Information Maven: Greg Meyer

I’ve been using LinkedIn for about two years to maintain contacts for business networking. LinkedIn just added a brilliant feature called “Answers”, which allows you to post questions to your network and to the larger LinkedIn network.

So, why is this any different from the glut of “Answers” products that have hit the marketplace in the last few years, including products from Amazon, Yahoo, and Google? This offering is different because you can better control the scope of people to whom you ask the question. The value of a network like the one on LinkedIn is the ability to ask questions just beyond your circle of friends. You may get great answers from outgoing folks far outside your network, but so far I’ve gotten great responses from the more immediate weak ties, i.e. friends of friends.

Guy Kawasaki’s thoughts on how to use LinkedIn illustrate this point as well. Guy mentions ten ways to use LinkedIn effectively when you are researching startups. I think the most valuable of these ways is to evaluate companies you don’t know by looking at the online history of the people in those companies. That being said, LinkedIn is a tool - it doesn’t do the networking for you, it just makes it easier - and adding real face to face conversations to email makes your networking much much more effective. LinkedIn is a great way to get in the door.