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figure 2.1 Top 15 Industries Represented on LinkedIn (according to LinkedIn Ads, April 5, 2011)

If you think LinkedIn is just for job seekers and recruiters, you are missing out on an important business opportunity. A look at the top 15 industries represented on LinkedIn (shown in Figure 2.1) reveals that, even with the combined number of users who categorize their profiles under human resources or staffing and recruitment, these industries do not make the list. Based on this statistic, recruiters make up only about one percent of all LinkedIn users, which means that the majority of networking done on LinkedIn is not related to job searches at all.

If you’re still not convinced that LinkedIn offers value for your company, I’d ask you to consider these points on why representation and engagement on LinkedIn is critical for any business:

LINKEDIN PROFILES AND COMPANIES PAGES ARE FREE YELLOW PAGES. Many businesses and professionals are using LinkedIn as they would the phone book, looking for experienced, qualified, and recommended service providers, businesses, and professionals. When someone needs insight or information about your industry, is your company or sales personnel being found? And if they are found, can non-paying LinkedIn members easily contact them?

NO OTHER TOOL MAKES IT AS EASY TO CONNECT TO DECISION MAKERS. Search, find, and ask for an introduction. To simplify the process, LinkedIn gives you tools to conveniently facilitate this every step of the way. Considering how easy it is to network with others on LinkedIn, you may wonder what business development professionals did before its creation.

YOU CAN GAIN MINDSHARE WITH POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS. Companies invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing to help potential customers find them online, and they use email marketing to help gain mindshare with clients on a regular basis. With the time, effort, and money spent to reach potential and current customers, it only makes sense to maintain a presence on LinkedIn, which is currently the 16th most visited website in the world,8 so that your company, products, and employees are the hot topics in your industry.

LINKEDIN HAS BECOME AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT SOURCE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE. With so many professionals having so many conversations and sharing so much information about themselves via their profiles on LinkedIn, platforms such as LinkedIn Companies and applications such as LinkedIn Signal are now providing a unique source of business intelligence for free, some of which cannot even be found on paid services such as Hoovers or OneSource.