Today I gave a presentation about social networking to a sophisticated corporate audience. The goal of my talk was to offer a primer on social networking tools for career development. During my preparation I realized that technology – no matter how slick – needs to be contextualized for it be be relevant. My clients are typically sales organizations or rainmakers (responsible to some degree for generating business), people for whom the social network is easily contextualized as a business development tool. But today’s audience, consisting of several corporate attorneys, upper managers, and insurance underwriters, was much different. For a point of reference, about 1/3 of the group had a LinkedIn account.
The language of social networking
For many of those who are not required to generate business (sales, marketing, independents, etc.) the social networking space remains a bit mysterious and vague. This is exacerbated by the unusual terminology and vernacular of the various social networks: Status Updates, Comment Threads, and Live Feeds are obvious terms to those who are familiar, but peppered into casual speech they seem esoteric.
Making the human connection
Any technology tool needs to serve a purpose – it must fill a need. Looking at the dramatic growth of social networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter it is evident that a need is being met. Strip away the strange terms, the security and privacy concerns, and the din of negative comments from friends at the local watering hole (“Status updates? I don’t care about what I’m doing right now – why would anyone else?”), we are left with highly efficient modes of communicating and connecting with the people in our community. We have a basic need to be accepted, to become part of a community, and to belong.
The LinkedIn user base
Today’s presentation skimmed the surface of the blogosphere, and touched very briefly on other social technologies, before ultimately landing on LinkedIn. As of this writing, LinkedIn claims over 55million users, in 200+ countries. They claim that the average household income is $107,000, and that over 40% of their users earn 6 figures. What makes these stats interesting is not that they describe a fairly affluent and sophisticated user base, but that LinkedIn is boasting these numbers in contrast to the user base of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Business Week. Clearly, LinkedIn is targeting a sophisticated, business savvy professional. If that describes you, and you have a basic desire to connect to your community of peers, then LinkedIn should be a natural extension of your current career development activities.
Bottom line…if you don’t get LinkedIn, you need to.
You can see the generic presentation (using my new favorite presentation software, prezi.com) here.
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