose to be an open networker because my reach is geometrically larger than if I limited it to people I know.

I paid the 50 bucks at TopLinked.com and put myself on their list. In 60 days I received over 2000 invites. I now have a connection list approaching 5000 people, which gives me access to a network of over 17M people by extension to “networks of networks.” Keep in mind that a user can only invite 3000 people before they are capped by the system. It behooves you to let other people do the inviting.

FYI, I use Facebook as the tool for the network of people whom I actually “know.”  That’s how I keep my contacts straight.

So, Facebook is the other tool that works for me to keep in touch with my personal network. As far as research is concerned, I would also highly recommend a tool called ZoomInfo.  It’s not cheap, but it’s powerful and accurate, and saves you (and/or your marketing department) hours of time a week.

Hope that helps!

With LinkedIn, the possibilities for use are endless.  Recruiters have known for the last two+ years that LinkedIn saves time and money, and the investment of time required to build a strong network pays huge dividends over the long run.  What I am now seeing more of is the unleashing of LinkedIn as a corporate marketing tool.  Once the fertile selling grounds of 1-person consulting shops and small business owners, LinkedIn is now being used by marketing operations to research trends and better understand customer behavior – particularly in B2B.

If you’re an entrepreneur or business manager, and want to find a free and easy way to connect with top talent in your industry, then get started building your network today.  It’s an asset that will grow over time, in size and in value.