Professional Networking Site Review
Posted by sandnsurf on October 2008
In total, over the last 3 years whilst building HealthEngine I have been exploring how social and professional networking works. Trying to develop a better understanding of how individuals interact and network online; how individuals and groups develop ‘trust’ of each other and the web domain to which they are entrusting sometimes very personal information.
At the same time I have the great honor and privilege of ‘networking’ and interacting with a wide range of interesting, enigmatic, energetic and inimitable personalities. Slowly an Australian online networking community is beginning to develop but at a ‘less trusting’ and tentative rate then other countries.
Hopefully this experience will help me to develop online education learning initiatives with vibrant and interested people…time will tell. Today I want to highlight some of the ‘professional’ networking sites which have been the most benefit in creating and maintaining a circle of trust within a virtual community.
Advice to ‘would-be’ professional networkers, wishing to dip their toe in the world of pixelated communications is to
- Define your objectives and define your ultimate goals
- Prepare your websites, blogs, profiles and personas into a single document to ensure rapidity of data entry to networking profiles.
- Review your email contact lists or open up a ‘new’ gmail account specifically for your professional networking – many sites offer to import or review your contact list to send out invitations as part of the sign up steps – and if you forget to ‘uncheck’ the long list of contact names, you will end up sending out 500 invitations including 453 inappropriate invites to family members, ‘help-desks’, florists, hotels and the vicar
- Bookmark your profile pages and login pages in a single toolbar folder or home page - I use Zeadoo.com as my homepage and have a professional profile bookmarking section to quickly access my sites to review invitations or conversations 2-3 times a week.
- Have fun
There is no moral obloquy to being associated with social networking sites – in fact this pullulating megalopolis in a pixelated world provides surprisingly sophisticated colloquy.
Naymz.com Professional style networking with minimal scope for social interaction. Simple Invitation system and meta-tag structure allowing easy review of people in your profession. I really like Naymz as a profile holding bay and web presence gallery – and find it simple and easy to use.
- Personal Profile Completion Time – 45 minutes
- Features: RepScore – World Map of Visitors to your profile (with IPs) – Reputation monitor – Great way to add RSS feeds from blogs – high Google presence
- Maintenance: Login three time per week to check messages, review invitations and update website feeds
- Spam Count: Low. Efficient and simple clearing system
- Solicitations: Infrequent and easy to clear
- Tips/Tricks: Maintain a RepScore 10 to take advantage of the visitor tracking and reputation monitor. Complete profile in full, ensure new web profiles are updated regularly and add RSS feeds for your blogs. You only get 10 referees to display – so make sure they have the highest repscore (10) in order to increase your profile points. Once signed in – immediately alter the email settings so you only get notifications once a week!
LinkedIn.com The ultimate Professional Networking system. Many professional networkers use this site to gather 10-20,000 contacts! I use it as a secure way of maintaining a select band of trusted contacts and to maintain a ‘CV’ like professional profile – which I use in my email signature.
- Personal Profile Completion Time – 45 minutes
- Features: Comprehensive and professional layout. Respected professional network site. Q&A section with rapid fire answers from respected professionals. Groups functions.
- Maintenance: Login 1-2 times per week to check inbox, review invitations and update website feeds
- Spam Count: Low. Efficient and simple clearing system
- Solicitations: Infrequent and easy to clear
- Tips/Tricks: Try to maintain contacts as trusted networking contacts
Ecademy.com Huge network in the UK and Europe, in fact one of the biggest online networking sites in the world. Initially I found this site to lack intuition, have inadequate explanation and basically be a bit of a nuisance. I stopped attending the site and only partially completed my profile. Then after 3 months absence I got an invite from a trusted colleague and gave it another shot with great success. Have now made lots of great contacts in Australia and throughout the world. Use this to get help and advice for the HealthEngine website, get some support and to create a viral medium.
- Personal Profile Completion Time – 60 minutes
- Features: Great profile page editing function (able to put company logo and website hyperlinks), internet feeds, website and blog feeds (appear in NetNews) Comprehensive and professional layout. Respected professional network site. Well maintained blogs by business professionals on the site to review. Groups functions.
- Maintenance: Login 3 times per week to check messages, review invitations, reply to messages.
- Spam Count: Moderate. Not complicated to clear – but can be a little oppressive at times
- Solicitations: Frequent and can become oppressive
- Tips/Tricks: Listen to Thomas Power (founder) and his interview with Stan Relihan. Remember that if somebody sends you a message and you reply – then you are ‘linked’
- Black star members pay a lot for the privilege and generally have a product to sell - Power Networker status (orange stars) can be attained by inviting 10 people and gives some improved messaging services.
Spock.com had the biggest potential to be an amazing web 2.0 to 3.0 social networking and commentary site. It started with gusto and a few commited individuals working hard to catalogue and collate images, pictures, quotes and news on ‘people’ – anybody…whilst maintaining your own profile and having friends and colleagues comment on your tags, images and news. The founders always maintained it would become the worlds largest ‘people-search-engine’ and it has certainly gone a long way to being such…but as a professional/social network – it is no more. I did have a blast meeting some fantastic people and still keep in touch through other networks – but a great shame to see the current product.
Interesting trends in traffic ranking and reach over the last 6 months…
Additional sites which I frequent but don’t actively participate to any great extent:
- Perfect Networker (My Profile) Very go-getter network for professional business people with products and services to share
- Fast Pitch Networking (My Profile) Does exactly what it says on the tin. Vibrant business networking site with networking opportunities, blog/website SEO opportunities. Multiple solicitations and major benefits associated with paid membership
- Xing (My Profile) Partner site to ZoomInfo.com. Professional layout but most of the benefits of the site seem to be wrapped up with premium membership.
- ZoomInfo (My Profile) Web trawled information form online sources – waiting for you to verify, then give your credit card details to confirm ownership of your profile. No interactivity.
- Konnects (My Profile) Recently had a makeover – but I still find this a very difficult site to use and it has lapsed
- Wink (My Profile) Clean and crisp looking site with lots of potential – just my profile won’t let me add friends, review messages or interact. Other users have found the site to be a fun and useful social/professional networking site
DocRipster said
Functional and useful overview of professional networking sites. I use LinkedIn but had bever even heard of most of the others. Well done.
Francesca Ambrosini said
Wow! Super review on Social Networks. How do you do it?! As always your research is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for taking the time and sharing your thoughts with us. I’m particularly happy about the Spock review. It had potential and faded into oblivion. Spock’s founders lack of communication or consideration for their users, especially their beta users, left to be desired. One good thing that came out of using Spock during it’s potential time was meeting some great network contacts like you. Keep up the great bloggin’!
Francesca Ambrosini said
The tips and tricks are really important and useful. I’m not the best keeping up with every technology trend. Giving examples about managing a virtual network is something I can appreciate. Thank you!
Martin Russell said
Thanks for putting this out there Mike.
As a dabbler in these fields myself, your direction and sorting of what does what and how well is wonderful indeed.
This whole site is powerful information, and I’m delighted you are getting this out there and I hope the search engines reward such great and useful content.
Oh, and I love the kids pictures too!
Life in the Fast Lane » Blog Archive » The times they are a changing said
[...] to read, review, digest and share online resources is a valuable learning experience and when done collaboratively becomes an essential future-proofing [...]
» Physician Social and Professional Networks Life in the Fast Lane said
[...] face-face interaction but in internet parlance it refers to a virtual community that is focused on professional interactions instead of social interactions. Notable examples include LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy, Naymz and Konnects. These professional [...]