Linkedin

Linked in is a place that sends me emails now and again saying people have added me, not great for my line of work, but I would imagine it would be pretty good for yours Mike!

Been a long time fan of Linkedin. I think it's a good way to build up a human face behind a business. A lot of people seem to want to strive to become some kind of faceless corporation, or at least appear as one.

Linked in can show the personalities behind the scenes. Does it work, no idea, can't say I can attribute any signups to it, but it doesn't cost anything. If nothing else, its a great way to keep tabs on old muckers and aquaintences over the years and see how they are plodding along in the corporate world

Maybe we should have a linked in sticky thread!

I'm Steve Richardson - LinkedIn

Great

I hope you don't mind Steve but I have just sent you a Linkedin mail invite. For some reason I am struggling to find any contacts. How sad.

Mike

Don't worry Mike, will add you when i log in again, just do not log on much, will post mine on here later, having a fag before polishing this turd for 11am lol

You have a contact! Ask Clive nicely and he'll add you when he can work it out

For someone who works in an IT company, he's a bit of a technofobe, seems to have natural bad computer kama

YES! I have my first Linked in contact. Couldn't be a nicer fella either.

Mike

After reading an article on increasing your business profile by linking to social networking sites, I signed up to Linkedin and put a link to it on my web site. I also put one to facebook. I also made a facebook page for my business. I'm not sure how it's of any benefit though as so far I've only had a couple of hits via facebook and none at all via Linkedin. Any tips to how these networking sites can improve your business profile would be appreciated.

I think it depends on your type of business. Eg, If your a game designer, then facebook could be an amazing source of traffic, but for a boring old business directory, no one really cares, so waste of space for me.

Again, we don't get any business value from linked in other than curiosity, but never say never.

But forums and twitter are forms of social networking, and these definately work for our business type. So guess its finding a suitable social networking avenue for your business model.

The problem I am having with all of this is that I've spent ten years guarding my identity online, not quite to a tinfoil hat level of paranoia, but it's a matter of pride that if you type my real name into google - even with additional qualifiers - none of my personal stuff comes up. Nothing I've created, nothing about me, no photos, just a load of stuff relating to dead Americans from family-tree sites.

Of course if you know my personal online identity then ten years worth of blogs, photographs and messageboard posts come spilling out, but it would take some effort to link the online persona to the actual flesh-and-blood person.

I can't seem to figure out how to reconcile my ingrained "never use full name, check all privacy settings before posting, never post email in full, no phone number or address details on any visible space" habits with the concept of... well, of marketing myself.