Learning how to LinkIn and what it's worth

When a graying journalist like me ventures into Facebook or twitter, you can count on finding lots of users who are way ahead of you and understand the terrain much better. Join LinkedIn and you find lots of users who are kind of puzzled and finding their way, just like you.

Lots of professional people view the burgeoning world of social networking with alarm and a sense of inferiority. We feel most comfortable operating where we understand everything. Join Facebook and you are confronted right away with applications (you quickly learn to call them apps) that offer a wide range of options for wasting - er, spending - your time and connecting with friends. You can see that the possibilities are endless and that you don't understand most of them. More about Facebook in a later post. I'm writing here about LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is more comfortable ground for starting to explore the possibilities of social networking. It hasn't taken off as quickly as Facebook, which makes it easier to follow. I am torn between seeing the possibilities for a professional networking platform and writing it off as a waste of time.

At the least, it's a way of connecting with former colleagues and business associates. If you haven't tried social networking yet, this is a place to start without getting overwhelmed. (And you should learn about social networking if you're involved in training journalists; it's already an important tool for gathering and distributing news and we need to learn about it before we can teach it.)

Professionals in any field were networking long before our worlds became wired. We were cultivating contacts and connecting with new contacts because we knew someone who knew someone. That's the premise of LinkedIn. It's the professional version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. (By the way, I'm only four degrees separated from Kevin Bacon, but more on that later.)

You can join LinkedIn for free, though they encourage you to upgrade to a professional version ($200 or $500 a year, depending on the level you choose; I'm still freeloading). Once you join, you post a profile (basically your résumé and information on any services you provide). Then you link to friends by inviting them to join (I don't do that; feels too much like bothering people who already have too much to do) or inviting them to link up if they've already joined.

As I first recounted here in November, I built my network passively at first, posting my profile and accepting invitations as people (mostly former colleagues and clients) found me and invited me to link. That built about 40 connections, then I turned active. You can search for other members who have worked at your current or former employers. You can peruse the connections of your connections, looking for familiar names. My list of connections is nearly to 300.

Connecting with nine colleagues from API was easy and inconsequential. I can see them by just walking down the hall. And it wasn't that big a deal to connect through this platform with some clients and newsroom trainers with whom I communicate fairly often by email, phone or in person.

But I was often reconnecting with people I hadn't seen or communicated for years as I linked to old colleagues from my former newsrooms - 27 from the Omaha World Herald, 22 from the Des Moines Register, nine from the Kansas City Star and times and five from the Minot Daily News (alas, none from my first paper, the Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah, Iowa, may it rest in peace). A classmate from Texas Christian University and I hadn't communicated in nearly 30 years until we reconnected through LinkedIn.

So is this just a free version of those banner ads I never click on, inviting me to find old classmates?

In most of my messages asking people to link, I told them I would be blogging about it and asked them to let me know whether people found it useful and if so, how they used it. Most who linked up didn't respond beyond the automated response LinkedIn sends when you click acceptance of an invitation to link.

I don't know whether that meant they didn't find it useful, whether they had time only to click their acceptance of the link and never noticed or bothered to read my personalized message, or to respond if they noticed. I share most of the answers people did send below.

One of the uses that LinkedIn offers is the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers from your network or from all users. I'm still skeptical how useful this is. I asked my how-are-you-using-LinkedIn question of all users and didn't get a single answer in 19 days. I might have received more responses by asking my network (I presume LinkedIn would have called it to their attention when they signed in.)

Jennifer Ward of the Fresno Bee figured out the question-answer function better than I did: "I've found a couple of useful answers (and hopefully provided some useful ones)."

That underscored one fact of social networking from my experience: When I don't "get" a function of a social-networking site, that usually says more about me than about the platform. But I'm usually not alone. No one else mentioned questions and answers as helpful. And I notice that just this week, the site has redesigned and questions and answers are featured much more prominently, obviously an attempt to stimulate this sort of activity.

A bar graph on my home page kept telling me my profile wasn't complete without some recommendations. It encouraged me to start seeking or making recommendations. I wasn't about to ask people for a recommendation, but I went through my list of connections and started writing sincere recommendations for some people I admired. I didn't have a lot of time on my hands, though, so I didn't recommend all those that I would be glad to recommend. I worried that someone I left out might take the lack of a rec personally - as though someone would be studying my profile that closely. That told me something about the ego involved in social-networking profiles. (I intend to write some more, so if you do study that closely, I'll get to you soon.)

Of course, some of those I recommended returned the favor. I'm pretty sure they were all sincere. Some just thanked me and didn't return the favor. Others just didn't respond. (Were they trying to tell me something or just busy or reluctant to step further into the social-networking world?)

An editor who's looking for another job was especially thankful for the recommendation. "Indeed, these help!" He wrote in an email. "People do in fact check them out!"

Finding a job is clearly one of the most effective current uses of LinkedIn. I'm not fully sure of the ways it might be helpful, but obviously the profiles and recommendations posted online are a help for the first steps a prospective employer might take in vetting potential job candidates. Prospective employers also could peruse your connections for people they know and call them unsolicited for references. LinkedIn also has help-wanted ads and other tools to help people looking for work.

Sue Glassey, former human rights director for Ottaway Newspapers, told me she "used it a lot during this job search" after she landed a new job as vice president of employee relations and talent management at Tishman Construction and Realty in New York City.

A copy editor who was looking for a new job sent me a one-page résumé she was sending out to prospective employers, linking to her more extensive résumé on LinkedIn. This struck me as an effective approach for the experienced journalist whose career achievements don't fit well on the one-page résumé that many journalists feel they should send out.

Derek Willis of the New York Times said, "I've used it before to check out profiles of prospective employees, but other than that I don't use LinkedIn much."

Kristi Bowden of the Detroit Media Partnership added: "I have found the benefit mostly to be in reconnecting with old friends and colleagues. These connections haven't been completely social, some have led to hiring leads, professional opportunities. I have encouraged my recruiter here to use Linkedin and other sites as tools and she has found them to be somewhat fruitful."

Jennifer Ward of the Fresno Bee: "LinkedIn has been a bit more helpful for others finding jobs - I've had a couple of people who wanted references on LinkedIn because their prospective employer preferred it (mostly technical and video gaming companies). ... I prefer it to Facebook for work simply because it gives me a more professional networking site. But, really, who can keep track of all the networking sites and accounts?"

Mark Furman of the University of Oregon actually got a job opportunity through LinkedIn (the timing wasn't right for him, though). I'll post his experience as a separate entry because this one is long enough already and his account stands up well on its own.

Freelance trainer, journalist and entrepreneur Matt Baron, the first person to recommend me, wrote: "I find that LinkedIn is as useful and relevant as people choose to make it. One thing that I strive to do is write recommendations about people on my list. In some cases, that's not really feasible, since I don't know them all that well, but enough to agree to link in with them. But I think there's a key opportunity here to strengthen this network by adding quality to the quantities of names that people cultivate. I've not yet seen much direct benefit, business-wise, from LinkedIn, but I am confident it will become more directly beneficial as time goes on. In addition, it's one of those intangibles that can have an indirect effect on building one's place in the market."

Tom O'Donnell, a former Des Moines Register colleague whom I recommended, questioned the value of LinkedIn recommendations: "My feeling on recommendations is that they're probably not worth much to an outsider. First, people are likely to think the person being recommended asked for the plug. Who's going to turn down their pal's request, even if they think they're a terrible worker? Second, people also are likely to think it's an 'I'll endorse you if you endorse me' kind deal, making it meaningless. There's no way to tell if the endorsement was entirely unsolicited, like yours was."

Deborah Potter of Newslab responded with a link to her own blog on LinkedIn and other social networks, inspired by my earlier post on the topic.

Debbie Wolfe of the St. Petersburg Times figured out a use that I haven't yet (but might try to so I can message my contacts with a link to this blog): "Currently, I'm treating it like a personal version of a private listserv without having to worry about getting frequent messages that need to be read, deleted or archived in some meaningful way."

Ken Sands of Congressional Quarterly wrote: "I'm not sure whether LinkedIn will live up to its potential. Most people I know are migrating to Facebook. LinkedIn has a much better format to get to know people and look for job candidates. That said, it's too speculative to spend what seems like a lot of money to buy an actual help-wanted ad on LinkedIn. Facebook, on the other hand, is a much better social networking site, particularly to stay in touch with people you already know. I'll hang in there with LinkedIn to see where it goes, but I spend the vast majority of my social networking time on Facebook right now."

The most common benefit my friends find from LinkedIn is the connecting and reconnecting:

Whit Andrews of Gartner calls it a "damn handy address book."

Jay Wagner, who almost crossed paths with me at the Des Moines Register: "I just signed up for Linked In and am still trying to determine what its applications can mean to me. Right now I feel like I am mostly collecting contacts the way a kid collects baseball cards. I don't know what they are worth but figure they'll be of some value eventually."

Pam Johnson of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri wrote: "This early in my LinkedIn experience, the major gain is that it has reconnected me to differing groups I have worked or been affiliated with. My contact list is refreshed and growing. For now that is invaluable."

Randy Smith of the Kansas City Star: "Like you, I'm doing my best to stay in touch and reach out to old friends. You've got to run faster than you did in the past or you'll fall behind." (Reminiscent of my description of social networking as a marathon where you sprint.)

Connecting through LinkedIn not only connected me with former Des Moines Register columnist Julie Gammack, whom I hadn't seen or heard from in years, it brought me an invite to her Iowa Day party in Annapolis this June, a gathering of transplants to the East Coast.

Aly Colón, formerly of the Poynter Institute: "I've found this makes it easy to connect, or reconnect, with people I know and people I might want to know."

Nancy Weil of IDG News Service: "I haven't found LinkedIn to be that useful, other than as a way to connect with former colleagues and college buddies from years ago. I know some people who find it really valuable. If you are going to write about it, I can connect you with them."

Many of the responses I heard from my LinkedIn connections confessed, often with self-deprecating humor, that they don't get it and wonder whether it really has value.

Shannon O'Neill of the Omaha World-Herald: "I haven't found this to be useful in any way other than to make me feel inferior to people who have tons more links (friends) than me."

Terry Harper, executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, told me: "I am a 'member' of the LinkedIn community and have 61 connections, but have found to be of very little value to me, either personally or professionally. I typically accept the invitations to connect with people, but that's pretty much where things have ended. I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose of LinkedIn is."

Cate Peterson Folsom of the Omaha World-Herald: "I have no idea how to make use of LinkedIn. I've had several people include me in their grouping, but I'm such a technodope I haven't done anything beyond say 'I accept' to anything sent my way."

Stan Austin of the Kansas City Star: "If I were less busy - yeah, right - I'd probably use it more."

Geneva Overholser of the University of Missouri: "Haven't a clue how/whether this will be helpful to me, but still hoping so. Ditto Facebook. MySpace. Second Life. You name it. Here's to a hoped-for connections-are-boundlessly-useful future!"

Final note: As for Kevin Bacon and me, here's how we're connected: My son, Joe, was an extra in "Election," directed by Alexander Payne, who also directed Jack Nicholson in "About Schmidt." And Nicholson and Bacon were in "A Few Good Men." So I'm just four degrees away. He's on LinkedIn. But I haven't asked him yet to connect. Oddly, he only has 17 connections.