LinkedIn Across The Miles

Becky McCray calls it “Making LinkedIn work for small town pros” on her gust blog at Small Biz Survival, but I think the key point she makes is that LinkedIn helps when you aren’t very local…

If you’re the only Internet Marketing Expert in a town of 2,000 people, you won’t be able to have coffee with many peers – but with LinkedIn, you can maintain your existing connections and build new relationships through introductions without ever traveling

And that’s a great thing…

Virtual environments

There is no physical place to go to get “LinkedIn”, so it’s quite easy to be everywhere. Sure, you give yourself a geographic location in your profile, but that usually doesn’t restrict things.

Ok – when looking for a new CPA, It’s most reasonable to look in the immediate vicinity… But that’s more of an exception than a rule.

And – I did try to help an individual that had used their zip code correctly, but had a distant city substituted as their location. It appears that the LinkedIn software was buggy in that instance.

In general though, you can be comfortable where you are and reach across the continent or the globe.

Time Zones

Ok – here’s one that might get you in a bit of trouble. “We’ll talk at 10:00 AM.” Everything is fine until you realize that you probably are not in the same time zone as the other person…-)

Get in the habit of offering your Time Zone, and asking about the other’s.

English

While I’m reasonably confident that we can expect LinkedIn to support language localizations on the main site (the Mobile version already has made some improvements there), as of today, if you want to use LinkedIn, you’ve got to do it in English…

So – It works globally as long as you both work in the same language, and that language is English;-)

Connectivity

This one can still be a killer – You’ve got to have high speed internet access, and while it reaches out into the countryside, I still hear stories from people that can’t get a good connection. If you’re going to plan an escape, be sure to plan your connection.

It used to be unthinkable…

If you were going to live outside a major metropolitan area, you were giving up everything the city had to offer – and that included networking.

That’s no longer the case, and that’s rather remarkable.

So yes – I agree with Becky – LinkedIn can help you stay in touch – even when you’re out of town.

steve