Linkedin – An Overview

“Its not just what you know but who you know that makes all the difference.” ~ Anonymous.

It’s all about people. It’s about networking and being nice to people and not burning any bridges. ~ Mike Davidson.

Intro

As of today, Linkedin is the largest professional community on the internet having close to 135 million members worldwide. Speaking of vast geographies, Linkedin members are logging in from over 200 countries and territories across the globe. According to Alexa – An amazon.com company, 32 percent of its traffic comes from US while close to 10 percent emanates from Asia and majorly from countries like India.

Update

Since this post was last published and since November of last year Linkedin has grown to 150 million members. Its landing page already is updated and displaying 150 million professionals. Screenshot below. For more information on the growth and developments visit this link.

Screenshot

Starting out in 2002, Linkedin has grown rapidly with over half its members outside the country of its origin – the US. India has the largest user base with a total of 13 million users which roughly translates to 10 percent of its entire user base worldwide. For more stats and details visit the link

Why Linkedin? Why now?

Linkedin is designed for professionals who wish to connect with their classmates, colleagues, and industry peers to maximize on their experience, knowledge as well as seeking out fresh opportunities leading to jobs, and more business.

Linkedin has transformed itself from just another networking service to a legitimate business and lead generating tool. Linkedin today is used by professionals working across diverse sectors such as IT and ITES, Human resources (HR), Marketing and Advertising, Telecommunications, Financial services, Banking, Law Practice, Hospitality, Online media, PR and communications, Arts and crafts, Photography for their professional networking needs and opportunities that come up as a result.

Maintaining a Linkedin profile is a vital exercise for any professional since you need to ensure you get it right when it comes to representing yourself to prospective employers, and networking with your peers. The video below gives an overview on how we can and should use Linkedin. It is a bit dated since Linkedin has a lot more to offer and has changed quite a bit.

Linkedin Series

This is the first in a series of short essays on Linkedin that will talk about how to make the best use of this service for your professional networking needs, finding jobs, expanding your network, integrating and using the proper settings for your social media channels, and optimizing and maintaining an online profile.

• Linkedin – An Overview (currently reading)
• Linkedin – Products Overview
• Linkedin Signal – Linkedin Signal – Find out who’s hiring and what’s happening in your network?
  
• Linkedin Groups – Unleash the hidden power of your Linkedin Groups (coming soon!)

Disclaimer

All content in text or image form on this blog is my own and does not represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of my current or future employer.

The author of this essay/post has not received any remuneration for endorsing or writing favorably about this product or service. Thank you.

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