With over 750 million users, LinkedIn’s popularity reflects its wide use across almost every business sector. Many economic shifts and changes to the realities of working life have made this the case. For example, LinkedIn has combined an effective summation of one’s professional qualifications (the traditional role of the CV) with the kind of instant networking which social media encourages. This is precisely what has suited it to the modern working world – which only seems to be becoming more “remote” and more governed by virtual networks.
However, this latter aspect of LinkedIn has led many other social networking sites to recognize their own potential as employment tools. However, unlike LinkedIn, other social media sites such as Facebook, were not specifically designed with facilitating digital working environments in mind. For that, LinkedIn is still the best site, but what actually are the unique advantages this site offers? And why haven’t any (bigger) social networking sites been able to usurp their role?
A Word on Digital Services
One of the best ways to appreciate the success of LinkedIn is to look to how seriously users take it as a tool. There are, for example, a range of digital services companies that offer LinkedIn lead generation, social media optimization, and LinkedIn profile SEO services. Engaged Media, market leaders in this particular field, recommend that to truly stand out in the 750 million-strong LinkedIn user community, using such services can help a lot.
The very fact that there has been a discipline built up that relates to creating a successful LinkedIn profile immediately shows that the potential for success is certainly there. People would not be paying professionals good money to help them use the site more effectively otherwise.
Some Benefits of LinkedIn
To further appreciate LinkedIn’s unique position among the social media sites, it is worth setting out some of the unique benefits it offers. Here are a few:
Connect With Recruiters
This first advantage is related to the social networking aspect of LinkedIn. While you might well have more connections on other sites such as Facebook, these are usually a totally unrefined mass of people from every corner of your life. On LinkedIn, it is all about streamlining your connections to include only the ones that could prove useful to your employment prospects. Over 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn – that alone proves that your “friends” are going to be useful ones.
You Can Use LinkedIn for Market Research
Although a good LinkedIn profile prioritizes concision, there is also a great deal of information about employers, companies, and individual candidates on the site that can be easily accessed. This makes the site nothing short of a first-rate market research tool.
LinkedIn Has an Exclusive Job Board
Having successfully limited the users of LinkedIn to those who are engaged in professional activity, the site has in turn become a great place to host job vacancies. To put it simply, there really are jobs on LinkedIn that you will not find advertised elsewhere.
LinkedIn Displays Your Activity
Once again combining the CV aspect of the site with the social media one, LinkedIn not only allows you to connect with fellow job searchers and employers but also succinctly displays what you have done for them. Your online relationship with fellow LinkedIn users can be viewed by employers and show them where you have added value and brought satisfaction.
In the end, while many of LinkedIn’s groundbreaking features have equivalents on other sites, it is its unique devotion to facilitating professional employment that has made it stand out – and which continues to make it stand out.