LinkedIn: turn off, drop out
LinkedIn is a funny old business. I receive periodic bursts of email from people asking me to connect with their “professional network”. This past week alone I’ve had five or six. It rarely occurs to me, though, to go and browse the website. Although, needless to say, I weakened and have had a LinkedIn profile for a couple of years. It may be true that you get out of things what you put back in, but when I clicked on “10 people you should connect with now”, LinkedIn tried to install software and connect with my Outlook inbox. Their emails claim around 13 people join every minute — around my total network of LinkedIn connections — but I struggle to see any advantage to being connected with them. If I want contact I send them an email. As far as I can tell, no work or even correspondence has eventuated from my being part of it and the only purpose seems to be to swell someone else’s buddy network. I’m hardly surprised to find plenty of bloggers out there agreeing with me, but if any NZBC readers are benefiting from this service I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment, or the next email you get may be one from me begging to be disconnected from your network.
posted by Chris Bell at 3:23 PM
6 Comments:
Hi Chris
Would you like to join my Professional Network?
Mark
P.S I do think that you get out of LinkedIn what you put into it.
In fact - although I've been a member for a while - I've seldom actually used it for what it looks like it was setup for. Which, as I understand it, is to help you "be introduced" to people that might be useful to know via contacts that you already know (hence leveraging your connections and establishing some credibility with the person you are being introduced to). In the US terminology that's known as "warming up a cold call".
However for me, LinkedIn has two main benefits, and for those reasons alone I maintain my profile on it:
1) I have a lot of old colleagues, friends and contacts that I like to stay in touch with but who move around on a regular basis to new jobs etc. However when they move, they generally update their profiles. So LinkedIn works as a "self-updating" address book for me
2) Having a LinkedIn profile has at times enabled people I've lost touch with to find me again - or vice versa. And that's been great. I've reconnected with people that I probably would never have been able to track down again otherwise.
So those are the benefits for me anyway
Points taken, Mark. In my experience, people rarely remember to update their LinkedIn profiles when they move to a new job. (On the invitation you sent me, incidentally, you're still listed as "a colleague from IDG Communications"...). Maybe I am too Web 1.0 and should declare email bankruptcy, but unlike PA, Google Analytics and BoingBoing and Arts and Letters, LinkedIn's site just doesn't jump out from my Favourites as a place I'd choose to surf. So perhaps it's also a web design thing - too much dubious "premium content" I don't feel like paying extra for.
No doubt there's professional benefits, but my LinkIn.com activity is driven by a playground mentality that I suspect is the secret behind the site's phenomenal growth: who's got the most friends?
I suspected as much, Chris. After all, I'm in your gang. Or at least I was, last playtime...
There is also, on my part, the lethargy of the smoker involved: I could quit, but quitting is for losers. I want to drop out, but can it really be harmful if everybody else is doing it...?
OK, I'll take the bait. I'm actually a big fan of LinkedIn, but here's the key factor: I'm a freelancer. It's immensely helpful to me, when work gets slow, to be able to look at a list of people I've worked with in the past, and say, "Who here haven't I talked to in a while? Who should I check in with, who might have a good lead?"
Conversely, LinkedIn can help remind people who can give me work of the fact that I exist. As a freelancer it's hugely important that key people think of you at critical moments when there's work to assign. (I once got a very lucrative brochure gig because I sent one of my clients a happy birthday email at the precise moment he needed a writer.)
I have reps at various freelance agencies, copy directors at advertising agencies, graphic designers I partner with from time to time -- and if they happen to see my name in their LinkedIn contact list when they have a gig to give away, that can really pay off.
And, I supposed it all depends on what professional circles you work in, but most of my contacts actually do tend to update their profiles. I have a lot of contacts in the software publishing field -- and that culture seems to be very focused on LinkedIn.
In fact, that's how I got on board -- I'd been ignoring LinkedIn emails for a year or so before one of my editors at the software book publisher I do a lot of work for sent me an invite. Once I registered, I saw that most of my best client contacts were already there, and I've kept my profile updated ever since.
There's also a certain psychological backscratching effect -- I've cemented relationships with some good contacts by writing "recommendations" for them, or just sending them an invitation to link. When two colleagues link and/or endorse each other, it can solidify a feeling of being allies.
I think it's different if you're in a static job with a fixed set of contacts and you aren't looking to move. You aren't really going to see the value of a well-maintained LinkedIn contact list until:
1) You move to a new job
2) You get suddenly laid off
3) Your current job becomes intolerable and you start looking for a new one
4) You shift into a freelance or self-employment situation
... those are all situations when you need to know who your best professional allies are and how to reach them. And that's where LinkedIn really comes in handy.
I've also used LinkedIn to steer work to friends, which is a very gratifying feeling. If one of my contacts calls looking for a writer or editor and I'm all booked up, I can say, "Hey, Susie Semicolon would be a great fit for this gig -- go take a look at her profile in my LinkedIn contacts list." And being able to consult the list myself helps remind me who might be available for stuff like that.
I resisted LinkedIn for a long time because I thought it was just another Friendster-type "who's got the most friends" status game. But for me, it's proven to be a very useful kind of dashboard.
Welcome back, Mr O.C. La Potamus. I'm a freelancer, too. I guess I'm just not using LinkedIn the way it was intended. OK, I'm not using it at all. But then, I'm sure NZ connections don't change jobs as often as yours would in the States and elsewhere in the world. I keep coming back to intuition and usability, though: how often would it occur to me to go to the LinkedIn website? Never, unless someone sends me an invitation. And then it just feels like a chore - as if someone has just asked me to write them a reference, almost. I guess there are LinkedIn people and DisEngaged people, and like the bloggers I linked to in my post, I'm one of the latter. As Pete Townshend not entirely rhetorically once asked in song, How Many Friends Have I Really Got?
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