One of the challenges for me with social media is diffusion; having lots of different kinds of things out there about myself on lots of different sites and not keeping them current or useful. I haven’t solved that problem but I do use my Linkedin site as my basic hub for my various activities.
What is a social network hub?
For me, its my most popular and inclusive profile, the place from which people can check out who I know, my website, my blog, groups I’m interested in and my professional background. It could be a website or blog but I like Linkedin because its more objective than my own content. While people can link on tenuous connections, that isn’t very useful, it doesn’t tell the world the kinds of people you know and all they see is that you have a zillion connections. In a sense, that could get you dismissed as readily as someone who has too few connections.
How can I maximize the value of Linkedin as a hub?
The first thing is to make sure that you are re-enforcing your basic message through the various Linkedin features. For me, I want people to see a professional face, to realize I have a good breadth of business and legal contacts, that I have expertise, that I am connected to groups that re-enforce that message and to see that I am blogging about what I know about in a compelling way.
There are many aspects to LinkedIn besides serving as a hub and I’d love to read any comments on how you are using it.
Tags: Linkedin, social media, social networking
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 
January 31, 2009 at 5:48 pm |
Hi Randy! Great piece on LinkedIn. I agree the ‘social proof’ of having a large range of connections does help as a business owner – especially having recommendations. I’ve found that to be one of the most useful functions of the site.
I’m a huge fan of Facebook for the ‘second tier’ business connections (as well as obviously personal). It really helps clients and business partners see the ‘real’ side of your personality, because they are, after all, doing business with a real person, not a corporation. I agree it can become overwhelming to manage much more than this – I have taken the “do two really well” versus trying to be everywhere on social sites.
January 31, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
Thanks Jenny, I appreciate your thoughts. Couple of my own; I haven’t used the recommendations feature of LinkedIn. I’d like to read an article about how to best utilize it. I’m a bit shy to ask for recommendations and would like to see how people handle that. Facebook; I agree that its a good way for people to see you as a person but there are a few privacy issues that make me relunctant to get too far into it. I do think the line between social and business contacts and information is becoming increasingly blurred and while that can be scary, its also good. As you said with Facebook, its important to have a sense of the whole person when you are doing business with them.