I'm on LinkedIn...finally!!! I'm a little behind the times, that's OK, I can handle that. I've been active on a few other social channels - Instagram and Twitter - for some time. I never got a Facebook account, and it looks like I made the right call there. However, I never really had a need for LinkedIn or fully understood it until recently.
I actually created a profile back in 2017, but I just recently got "into" LinkedIn and saw the value of it first-hand over the past several weeks.
My professional career started way back in 1993. Social media didn't exist back then...neither did smart phones and lots of other things we use daily today, but you already know that, so I'll spare you.
I took a professional pause in 2001 with the birth of my son. We then founded adWhite in 2003, but I remained pretty behind the scenes until 2010 or so. At that time I really didn't need to be on social media for my work. I wasn't looking for a job, I wasn't hiring anyone and I wasn't looking for new business. I'm an accountant. The best use of LinkedIn for me was to connect with vendors that I needed to learn more about so I could buy their products or services. But the need for that wasn't great because I was fairly accessible via phone/email. I simply communicated with these companies in the more "traditional" way.
LinkedIn was launched in 2003. It gained popularity throughout that decade, but arguably didn't hit its' stride until around 2011. Today it has more than 500 million users.
I finally got on board because I kept hearing about how effective it was for us, mostly from husband, Taylor. He was an early adopter of the platform. He's used it for hiring, finding new clients, connecting with partners, staying up to date with marketing and technology news and much more... all the common uses of the platform. But as I started participating in more meetings at adWhite I kept hearing about LinkedIn and how it was the most important social channel for most of our clients.
We mostly work with business-to-business clients, so they rely on LinkedIn to help share their message. Their target audiences are on LinkedIn. Part of our job for them is to get their content to their audiences. We create content for them that helps them grow their business. It's then our job to find the people who buy from them.
I built my profile and I started connecting with people. I then started following our clients and trying to do my part to spread their messages to my followers. I need to improve on that, but I'm doing the basics and seeing value in these activities.
Recently though, Taylor and I were featured in someone else's post. I finally got the opportunity to experience LinkedIn from the other side. This was news about our company. It was good news. I was tagged in the post and I found myself getting pinged with notifications as people liked, shared and commented on the post and the light went off. This is where business professionals come to communicate. I need to get more involved, and I plan to.
