LinkedHow?

LinkedHow?

I joined LinkedIn a few weeks ago. I have a mighty 11 'connections' at the time of writing and, truth be told, haven't been taking a very serious interest in the site. Until I happened to log in yesterday and did a double-take at one of the 'people I may know' listed on the right. The site had helpfully directed me to connect with my brother (and yes, I do actually know him).

Logical enough, you might think, except that there's no direct link between my brother and me on LinkedIn at all. My only 'connections' at the moment are current colleagues and a handful of friends (none of whom he mutually shares). The single thing linking me and my brother is our surname, and when I did a search on his name on the site it turned out there are another 132 Brother Knights on the system. I don't know how many SomeOtherFirstName Knights are out there too in LinkedIn world, but I imagine it's not an insignificant number. I haven't let the site access my address book, email account or anything else and to be honest I've been pretty cagey about any of my details from before I started working at BHP (not listed any schools or former employers). My brother lives in a different town and works in a different industry. So HOW DID IT KNOW?

Is it a magic psychic ability? OK, probably not. My brother wondered if it has a clever cross-referencing system with Facebook, which is the only option I can rationally understand which doesn't make me look over my shoulder nervously trying to spot the LinkedIn spy stalking me. It's a bit Big Brotherly, if that is how it works, although it's clever stuff (though if that is how it works, they don't advertise it - I can't find any sources yet which mention Facebook as anything other than a competitor to LinkedIn).

Anyway. I still don't know for sure how it did it, but it impressed me (while simultaneously freaking me out a little bit). My point is that clever technology on a website or anywhere else is only going to work if it's not just flashy, but intrinsically interesting and/or (preferably 'and') useful. LinkedIn naturally wants me to use it more and more, and I have to reluctantly admit that it's got my interest for the time being (even if, by the looks of it, my next connections will be my hairdresser and my next-door neighbour). We've all had conversations about work projects where someone's gone "wouldn't it be brilliant if this did that?" And while it's often tempting to respond "ooh, cool idea!", think about what you'd actually achieve. Is it just something that's flash but ultimately meaningless? Or does it achieve what you actually want (be that users engaging with a website, people buying your products, brand awareness or anything else).

Questions like these have come up time and time again on the Marketing Donut, and hopefully we'll have answered most of them correctly when you get to see the site. We're creating a site which we think will be useful, informative, attractive and engaging for SMEs with an interest in marketing. It is going to be clever and it is going to look amazing, but what we're aiming for is a site that businesspeople actually want to use. In a couple of months, you can let us know how we've done.

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