DISQUS

louisgray.com: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/03/you-should-be-using-linkedin-for-demand.html

  • Riaz Kanani · 9 months ago
    Great idea, though I sense the ability to do this will not be around forever - this is purely a result of ineffective contact management (ie poor privacy controls) inside LinkedIn.

    It will not be around forever though for one of 2 reasons (and I hope the one that happens is the first reason).

    1. LinkedIn improves their contact management allowing the ability to share contacts with only selected people. LinkedIn are currently testing tagging (ie grouping) of contacts so my guess is this could happen post the launch of this capability.

    2. Enough people start doing this that everyone stops sharing their contact list.

    Needless to say the second reason is bad for LinkedIn.
  • Louis Gray · 9 months ago
    The second reason is bad for LinkedIn. I would like to open mine up, but I would have to disconnect from the competition, and therefore, hamper my own process of reviewing their contacts. It should flow one way.
  • Peter Efland · 9 months ago
    great tips Louis. Never thought of using Linkedin for research when already having a job I like. Will be interesting to put your ideas into practice.
  • Louis Gray · 9 months ago
    Peter, there's no slam dunk in terms of getting perfect contacts and contact info. LinkedIn is a very strong resource and I don't believe many are using it to its full potential.
  • Nigel Walsh · 9 months ago
    Id certainly agree and for now, LinkedIN seems to good quality still. My biggest bug bear though is still quantity over quality - to your point "Don't be afraid to link up to more people" - absolutely, as long as you know them, interact with them or want to. The concept of LIONS (open networkers) to me misses the main point of LI
  • Louis Gray · 9 months ago
    Open networking does absolutely miss the main point of LinkedIn. I used to have hard and fast rules for who I connected with there and Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, you name it. But then I realized people just want to follow your updates no matter where they are and I stopped being picky.
  • ChangeForge | Ken Stewart · 9 months ago
    I'm just not that sneak... Louis I didn't give you enough credit you corporate spy you ;-)
  • Louis Gray · 9 months ago
    Ken, never underestimate me. I don't always blog all my secrets. :)
  • readycontacts · 8 months ago
    Nice post on LinkedIn as a lead gen tool. At ReadyContacts, we leverage it extensively to help our customers on a regular basis. You might also want to add a point about how you can use Google Site Search on linkedin.com to find contacts by titles/keywords which you may not see while logged in to your LinkedIn account as internal search is restricted by your connections. I'd be glad to share more ideas and thoughts on tools for demand generation that we have systematized over time.

    Vaibhav Domkundwar
    CEO, ReadyContacts.com