Over the last year I’ve written a book about LinkedIn, written over 70 blog posts, presented numerous talks on LinkedIn, created a tool to grade your profile and presence on LinkedIn, and used LinkedIn to enhance my networking and grow my business. If I am to be considered a LinkedIn expert, I’m not your typical expert.
My background isn’t in training, I didn’t start doing this with a plan, and 15 months ago I had 19 connections and no clue how to use LinkedIn. I’m not a social Media expert. All that I am is a small business person that was referred business based on my LinkedIn profile. At that point I decided that it would be in my best interest to learn as much as I could about LinkedIn.
Since December of 2007 I have tried to learn as much as possible about LinkedIn. I’ve read every blog, article and bit of data I could find about LinkedIn online. Then I started documenting my experience. This led to trying to write a short guide about how to use LinkedIn as a gift to the people I was connected to. This guide grew into a 115 page eBook and this blog.
There are a lot of LinkedIn experts. I make it a point to read Jason Alba‘s blog. Chris Rollyson always leaves my head spinning with his take on LinkedIn. Peter Nguyen is another one that I keep up with. Scott Allen is another favorite. And finally, I just discovered Neal Schaffer’s blog. Each of these people provide me with a different perspective.
I once wrote that if they are writing text books, my contributions would be considered a comic book. And that’s OK because I think there is a section of people out there that are looking for a simple, everyman perspective on LinkedIn.
You won’t walk away from my blog thinking you’ve just read War and Peace, but Bloom County or Calvin & Hobbs provide worthwhile perspectives too. Any day that you can manage to get Bloom County and LinkedIn into the same conversation isn’t a bad day.
