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Marketing professionals are learning now more than ever the importance and value of networking. Having a foot in the door at a future job, or just being able to help out a friend in need of a marketing consultant is really hard to do if you don’t know the right people.
So many marketing professionals struggle in the beginning when they don’t have a very big network. There’s a lot of articles and tools online that will tell you about all the secrets to building your network and growing your LinkedIn profile.
I’m here to tell you your most successful networking is not going to happen on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a great tool to introduce yourself to future and current marketing professionals. But at most, a LinkedIn message could get you a phone call if you’re lucky. The timing, wording of the message, and and a bunch of other environmental factors that you have no control over I’ll determine how the other person is lgoing to respond to the message.
But doesn’t that same thing true for in person networking? Right place right message, right time?
Absolutely. But at a networking event, your chances of hitting the right place, right time, and right environment are much closer to 100%.
So if LinkedIn is not a place to network, what is it?
A resume for general recruitment, or social media. If you don’t customise a resume for every job you apply to, you need to start doing that immediately. Because every job nowadays is going to need taylormade resumes for a tailor-made job.
The place for your general resume and general work experience is now LinkedIn. This is where you can post your skills, hard or soft.
If your not in an industry where you can make an application to a job periodically or recruiters aren’t actively looking for you, then your LinkedIn profile is a way to build a general resume to you can bulk-send out to job applications.
Now I’m very careful saying this, LinkedIn is social media… but that does not mean that you should be comfortable sharing everything you think or believe on LinkedIn.
Because while potential recruiter might be looking through your previous job history timer they might also see your political, religious, or social belies. Unless you have the most nondescript or generalised beliefs about the world… posting these beliefs can only serve to her you end.
Did something I said about LinkedIn shock you? Do you disagree? Let me know if I’m off base in the comments.
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