By: Emily Raij, Maupin House
Everyone seems to be on Facebook and Twitter by now, but what about LinkedIn? This professional networking site offers some unique benefits that might appeal to educational businesses even more than the other popular social-networking sites. With LinkedIn, you can:
- Maintain an online resume. You can easily update your credentials and experience while also browsing other people’s professional profiles. Link to your blog, share presentations, create lists, and even keep track of what folks are saying about your company on Twitter.
- Connect with other professionals. From service providers to potential employees and employers, anyone with an email address is pretty easy to find and connect with on LinkedIn. You can also look up past co-workers, colleagues, and contacts you met at conferences and events.
- Recommend and get recommended. Like a modern-day reference letter, LinkedIn lets you recommend and get recommended by professionals with whom you have worked. It’s a little less like a popularity contest than Facebook but still gets the point across that you’re someone people want to connect—and work—with.
- Stay current. LinkedIn sends email notifications when one of your connections updates any part of his or her profile, so you don’t have to log in to stay informed of career moves or notify others of your latest news (and it comes in a daily digest format, so you’re not getting notifications every minute). This is an especially convenient tool for keeping abreast of your industry.
- Ask and answer questions. Get expertise from colleagues or share your own. You can even conduct polls to gather valuable market research. This is a great way to get your profile noticed, share knowledge, and help out others.
- Start or join a group. LinkedIn Groups let you start your own mini-community or seek out other professionals who share common experiences, interests, and goals. One recently added feature is sub-groups, which allow group managers to create more focused audiences within their larger groups.
There are a number of NSSEA members that are currently on “LinkedIn”.
Please join our “School Supply & Equipment Industry” discussion group.
I have been on LinkedIn for half a year, and have been a bit amazed at the links I have been able to make to past collegues if nothing else. I wasn’t aware of the SS&EI discussion group. I’ll have to check it out and join.