Tips on Using Linkedin?

Here’s a list of articles about effective ways to use linkedin. Here’s the main page.

By the way, I’m looking for a job. Anything having to do with technical writing, instructional design, publishing, blogging, professional writing, distance education, teaching, content management. Let’s see…what else?

I have not prepared a resume yet although I will do so soon (For now, I’ve been using my linkedin profile) Actually, in the next week I’ll probably doing a grand facelift of my web presence to make it easier for employers to find me and know what I’m about.

Although Linkedin has shortcomings, I think it is greatly underutilized. By the way, I’ll probably be creating a facebook profile. Oh, it’s such a bother to transfer my friends to the latest social networking site of the month.

Someone needs to write up an Etiquette page for how to send and receive invites from social networking sites. A few days ago I received a linkedin invite from someone who mass imported his gmail contacts to linkedin. He included a generic introduction. It went like this, “Hey, you’re in my gmail address book. If I know you and you want to be my linkedin contact, then accept this invitation. If I don’t know you or if you don’t know me, then you can ignore this invitation.”

So he’s inviting random people to be a linkedin contact? That’s crazy! (My guess is that we must have exchanged an email once upon a time or maybe one of us responded to the other’s post on a newsgroup).