Earlier this year, I was delivering a personal branding workshop for a group of senior business executives who had assembled for a professional development day. During the middle of my presentation on how you can use social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium to build and reinforce your personal brand, one gentleman raised his hand, then peppered me with questions about why anyone should even bother with being on LinkedIn. He said that if anyone wanted to find him, they could simply go to his company website to find his bio there.
Anyway, we got into a bit of a back and forth?. However, I couldn’t seem to convince him of my view that being on LinkedIn is not only helpful, but necessary these days if you want to maximise your chances of being top-of-mind and easily tracked down by other professionals.
So that inspired me to reach out to a bunch of professionals to find out their views on whether being on LinkedIn is useful, even if you’re a seasoned professional where your “work speaks for itself.” The overwhelming response was that you absolutely should be on LinkedIn if you want to be taken seriously. I’ve summarised the 5 major opportunities you’re missing by NOT being on LinkedIn in this Forbes article.
