Most business people know Facebook, but it seems not everyone realises the value the specialised online networking website LinkedIn can have for business networking.
Microsoft’s $26 billion recent acquisition of LinkedIn, the biggest-ever deal for a social media company, promises big things for social media marketing.
Although it has an estimated 433 million users, LinkedIn reported a loss of $46 million in the past quarter and a $166 million loss for 2015. Microsoft agreed to pay a 50 per cent premium for the company.
That suggests LinkedIn is going to increase its standing as a powerful social networking tool and those who realise this sooner rather than later are going to be ahead of the pack. There are certain parallels that can be drawn between LinkedIn and other ways of networking, such as chambers of commerce.
Just like the chamber offers brilliant networking opportunities, the purpose of LinkedIn is to expand your professional peer-to-peer network.
In the case of LinkedIn, it is important to build your network until you have at least 500 connections. The reason you should have 500 connections is that LinkedIn ranks you accordingly.
Say, for example, someone was looking for a networking specialist.
If I had 400 connections and someone else had 600 connections, then that person would come up before me in the search results because that is how LinkedIn ranks you. And that’s why getting to 500 connections is a very important benchmark.