Matthew Petro

LinkedIn: social media for the non nerds

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On Monday, I posted a Facebook update/tweet asking why deleting my LinkedIn account would be a stupid idea. It received WAY more comments than I thought it would, so I wanted to continue the discussion in a better forum.

Originally, I thought about deleting my account because I pretty much never use it. I only log in when I get emails because someone wants to connect with me. I figured I may as well just cut down on some social media clutter and get rid of it. As it turns out, I was taking a close-minded, social media nerd’s view of LinkedIn’s usefulness.

I tend to have few boundaries in my online social life. I don’t worry too much about who follows me on Twitter or which co-workers are friends with me on Facebook. I just figure that if I say something in the vastness of the social web, I’d better be prepared for anyone and everyone to know I said it.

What I haven’t yet done is looked at my complete social presence from the perspective of an entrepreneur. As someone who would ultimately like to wind up working for myself, I need to approach my personal social media with that mindset. Through the discussions on Facebook and Twitter, I picked up two good tips which helped me to change my strategy in dealing with LinkedIn:

1. It’s a good service for helping to segregate business relationships from personal ones. Business connections can be maintained on LinkedIn, whereas personal friendships can be kept in Facebook.
2. LinkedIn is used more heavily by business executives, even those who aren’t otherwise social media savvy. It’s social media for non social media nerds.

If I want to help companies who aren’t as knowledgeable about social media, I need to be available in the forums where they do participate. I also need to develop more definition around where my personal life and professional life diverge, and I need to present them accordingly in the online social realm.

Does anyone else have thoughts about the use or uselessness of LinkedIn? I’d like to see if there are more opinions, so throw a comment on this post if you have one.