Are you LinkedIn?

If you are a professional with a large network of associates and co-workers or if you are self-employed and network for the purposes of finding new clients, then you need to be LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a Web 2.0 social network for business professionals that makes you more approachable and gives clients, associates and customers another way to contact you. As social networking increases in popularity people will seek out these means of contacting you instead of e-mail.

If you are looking for a new job LinkedIn is an excellent tool for helping you find one. LinkedIn posts new job listings every day and there’s a very good chance you’ll find one you like. You can upload your resume to your profile and also list your accomplishments and other noteworthy endeavors. You can also store testimonials and references here (these always bode well for business owners and make you look good in the eyes of prospects or potential employers).

Even if you aren’t looking for a job, LinkedIn is a handy place to keep track of your achievements as they happen. In today’s changing economy it never hurts to be prepared. So it’s always a good idea to have your profile up to date.

As an added benefit, LinkedIn profiles rank pretty well in the search engines, and if you have one, there’s a good chance that it will show up in the first page of results whenever someone searches for your name.

Although there are a few similarities to Facebook, LinkedIn is very different and “old-school” about its network. In Facebook you might accept random friend requests but LinkedIn is more of a professional site and many people limit their friends to people they actually know. If you do want to add someone as a friend even though you don’t know them, you can use the “get introduced through a connection” link and ask a mutual friend to introduce you. Or you can send the person an InMail. LinkedIn isn’t targeted to the younger crowd the way Facebook and MySpace are. If you work from home, LinkedIn can help you remain in contact with colleagues that live at a distance. If you change jobs or move around a lot, LinkedIn can help you remain in touch with former co-workers.

Also, if you would like to expand your network to include former classmates or co-workers you worked with in the pre-social networking era, LinkedIn has a handy “build your network” section that helps you find these people. It also has a feature that lets you send invitations to people in your e-mail address book.

If you have a business that you want to promote, LinkedIn has a “unlock your network’s potential” section that is similar to Yahoo Answers but focused on categories in your areas of professional expertise. When you answer questions your LinkedIn ID will be displayed, giving you yet another opportunity to promote your services or product. This is really powerful stuff and should not be taken lightly!

Approachability and accessibility are important in this Web 2.0 era. LinkedIn is just one more way to make yourself more accessible and it only takes a few minutes to set up a profile. Unlike some social networking sites, it doesn’t require much time to maintain a profile so it’s worth taking a moment to set one up.