linkedin.com

I have been sent the link to www.linkedin.com a few months ago by a friend and have been working with it quite a bit since. Very basically, Linkedin is a website where you can find the people, jobs and services you need through the people you know and trust, while you strengthen and extend your existing network.

How does that work?

1. You register (a quick and simple progress).
2. You complete your profile by adding your current and previous employments with company names, job description, experience and education.
3. You add your own connections.

So how do you add connections then?

You can find colleagues - the system will automatically display people that work or worked in the same companies as you did based on your profile and that are registered in Linkedin. If you know any of them and see them as a person you trust, you simply send him/her an email through the system to ask him to add you to his connections. When he/she accepts you are linked.

You can also search for people manually by entering Keyword, Name, Title, Company, Industry, Location etc. - if there is anybody you know, you simply request connection again.

Another simple way to add connections is to upload your address book - people won't be contacted like this, but you can see, if any of them is already a member and decide to contact. Or if they aren't a member, you can send them an email to join linkedin and your network.

You would be surprised, how many people you know, are already members… My network already contains 19 people. And some of them know other people that know other people that….

What happens next?

You might be looking for a job or a service or somebody with a certain expertise. You search with the relevant keywords and will see a list of all members that are relevant to your search. You can immediately see the ones that are somehow connected to you, i.e. up to 4 levels away. If you then want to get in touch with them, you contact the person you know in this connection line who contacts the next person in the line. Your Network is the group of professionals you can contact through your connections and those users more than four degrees away from you who have decided to accept contacts without referral.

I currently can reach over 150,000 contacts that are trusted by somebody that somebody I know knows…

Sounds complicated, but it's a great system. And doesn't cost you a pence (only if you want to contact it a lot e.g. for sales leads you should upgrade to be able to send more enquiries out at the same time…).

The site is from the USA and most members are from there, however, the UK is quite well represented with 10,500+ users.
If you use the web for keeping in touch with people, try this tool.

Connections are never a bad thing to have! And it couldn't be easier.