I
am a member of, or at least a lurker at, half-a-dozen freelance writing groups
on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn
is as close as I come to engaging with “social media.” LinkedIn is the social
medium for business people; you don’t find highschoolers bragging about how
drunk they were last Saturday night. I’m on it because when I joined one of the
professional societies I belong to I was told, “You have to join LinkedIn; everyone
is there.” I didn’t take that literally at the time, but I think it may be true
now.
The
writing community spans a range of experience and expertise; there are rank
beginners recently out of Journalism school, and there are veterans, among whom
I count myself. The veterans cheer on the newcomers, and the new people keep us
(or me, anyway) aware of what‘s going on in the electronified world.
I
was “linked” for a year or more during which absolutely nothing happened because
I didn’t work at making anything happen, and my resume was so dull no one would
have cared anyway. Eventually the light went on and I realized I didn’t have to
follow LinkedIn’s one-size-fits-all resume format, and that there’s a lot of
latitude to how you can structure it. Mine will never be “complete” to
LinkedIn’s standards, because your profile isn’t “complete” without your
picture, and I don’t figure my mug shot is likely to win me any business.
However, I’ve revised my profile to say what I want it to say, and I now find
myself a semi-active participant.
I
am linked to 39 people, some of whom I know and others who apparently come
along attached to them. I’m told it’s a great way to prospect for business, but
so far I haven’t cracked the code on that. I have offered “congrats” to a group
member on attaining his seventh anniversary on LinkedIn, and sent a few words
of encouragement to a recent Journalism grad. I asked an uncommonly bright
friend who is also on LinkedIn (we’re “linked,” although neither of us is sure
why) whether she was finding any practical value in membership. She summed it
up beautifully: LinkedIn is like “a yearbook without names.”
But
if, as they used to say, 50,000 Frenchmen can’t be wrong, 2,066,795 linkers,
as I write this, just in "my" network, mustn’t be wrong either. And I've read there are 277 million members altogether. I’ll have to give it more thought.