How it works:

Linkedin is your 80’s rolodex…online.  You create a profile to sell yourself (which should do the equivalent of a power suit and walnut desk for your online reputation), including all of your professional qualifications, experience, fields of interest and expertise; and then you add your contacts.  As in everyone you know in a business capacity, who knows when a contact of a contact will become a vital link in your career path?

Use it to:

Link with people you know.  Keep people informed about what you’re up to or looking to be involved with.  But crucially, as with all networking, stay interested in what everyone else is doing too.  Be part of other people’s chains – if you have a colleague who does freelance web design and know the Digital Marketing Manager of a firm you used to work for is looking for support with their new site, introduce them.  Acts of altruism in this context propel you to the front of people’s minds and reciprocal connections inevitably come flooding in.

What you could get:

A widened net.  As in MUCH wider.  Wider than that which you could ever have cast in real life.  Instead of ringing round old friends and colleagues for access to their rolodex when in need of an opportunity or referral, these people become your own contacts, to nurture as you see fit.  The better you do this, the stronger your net and the greater your pool of resources becomes.

One thing to remember: nurture when you don’t need anything.  Then when you do, connections are already established and not on an awkward ‘needy vs bestower of contacts’ basis.