The value of LinkedIn

I used to think that LinkedIn was just a place to post your resume and connect with friends and colleagues. However, more recently, I have taken the time to learn the ins and outs of what LinkedIn has to offer companies. With the recent addition of following companies on LinkedIn, LinkedIn has become another place to create a brand community (and with time, it may become quite successful).

Currently, I work at the Bryce Jordan Center as a marketing assistant. Recently, I was faced with the questions: "What are the benefits of being on LinkedIn?" and "How do we make it effective?"

As PR professionals, we are always faced with using the right vehicle to communicate with our target public(s). Typically, LinkedIn reaches a middle-aged, professional public compared to Facebook or Twitter, which have a younger demographic. LinkedIn allows companies to make profiles that people can follow and employees can link their title to. This allows companies to manage their number one public--their employees--as well as potentially connect with other publics.

In addition to company profiles, companies can create groups to generate discussion. These are similar to Facebook's groups and allow people to share company and industry news, post jobs and communicate with others in the group.

During tonight's PR 2.0 Chat, we discussed LinkedIn's company profiles. It seemed that many who knew how to use them, thought there were some disadvantages to company profiles. For one, @JGoldborough pointed out that since there is no owner (like in groups) you can't really "talk" to it. In addition, even many PR professionals participating in the discussion were not sure about LinkedIn and expressed much uncertainty.

So, that leads us to the real question: how active are the members on LinkedIn? I have yet to find an answer to this, but I am constantly looking for more statistics about LinkedIn users. Yeah, someone might update their profile every so often, but do they seek out groups and company profiles that they like? Several great points were made during the PR 2.0 Chat about LinkedIn being considered a social network, but it not being very social.

In conclusion, LinkedIn has many good ideas to become more social, while remaining a professional social network, but it hasn't quite reached the point of truly being effective. For now, HR will continue to effectively use LinkedIn to seek out future employees, but it might be a while before the PR industry finds effective ways to use the network.