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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Professional Social Media Networking

Are you using LinkedIn?  There are over 100million users currently using this professional social network.  It is a well established resource for networking, finding out information and staying connected.  You control all of the aspects of your profile, you see who you have invited, and once you know your way around, LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable tool to build your personal and business brand. LinkedIn recently went public on the stock exchange and wowed the world with its initial IPO offerings of $82 a share. Currently trading around $76.

Within the past year, BranchOut became more popular as a job search network application on Facebook.  I set up a profile.  As it is trying to be like LinkedIn, you have the ability to import items from your LinkedIn profile.  It has a game type feel to me, you have badges that you "earn" with more connections or honor badges you can give to your contacts.  I haven't experienced the same value from BranchOut that I have from LinkedIn.  The one recent benefit to BranchOut is the ability to post a job for free to a jobs tab in BranchOut on your Facebook Fan Page.  If you have a person handling your web/social media development, that isn't so useful, but if you are a small company without that type of staff, it is a good feature. Mashable's take on Branchout

On June 26, 2001, a new application from Monster.com showed up on the Facebook scene. BeKnown is the latest (and late in the game) social media for professionals to appear. To test it out, I set up a profile.  You have the option of uploading your Monster profile, if you have one, or your LinkedIn profile.  I tried to upload the LinkedIn profile and either my computer didn't like it or the widgit isn't functioning properly.  BeKnown promised to let you connect with people to whom you are not connected on Facebook, but when I tried to find one such person, I was unable to do so.  Someone had sent me an invitation to connect on BeKnown and I couldn't see where to "accept" it. Mashable's take on BeKnown

I think I will concentrate my efforts on LinkedIn until I see more substance from either of these other products.

What have you tried?