This is Not Your Kid's Social Network: Leveraging LinkedIn

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This is Not Your Kid's Social Network: Leveraging LinkedIn

The worlds of social networking and search are beginning to blur more and more. And the number of influencers that are networking is higher than you might think. It's not all about MySpace, but in many cases, contact networks like LinkedIn. New research from KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann shows these seemingly contradictory findings:

"Seventy seven percent of B2B technology buyers have little to no familiarity with social networking online. Of the 24% who are very accustomed to social networks, a large majority of the respondents visit these sites at least once a month.

70% of B2B technology buyers use social networking sites for business networking and/or development, though 59% admit to also using these sites for personal reasons."

So if 77% don't know what social networking is, but 70% use them, what's going on? I think it comes from many people not knowing that having a LinkedIn or Plaxo network actually counts as social networking. They're participating, but they don't know it. When they think social networking, they're thinking about teenagers spending hours on MySpace or Second Life.

And at 70% usage, it's a channel worth paying some attention to. Luckily, Guy Kawasaki recently engaged Kay Luo and Mike Lin at LinkedIn to brush up his profile. Check out the results of Guy's Profile "Extreme Makeover".

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Print | posted @ Thursday, January 18, 2007 9:44 AM

Comments on this entry:

# re: This is Not Your Kid's Social Network: Leveraging LinkedIn

by Matt Lohman at 1/19/2007 2:47 PM

Gord,
I always enjoy your commentary on search and SEO. I wanted to thank you for referencing the recent research study from KnowledgeStorm. I thought I would clarify some of the confusion with the respondent percentages: The write up of results that you reference is a bit misleading. I'll try to explain without getting too off the deep end...
We asked about familiarity with social networks first, for which 35% replied "not familiar at all" while another 42% replied "somewhat familiar" adding up to the 77% figure. As part of further validation, the next question asked "How often do you visit social networking sites?" from which we received 31% stating "Never". This is very close to the 35% who were "not at all familiar" in the previous question. Good confirmation there. From that point forward in the questioning, we excluded anyone who claimed they "never" visit social networking sites (the 31%). Therefore, when we got to the question that asked "What are your primary reasons for using social networking sites?" the only respondents were those individuals who visit social networking sites at least once a month (69%). Of the individuals using these sites, 70% are doing so for business development networking or development reasons.
I still think your conclusions are valid but also wanted to make sure our research wasn't getting misconstrued.

P.S. - I keep a LinkedIn profile and I am an avid reader of Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Great stuff!

Best,

Matt