CIOIN

After announcing one of the most ambitious IPOs of the market and a skyrocketing valuation, LinkedIn has shifted attention, if not completely, to itself from the limelight-hogging Facebook. With such an enormous force redefining online professional social networking, CIOs might want to rethink about not being a part of LinkedIn.

The quaint blue social media site reported member count increase to 120 million this month, an increase of 61 percent from the second quarter of 2010, while crossing a major milestone of 10 million users in India just in the month of June.

The network is for real and the total number of business decision makers on the site will only continue to grow in time from the current 60 million professionals.

So is it the right time for an organization to get clued in to professional social networking? David M. Gowel, CEO at RockTech which trains companies to integrate LinkedIn and other social technologies into their business says, “LinkedIn adoption helps increase the flow of social business intelligence throughout an enterprise that yields shorter sales cycles, stronger client relationships, more introductions from current clients to new clients and new talent.”

Indians Interested in Professional Networking

Not surprisingly, India Inc has already started looking up to LinkedIn for more innovative ways of reaping benefits from LinkedIn.

“We knew that as long as we continued creating value for Indian professionals, they would join the website and continue to engage with one another. For example, Deepak Srinath and Uday Disley, co-founders and directors at Viedea Capital Advisors connected with investors in Europe to raise capital for a Mumbai-based media company…and we believe that this is just the start.” Hari Krishnan, LinkedIn’s country manager for India wrote on the company’s blog.

So how exactly can LinkedIn help you?

We asked experts in the field and found some interesting steps you should get started with, if you haven’t already.
Apart from being a part of LinkedIn Groups which will help bring users close to insights from experts. Here’s some advice from RockTech’s Gowel on how to go about LinkedIn more effectively:

Connect with the Right People. Arguably one of the most valuable features of LinkedIn is its advanced people search capability.  This permits a user with a well-built LinkedIn network, to produce an organized list of his/her target market by not only title, company, geography, and/or other relevant fields, but most importantly to sort that list by relationship.  The relationship filter, helps you find talent, expertise, business intelligence or clientele that are filtered by the people you know but only if you connect to enough of the right people in LinkedIn.

Establish Privacy and Security Settings.  If a CIO feels concerned about the privacy of his network data while using LinkedIn, he will use it less efficiently than someone who is comfortable with the level of protection around her profile. “I often gain social business intelligence via connections I have, or request warm introductions to, in LinkedIn that I could not buy for any amount of financial capital. Therefore, access to this data is important to protect,” adds Gowel.

Build a Profile that Resonates with Your Target Market.  This will ensure the right people find you, even if you don’t have the time to proactively use LinkedIn.

Pay Attention to Growing Your Network. Use the site’s network growth tools to connect to people who will assist in achieving your business goals, saving your time in what can otherwise be a time-intensive process.

Have a LinkedIn Trained Staff Member. It is helpful to have a CIO assistant learn specific tasks within the executive’s LinkedIn profile that can be performed to help save that CIO time. This type of responsibility should be considered tantamount to providing the same level of control as financial, calendar or travel information for the CIO.

Not LinkedIn yet? For those of you who might want to sit back and wait for others to “try it out first”, the problem occurs when the “others” are your competition, using LinkedIn to get warmly introduced to members of your network, perhaps taking opportunities away from you.