Member Article

I ‘Link’, therefore I am

Brian Rees – chairman of IF

We live and work in a social media driven world; you can’t escape it and nor would any of us want to. The meteoric rise of Twitter & Instagram have created a seismic shift in how we communicate and present ourselves. They’re immediate, they’re engaging, they’re exciting and they help forge our own ‘personal brands’ online. However, in my view, there are still strong arguments for other platforms on which you can drive a more balanced and detailed debate - the most obvious one being LinkedIn. It’s certainly received its fair share of criticism of late and it’s certainly not perfect but what’s the reality? When does it come into its own? And where is it going wrong? All pretty subjective questions but here’s my own LinkedIn journey….

Many years ago, my agency was bought by McCann Erickson and after three years of fun and games I decided to opt out of the agency world forever. The days of networking, client schmoozing and elevator pitches were, I thought, over. Whilst I was never going to become a Trappist Monk, I threw the rolodex away and left all my contacts behind on my gas driven version of Outlook. My thought was: “If you ever see me in an agency again… shoot me!”

However, fate played its part (as it so often does) and I chose to ignore that bold statement as I soon met Christian James and IF was born. Suddenly, I was once again filled with a sense of excitement and drive so I reached for the rolodex but quickly realised that times had moved on and it was somewhat antiquated. I then got an invitation to join this networking site called LinkedIn. I had an epiphany moment: I could use this to re-emerge with real online connectivity. This could be fun!

The good bits? Well, it was easy to join and then track down ex-colleagues and clients. I was able to say hello and share the incredible news that I was back and an early adopter (like them) of this platform. Within a few weeks, many of my contacts were updated. I could now easily communicate so I decided to open my virtual LinkedIn door to anyone, because - let’s face it – it’s business after all.

Then the not so good bits? The open door policy started to create a continuous stream of invitations from hard selling service providers; mostly recruitment agencies, software and IT companies that had not profiled me (or my agency) accurately. This is still a fundamental problem. It got really daft when other agencies starting offering their services to help us do what we do! Then I got the nutters, (you know who you are!) with really strange agendas; some of whom had even managed to link-in with God (that’s not an acronym – they claimed they had the ear of the big man in the sky!)… I then started to get requests from people with Game of Thrones-esque names; usually from parts of the world that would be good Pointless answers. I realised that I had to re-think the open door as I was connecting to simply to build my connections but to what end?

I’m still a big fan but - in retrospect - I think I should have been more selective about how I went about using it. It’s been fantastic for re-acquainting myself with ex-colleagues, introducing IF to clients, and it’s pretty good for recruitment as it allows direct access to potential candidates. Whilst the specialist groups act as sounding-boards for like-minded professionals where they share brilliant insights and answer genuine business questions. The users who just continuously re-post other contributors content should spend some time re-examining whey they are on the site and then try something original for a change. Some companies and individuals are extremely good at connecting and tailoring their approach whilst others are just plain annoying. I could go on for hours but the key to maximising any social media platform is to use it WELL.

To conclude, I really value LinkedIn as an effective way to communicate, connect, learn and promote myself and my company. In my opinion, it is far more relevant (and credible) than many other social media sites and is still the pre-eminent business networking portal. Sure, it has weaknesses - and sometimes networking seems an end in itself, but I’m still on it and I think with 300,000,000 members it is here to stay for a while yet.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by The if agency .