The Dilemma of a Closed Garden
A wise man once said, “A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” In the realm of social networking, some might suggest that if the “harbor” is organized well and used by many, then there are merits to sticking to what works; in this case Facebook. What happens if the harbor master hates red sails and decides to charge a tariff for traveling between the shores? This metaphor speaks to the potential problems of letting one organization control the entire social networking arena. We all know that both Facebook and Google are in it for the money. Ultimately, having more than one legitimate choice gives the consumer at least some decision power. With other distributed social network initiatives like Diaspora on the horizon, the future still holds hope for a less money oriented solution to your social networking needs. The more portable your social networking information is, the less control an outside organization will have over your freedom of choice.

Privacy is in its Death Throws
As a consumer, you should know that all of these companies are recording a massive amount of data about your personal interactions. While this data currently concerns mainly the online world, new developments like Facebook’s Location Service are guaranteed to change things. Imagine the day when companies will know where you are at all times, who you are spending time with and the exact time intervals for each of these activities. That day was yesterday. Ultimately, for companies in the social networking space, data is money. The more data they capture, the more money they can squeeze out of their user base. Facebook, Google and other players in the social networking space have to make strategic decisions about how they capture this data. Are the new programs opt out? Do they make the controls to toggle off certain privacy settings intentionally hard to find? You bet they do. Each of these companies has a decision to make about where they stand on the privacy spectrum. Imagine if a company’s stance on privacy actually revolved around letting the user decide. A more open privacy strategy might give users incentive to make a change.

The legend of Google Me
If you have spent any time in Silicon Valley or ventured into the blogosphere recently you may have heard the chatter; sweet rumors of a true challenger to Facebook’s stranglehold on the social networking space. What is Google Me? A better question is what does Google Me have to be in order to fulfill its promise of a new tomorrow. Ultimately Google Me has to be something that people are both familiar with and comfortable using. Let’s think of an example that fits those requirements. How about Facebook? A true Facebook clone is a scary prospect. Will most people see it as just a knock off?

Where does Orkut figure in to all of this?
With over 100 million active users, Google would be foolish to cut the cord on the Orkut user base. Ultimately, if Google Me is going to work, they will need to seed the new service. Building a user base for a social networking site requires getting massive amounts of people to sign up, establish social connections and fill out a wealth of personal information. Where could Google Me possibly get a kick start of users? How about building the service so that user info can easily, perhaps automatically, be ported over from Orkut? While they are at it, why not do the same with Gmail. Google currently has most of the core information to build a profile for hundreds of millions of users. If they can make joining the service a push button decision, then perhaps they can chip away at the networking effect that is powering the Facebook phenomenon.

In the past, Google has adopted features from Facebook and incorporated them into the Orkut Service. This cloning strategy may be the focus of the Google Me effort. If the Japanese can do it with cars, who’s to say the same strategy will not work with social networks. Ultimately, to gain insight into what works for social networking Google may have to go to the source; engineers with direct experience in social networking development. To build a true Facebook killer Google may want to fire up some hiring software and target Facebook employees. Tapping the Facebook brain trust may be a critical competitive maneuver for overtaking the social networking giant.

As Facebook continues its dominance in the social space, the honest chances of Google Me rising to prominence are slim at best. Google’s best chances of making an impact with Google Me will require building something that has a small learning curve and can incorporate assets they have already developed through sites like Orkut. Only time will tell if the social networking stronghold is unbreakable in the immediate future, but for the sake on competition, let’s wish Google the best of luck.

In the current job market companies are clamoring to hang on to their talent.  Blasting out new positions in real-time is an exciting strategy to target quality candidates.  The fact of the matter is that there are more job seekers than jobs.  This situation results in the limited number of prime candidates being scooped up with greater urgency.  Despite the fact that there are less job openings, publicizing your new positions is critical to landing top talent.

Another interesting facet of Twitter’s contribution to the recruiting field is an enhanced ability to find passionate candidates.  Companies that actively rely on twitter to publicize new job openings create a channel for passionate supporters and potential future employees to track.  For example, A software engineer who thoroughly enjoys the online music service Pandora.com will be more likely to respond to a new job opening if the candidate can track the available positions for Pandora in real-time.

Perhaps Twitter’s most impressive function in the recruiting process is to establish a company’s reputation for hiring quality, renowned talent.  Spacex, the growing rocket company founded by Elon Musk, uses Twitter to announce talent acquisition.  When Spacex hired former astronaut Ken Bowersox they tweeted out the news.  This PR strategy serves to build a reputation around the human capital at a company.  The more talented super stars that a candidate perceives to work for your company, the more likely that candidate will want to join your ranks.  Ultimately companies want top candidates beating down the doors to get a chance to join the team.  Twitter can help make this desire a reality.

A few smart software companies are working to seamlessly integrate Twitter and other social media sites into the recruiting process.  These applicant tracking providers allow corporate recruiters to automatically post new positions to Twitter.  Whenever a new job goes live the system will tweet out the new position.  As more recruiting software packages leverage the Twitter API, Twitter will become more integral to the hiring process.

The recent Twitter revolution in the recruiting field is only a subset of how the social media site is affecting business across the board.  With adoption rates soaring and users hunting out innovative applications for the service, Twitter’s inherent flexibility may become its killer feature.

LinkedIn is a professional, business and career oriented social networking site. It allows you to meet professional experts in a variety of industries across the globe.

There’s currently over 35 millions professionals on LinkedIn and these numbers are growing as we speak.

The LinkedIn community enables you to connect with like minded people which in returns allow you to grow your business contacts and network.

As a registered member, you get to create your own personal profile with information about you, your company, your products and services. You can also mention your professional accomplishments.

Once you’ve done this, you can begin to maintain a list of contacts which are known as connections and actively invite others to join your network and that whether they are existing LinkedIn users or not.

Now that you’re a little more familiar with the LinkedIn community, let’s go ahead and detail the numerous ways you can use LinkedIn to increase your business growth and get ahead of your competitors.

#1. Growing & Managing Your Contact List

Jeffrey Combs once said: “Your Networth Is Proportional To Your Network” and this statement is so true. In business, your contacts are everything. You don’t know need to know everyone, but make sure you know the people that know everyone!

That being said, the LinkedIn community is a great place to begin connecting with real professionals in order to begin growing your list of business contacts which could be done pretty easily.

Just like any social networking site, you should approach like minded people to initiate the first contact (make sure that you’re not spamming people with your ads) and regularly keep in touch with them so in the long run, they’ll know, like and trust you.

In addition to this, you can import almost any digital address book and web email contacts (Hotmail, Aol, Yahoo, etc…) from your LinkedIn account hence growing your list of contacts.

#2. LinkedIn Answers

This tool is by far one of the most important tools on LinkedIn. “LinkedIn Answers” allow anyone to ask questions about any topic and anyone can answer these questions.

The cool thing about this is that you can interact with lots of people that are not in your network…Hence, a great way to increase your connections.

So Here’s How It Works: When someone asks a question, everyone can give out answers or suggestions to that specific question.

A few days after the question has been posted and that you’ve received some answers, you’ll be asked to choose the right answers or the answers that helped you most.

And out of all these good answers, you’ll have to pick the “best” answer. Then the person that has been chosen for the “best” answer will be provided with an expertise point that will show up on his/her profile.

Answering questions is a great way to establish your expertise in a certain field. By answering more and more questions or inquiries from other LinkedIn users, you’ll be able to gain more expertise points which will allow you to become the expert people are looking for to do business with.

Remember that in business, people join you or buy your products or services because you’re an expert or a leader they know, like and trust.

With this little tool, you’ll be able to drive a great deal of traffic to your site…Increasing sales and sign-ups!

You can easily become THAT expert in a really short period of time (anyone can become an expert in anything with just a simple research…Please do not share this secret with anyone!), hence attracting potential leads and prospects to your marketing funnels.

Asking questions is also a good way to interact with other experts. Your questions will be read and answered by so many people and you can make use of their expertise to do joint ventures or share business ideas.

#3. LinkedIn Services

The “LinkedIn Services” tool is a complete directory of service providers that have been recommended by other users in your network.

Let’s say that you’re looking for a highly qualified graphic & web designer in your town or city and you really want to make sure they’re real experts. You can use the “LinkedIn Services” to see which graphic & web designers have been recommended by others.

This tool will help you save time researching for professionals you want to hire to get a certain job done.

That being said, I strongly suggest that you get your clients to recommend you as a professional so when people are searching for services or products you offer, then they’ll find you.

That alone is priceless since you’ll get tons of prospective clients at your fingertip without spending a penny on advertising.

#4. Search LinkedIn

The search tool simply allows you to find professionals that you know and even the ones you don’t know.

Then you can either try to get an introduction from someone in your network that knows that person or simply upgrade your LinkedIn account in order to be able to contact him/her directly.

#5. LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups allow you to join any group that you want. You’ll then be able to meet great people and keep in touch with prospective business partners and clients.

Make sure that you’re a contributing member of each group you join. Post great content regularly, keep in touch with the other group members, etc…This will literally help you brand your name, your products, services and even business opportunities because people will begin to relate to you.

#6. LinkedIn Jobs

LinkedIn is also a great place to post jobs or recruit employees to your company. Thousands of companies are hiring and recruiting on LinkedIn so if you’re a business owner looking for prospective employees, there you go!

If you’re looking for employment, there are so many great companies on LinkedIn offering great career opportunities.

#7. Search Engine Optimization Made Easy

SEO marketing is one the toughest things out there in cyberspace and takes a lot of effort and learning to become an expert.

Since LinkedIn is highly ranked in all top search engines, your LinkedIn page will easily show up in the top 10 in search engine results for certain keywords. That’s literally free organic traffic your page without all the SEO marketing hassle.

Give it a try: simply type my name “Souleymane Maiga” on Google.com and on the 1st page, you’ll see my LinkedIn profile.

#8. Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to say that LinkedIn is a great social networking site. If used properly, it could increase your visibility and brand name.

It also adds more credibility to your image and brand (“LinkedIn Answers” easily allow you to become a known expert in your field of expertise).

Keep in mind that LinkedIn should not be used a mass marketing outlet like Facebook or MySpace or even Twitter (you should only target what you’re looking forward to accomplish).

About the Author:

Souleymane Maiga is a 20-year old successful marketer that has been helping others grow their businesses for F.R.E.E. Steal his best-kept secrets today: http://www.ImmediateRiches.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Linkedin Marketing: The Secret Behind Social Networking Success