You use Facebook. But what about LinkedIn? My contribution to the Feb Net2ThinkTank

I have had an account on LinkedIn for years, but recently devoted a solid week to beefing up my LinkedIn Profile, which I used to create my Curriculum Vitae using the free LinkedIn Resume Builder. While I was there, I also decided to create a Kabissa Company page and Kabissa Discussion Group to facilitate connections with Kabissa members, volunteers and colleagues who also use LinkedIn. Apparently in the process I inspired the Netsquared team to feature LinkedIn for Social Change as the Net2 Think Tank topic for February. This post is intended to return the honor by addressing their topic question:

How are you using Linkedin to support the efforts of your nonprofit or social enterprise? Which tactics seem to be working for your community - and which aren't? Tell us about how you're using Linkedin and all of the hints and tricks to curate and moderate that space for maximum impact.

For those who are not yet familiar with it, LinkedIn is a social network like Facebook aimed at connecting professionals. It is fairly influential so you should be paying some attention to it even if you do not use it actively personally or for your organization. If you are serious about using social media in your work, your organization should be represented on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and have an RSS feed of your latest news - even if you focus your energy more on one platform than the others. Even LinkedIn has Facebook and Twitter pages (see screenshot) and Facebook has a LinkedIn Company page. :)  

According to the official What is LinkedIn page, LinkedIn "connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals." When I first signed on quite a few years ago the focus was on building your CV and professional reputation online, and it still does a good job at that. However, LinkedIn now also provides all the typical social networking features like Facebook - twitter-style updates from your contacts, direct messaging, group discussions and more. It also offers various ways to connect your profile, group or company with accounts on other website, so for example my twitter feed is displayed on my LinkedIn profile.

While Facebook is completely free to use and depends on advertising revenue to make its profits, LinkedIn has a free "Basic" account and encourages users to upgrade to premium services that cost money. This makes it more like Flickr (with its pro account) than like Facebook, which I feel comfortable with. LinkedIn also has a professional and clean design, and provides very nice, user-friendly features that people and companies really do need to connect around employment and reputation building.

On the other hand, LinkedIn is also run by a large corporation and is seeking to make money from the interactions of its users. The more users they have, the more money they can make. The free services they offer, therefore, are those that encourage you to do their work to build their user base. So, just like with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc, you need to decide for yourself if the benefits provided by the service outweigh the costs (or potential risks) to yourself and the people you use LinkedIn to connect with.

With those qualifications and warnings aside, below is a quick run-down of how I use LinkedIn in support of Kabissa and for my own career building.

1. I find that my profile at http://linkedin.com/in/tobiaseigen is a great resource for me personally and I am very happy with how it reflects my influence and reputation in the field in which I am working. Over 500 colleagues have agreed to connect with me and many have used the platform to recommend my work.
2. I was able to find and reconnect with a handful of people who used to work closely with Kabissa in the past and invite them to join our volunteering group. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Being able to do this has been immensely rewarding and of great benefit to Kabissa.
3. LinkedIn's recommendation feature is an excellent tool that I intend to use to thank Kabissa volunteers and partners for contributions they have made to Kabissa, in the past and going forward.
4. I created the Company page on LinkedIn in January and so far it has not generated any attention nor have I actively promoted it. This does not mean it is not beneficial to have it, since it will still turn up in search results, allow volunteers and current/former employees to link to it from their profiles, and provide yet another opportunity for people to show their support for Kabissa.
5. I also created a Discussion Group on LinkedIn, which has remarkably powerful features for enabling people to connect and share information - it's like Yahoo Groups that has been beefed up with all the latest social media functionality and integrated with LinkedIn's other reputation building and networking features. Again, I have not been promoting it but it may be beneficial to Kabissa and our community because it will provide another channel for people to connect with Kabissa besides Facebook, Twitter and the groups we host ourselves at kabissa.org.

And again the links you can use to connect with Kabissa on LinkedIn - you are very welcome to join us there and drop us a line!

• Tobias Eigen profile on LinkedIn
  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiaseigen
   
• Tobias Eigen latest CV generated automatically from LinkedIn
  http://kb2.org/eigencv
   
• Kabissa Company page on LinkedIn
  http://www.linkedin.com/in/kabissa
   
• Kabissa Discussion Group on LinkedIn
  http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3754908

I look forward to the insights that will be shared by others in the Net2 Think Tank and of course welcome you to post your feedback here. We will share outcomes relevant to African civil society in the March member newsletter.