Getting LinkedIn
The only social media site of these three that I was already somewhat familiar with was the business networking Web site called LinkedIn. At the invitation of The Reminder's marketing director, I'd signed up and created a very basic profile of my work life a couple of years ago. But I'd never done much more with it than accept invitations from colleagues to link up to their networks.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when a colleague from a former job recently called me looking for help locating a graphic designer. She said she'd found me through my page on LinkedIn.
"That's one of the key benefits of LinkedIn people can find long-lost colleagues," Latham told me. "It's the more professional, business-oriented tool."
Garvey said in this down economy, LinkedIn has also become a useful job-search tool and "a tool that recruiters are using to find qualified candidates."
"It's visibility," Latham said of LinkedIn. You start doing things so your name is appearing to people, you start connecting [to people], you start putting out posts, updating your status [at your job], update your resume . as a result people will see you in LinkedIn updates on their home page."
To make more use of this form of social media, Latham said users can pose questions, post interesting news and links and in general try to be helpful.
"The flip side is, [with LinkedIn], your [audience] is pretty limited because it's just your connections," she said.
To sign up on LinkedIn:
To sign up for LinkedIn: Go to
www.LinkedIn.com. You will be asked to enter your first name, last name, e-mail address and then create a password of six characters or more. Once you have joined you can create a professional profile. Photos are optional (I don't have one posted on any site).
LinkedIn also lets you search for people and view a limited profile of someone before you sign up to see if there are people you'd like to connect with.