Think Before You Engage: 100 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Media Marketing Campaign

58. What Is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a little different than other social networking sites discussed in this book. This site is set up for business professionals. Therefore, members are more formal in their interactions. With LinkedIn, you find less casual conversations and more conversations about business.

LinkedIn is set up for the business professional; therefore, people act in a much more professional manner on the site.

In 2002, five people got together and created LinkedIn. Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke had the vision to create a social networking site to enable professionals to connect with the goal to advance their businesses and professional relationships. The overall goal of the site is to enable users to maintain connections with people they know and trust in business.

The mission statement is “To connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful.” LinkedIn achieves this mission with many different features and tools such as:

• A network that consists of direct connections (first-degree connections), the connections of each of their connections (second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to ...