SiteGet LinkedIn to Find Work and Sources
LinkedIn is a professional networking site that works on the “six degrees of separation” principle: Find someone you want to meet, and chances are you know someone who knows that person. You invite friends and colleagues to “link” to you, and then all their contacts are your contacts, too. LinkedIn is free unless you want to use advanced features.
I’ve been browsing around on LinkedIn and finding lots of editors and writers. I discovered that one of my friends knows someone who knows an editor at a career magazine. I created a message to the editor, LinkedIn forwarded it to my friend, my friend forwarded it to HIS friend, and that guy passed it along to the editor. Within a couple of days, the editor e-mailed me to give me the name of the editor at the magazine who accepts freelance pitches.
I also used LinkedIn to find the perfect sources for two articles. And this was no easy task: One source I needed as a PR exec who was also an expert in credit union topics, and the other was a journalism professor with experience in writing and critiquing profiles.
In the August 29 New York Times, columnist David Pogue asks what’s the big deal about LinkedIn — and dozens of readers have weighed in on how to make it a useful tool for your business. [lf]
One Response to “Get LinkedIn to Find Work and Sources”
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Elaine Grant
Said this on October 22nd, 2007 at 9:54am:Linda, interesting post! LinkedIn has been very useful to me on a few occasions. I really like the feature that allows you to post a question to your network. It winds up getting broadcast quite widely, and I’ve gotten some very useful information as a result. For instance, I was writing a how-to guide on using Internet tools for increasing your productivity, so I asked on LinkedIn, “What’s your favorite productivity tool?” I wound up getting some great ideas from far and wide, which went into this guide on Work.com (which, by the way, has some helpful ideas for writers): http://www.work.com/web-based-productivity-tools-1477/
I also used LinkedIn recently to help with a very vague and frustrating query. I needed business people who were affected by federal regulation. I wrote that question, and people on LinkedIn actually passed it to friends of theirs who were NOT on LinkedIn. I wound up with the sources I needed for a story that had been giving me fits.
Elaine Grant