Building your professional network with LinkedIn

In my industry, referrals and customer references are important. In fact, at this point I haven't had to advertise my services yet and most of my work has come through referrals. One of the great tools for this has been LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is basically the MySpace or Facebook of professional networking. It allows you to list your education credentials, job history, and areas of expertise. It also allows you to "connect" to past colleagues, clients, friends, etc. By connecting to these people, their connections become extended connections of your own and you can find people offering services you might need, or vice versa.

One of the great things about the site is that people can write up recommendations for you, thus giving your work ethic some credibility. I know that on liftdevelopment.com I list some quotes by past clients, but how do you know I didn't just make those up? (I didn't by the way) With LinkedIn, each person that writes up a recommendation about me has their own profile, their own history, and their own connections. Therefore I cannot write up some bogus recommendations, and potential clients are assured that real people have recommended my work.

I encourage you to set up a profile on LinkedIn if you haven't already done so. One of the fun things is finding people you may have lost contact with. It's a great way to keep in touch and be assured you've always got their most up-to-date contact information.

My profile on LinkedIn is availabe here. Feel free to add me as a connection if we've interacted in the past.

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