At the recent Technology for Marketing and Advertising (TFM&A) event in London, the European MD of LinkedIn urged listeners to view themselves as brands within online social networking environments. MyCustomer.com editor Louise Druce reports.

Kevin Eyres, MD Europe for LinkedIn, the social network for business people, told the TFM&A audience, "With LinkedIn, individuals are represented as a brand. Everybody is a small business and brand aspects are transitional."

Merely having a presence on a social network is not the object of the exercise, he explained, likening this approach to attending a traditional networking conference and standing in the corner with a business card. You may get noticed - but have you interacted with people and enhanced the brand?

The key to networking is relationships. "The questions you need to ask when interacting and engaging online are who are you trying to influence or interact with? And in what context is the user in - a social or a business network?" said Eyres.

"The setting for how you interact gives you context and the state of mind of the member. You really need to listen, then figure out how to engage on what they're telling you."

Many LinkedIn members have still not taken this lesson on board. Many businesspeople joining the networking site because other colleagues and friends are using it, but have little idea what to do once they've completed their personal profiles.

The worsening economy has increased the number of people using sites like LinkedIn for recruitment, even though the site cannot verify the quality of the information posted. Often, too, online networkers will connect with organisations was a way of finding a job or headhunting candidates themselves.

But used appropriately, sites like LinkedIn can improve connections within like-minded communities and enhance a brand, whether individual or organisational. Business software house Sage recently used LinkedIn to deploy its "Train Your Business Brain" campaign, which ran alongside its sponsorship of ITV's Krypton Factor [2] revival. Linking to a viral Krypton Factor gave users the ability to discuss the results with each other and with Sage which "added business value" to the interaction, Eyres claimed.

Further reading

What does Google say about you and your firm? [3]
Member's Blog: Social Networking – An Opportunity or a Threat? [4]
Social netowrking: Who are the professional Arctic Monkeys, and where are they playing? [5]