ForumsEvents

Hi Interpreter -

Don't be embarrassed; a number of folks are just starting to get involved in social networking and it's still relatively new for quite a few folks. That said, there are now more than 28 million professionals on LinkedIn and more than a million join each month, so it's a good time to get started.

We've actually created a site called Learn.LinkedIn.com (found at - you guessed it - http://learn.linkedin.com) which is a great place to understand what a professional network like LinkedIn has to offer you and how you can best put it to use. My suggestion is to spend some time there reading through the material and see if it sounds like something that could help you and/or your business.

Hi Bernoulli -

Of the 28 million members on LinkedIn, about half are based outside of the U.S. The UK is one of our largest markets, with about 1.75M members, and we have almost as many spread through continental Europe (the Netherlands and Denmark are particularly heavy in membership). We recently launched the ability to view LinkedIn in Spanish, with more languages to launch soon, so we expect our international membership in Spain and other countries to grow strongly in the next year.

We also have about 1M members in India, and that market is also growing a nice pace. Asia is an opportunity market for us; we don't have an incredibly strong member base there yet but it's going to be an area of focus for us in 2009.

4) Vet Demands for Your Time - if someone is trying to sell you a service, a quick search on LinkedIn will help you see how you're connected to that person or company and let you know if it's relevant to your specific needs

5) Find And Research Experts - as a small business, you don't always have all of the answers but you need them fast to make the right decisions. Spend some time on LinkedIn Answers - you'll likely learn quite a bit from other small business professionals just like you, but you can also share your own thoughts and insights to showcase your professional value to potential customers, partners, and employees.

6) Consider LinkedIn DirectAds - these are self-serve ads you can buy and target to specific members of the LinkedIn audience. There's a link at the bottom of LinkedIn.com that says "Advertise" that can give you more information.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did and I hope this was valuable. I can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepatrizi if you'd like to contact me with questions or thoughts.

Cheers,
Steve

If you missed the event, don't worry! You can always read the transcript.

I realize this thread is sort of old, but I wanted to mention that myspace and facebook are not just "for kids". A lot of businesses utilize myspace and facebook to promote their businesses and advertise. Social media is becoming a very sophisticated field. Check out socialmedia.biz for more information.