Making the most out of LinkedIn.com

I would have thought that most people who read this blog are probably members of LinkedIn - the business networking site. I found the site interesting at first but then struggled to really understand the long term value for me as a member.

I was able to run some searches to generate some new contacts, and it was certainly helpful for the recruitment process, but overall limiting.

So in the interests of being open and sharing, I found a great service called TopLinked.com. It shows the people on LinkedIn with the most contacts and facilitates a rapid process for you to add them to your list of contacts. It is true that you don't know these people from Adam, which is arguably against the ethos of LinkedIn, but they do have their uses.

By adding several of the Top 100 networked people to my own network I expanded my direct network to 266, but far more importantly, my overall network on that site now stands at over 5.6m business contacts.

Now LinkedIn becomes useful.

If I need a contact at a particular company I can search for it and am likely to find it, and can either go direct or use the network as a method of introduction. I have found candidates for staffing, direct contacts at publishers for ad deals and been able to map the org structure around a given contact at a client.

Highly recommended, and its quick and easy to do to.