Is LinkedIn useful or useless? Here’s a smart way to use it – The Wall Street Journal

Is LinkedIn useful or useless? That's the question increasingly being asked by busy professionals of the social media platform that aims to facilitate business networking. Personally, I find LinkedIn very useful for reaching people fast when I am trying to track them down for urgent comment before a story is published. For me, LinkedIn is the 21st century equivalent of the old-fashioned telephone book that contained everyone's landline numbers. I also like connecting periodically with previous work colleagues to find out how they are doing or catch up on some office gossip. But, as far as building my career is concerned, LinkedIn doesn't on the surface appear to have offered much in the way of hard job offers. I'm also inundated with people I've never met trying to LinkIn. Ashley Mateo provides tips on how to use LinkedIn to your benefit, though one has to wonder whether LinkedIn is a platform that has had its time and is slowly going the way of social media fossils. – Jackie Cameron

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