Just announced today, LinkedIn has added a services directory to its website, a feature that users of the business networking site have been asking for.
What is LinkedIn? In a nutshell, LinkedIn is a social networking site for people in business. This is not the place for kids looking to cram up MySpace.com with their thoughts, videos and pictures, rather LinkedIn is a connection of professionals that you build based on your contacts. You can see my LinkedIn profile here.
So how do I use LinkedIn and why would I recommend this for business owners?
1) I use it as a place to record my history – in a nutshell a digital resume.
2) I use it as a contact manager – if I do something different, with a click of the button I can notify people.
3) I use it to make new contacts for products, services or information.
How does the last one work? Well basically its like 6 degrees of separation. For example, I have 45 wonderful directly connected to me. Those 45 people connect me to over 6000 people (the 2nd degree). Those 6000 people connect me to over 710,600 people (the 3rd degree). What this basically means is, that if I need to contact somebody at the 3rd degree, I can send an email to my direct contact, who can forward through their contact base to reach the third person.
In business, the old saying goes, it’s not what you know, rather who you know. LinkedIn makes that happen in a way that is truly amazing and a great tool for business owners.
I highly recommend the usage of this service.