Remember the guy in high school who was always kind of nerdy? You knew he was smart, but you didn’t hang out with him because he wasn’t cool. Then, he shows up at your 10 or 20 year reunion and has made a fortune with some tech invention.

Well, LinkedIn is kind of like that geeky guy. LinkedIn was never the flashy network, but slowly and steadily over the years they have carved out a place for themselves by focusing on what works. From an expanded address book they have created a blogging and social platform which has transformed this “geek” into a “golden boy” for serious business professionals.

Just look at the numbers:

300 million members with 100 million here in the United States. No matter who you are, I am pretty sure you know people on LinkedIn.
40 percent of users now check in daily. So what are they doing when they log in? If they are smart, they are posting an update, taking a few minutes to check in on the activities in one or two groups they belong to, look in on a few competitors and business associates and get on with the rest of their day. It takes just a few minutes to reach a wide professional audience every single day which is why 46 percent of people spend less than 2 hours a week on LinkedIn.
64 percent of all visits from social media channels to corporate websites come from LinkedIn. Facebook drives about 17 percent and Twitter just 14 percent. When I first read this statistic I thought it was primarily referring to B2B companies, but L’Oreal is the most engaging consumer packaged goods brand on LinkedIn. If they are having success on this platform, there should be room for you too.

LinkedIn makes sense for business professionals. From the robust search function, smart messaging tool and diverse groups it is a powerful way to keep up with what is happening with your peers, competitors and broader industry. In addition to information gathering, it is a terrific place to share your professional expertise with their Blogging platform.

This feature was originally limited to a small group of influencers, but in February, LinkedIn opened up the feature to everyone. Think you don’t have time to blog on your website and on LinkedIn? Think again. There is no requirement for you to publish original content, so you can publish on your blog first and then share it to the LinkedIn community. I have spent some time going back through several years of blog posts, finding the ones which are still relevant and giving them another chance to shine.

As of July, about 30,000 long form blog posts were being added to LinkedIn each week. I assume this will continue to grow as everyone looks to get their moment in the sun. If you are blogging, just as you do on your website, be sure to promote it to your network, add images which will capture people’s attention as they scroll through your feed and be sure to embed links back to your primary web site. While many posts are only seen by 50 or 100 people, every now and then one will catches fire. Using existing content means the return for time invested is extraordinarily high.

So what about you? Still think LinkedIn isn’t as important to your marketing as Facebook or Twitter? It may not be as much fun, but the numbers clearly show it works.

Many of the statistics in this blog post came from DMR, CMO by Adobe

Think you’re set to conquer networking online using LinkedIn? Now it’s time to get out there in the real world and build even more connections. Download our guide to building a healthy networking habit to get started.

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