Week 7 EOC: LinkedIn

The social networking site LinkedIn is a way for small business owners to help expand their company by "linking" up with potential employees. LinkedIn can be considered the professional side of social networking. As a user of LinkedIn, you can join different groups of interest to keep up with the latest updates in the industry/area of interest. Most of the news coming from these groups are from the companies themselves and as a user you are able to join threads and have discussions with other professionals in the industry of your choice. There is a lot of opportunity to connect with others in your area of interest through this social networking site. LinkedIn is also free; so what they give you access to can help businesses find potential employees, help people connect with other professionals in their area of industry, and keeps people up-to-date with the latest news of the biggest companies in their field. As good as that may sound to a lot of people, LinkedIn has a lot of other problematic things especially with the spamming. Here are some Pros of the social networking site, "Keeping up on the news- Users can access LinkedIn Today which organizes content from the web and categorizes it into certain industries. It can be a useful source for keeping up to date on topics in your field such as social media or marketing(https://sites.google.com/site/linkedintheprofessionalnetwork/home/pros-cons)." This is highly valuable to everyone because it keeps them up-to-date in the industry of their choice. "LinkedIn has the potential to help people move up in a job industry or potentially change careers (http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/business/article_018e1ab4-0e5f-11e2-843b-0019bb2963f4.html)." This is another Pro of the social networking site LinkedIn, it has a lot of power to connect you with people within your industry leading to life changing careers and being able to move up in your field of choice. "anyone can search, find, and read the posts that you've written without being a connection.(http://socialmouths.com/blog/2014/03/11/linkedin-publishing-platform/)."This allows for people outside your network to see what you post which allows unlimited connection power between people. Now here are 3 cons of LinkedIn, "Spam- Spam always finds its way into social media sites and although can be filtered out, it is sometimes difficult to prevent it completely (https://sites.google.com/site/linkedintheprofessionalnetwork/home/pros-cons)." Just like any other social networking site, spam is inevitable and their is quite a bit on LinkedIn. "LinkedIn paid subscription is quite expensive and may not be affordable to small business owners (http://www.corpmagazine.com/technology/digital/the-pros-and-cons-of-linkedin-for-a-business/)."  Another down side to LinkedIn is that in order to get the full experience of LinkedIn you need to pay for all the extra features. "LinkedIn’s “request to be linked” process is cumbersome and not as real-time as a connection request on a Facebook Fan page or on Twitter (http://www.corpmagazine.com/technology/digital/the-pros-and-cons-of-linkedin-for-a-business/)." When you request to connect to someone it can take some time for that person to accept your connection and isn't as fast as people may want it to be. LinkedIn has some good strengths especially if your a small business that is starting out. You have a good amount of access to people who are in your industry.