Book Report - LinkedIn

Today I am going to go away from my normal topic of Geocaching to talk to you about a book that I read from the CSN’s online library regarding a Web 2.0 application. The book I read was:

 Sams Teach Yourself LinkedIn in 10 Minutes, Third Edition

By: Patrice-Anne Rutledge

It was published by SAMS on April 10, 2012

I don’t know about many of you but I have never used LinkedIn but always been interested in learning more about it. That is why I chose this book for our book report. This book, Sams Teach Yourself LinkedIn in 10 Minutes, is for people who are new to LinkedIn like myself. It takes you through all the steps you will go through to sign up your account and gives you more detailed information about the different things you can add or look at while you are logged into your account.

LinkedIn is like the Facebook for professionals. It helps maximize your potential of an online network. It is said that two new members join LinkedIn approximately every second. Maybe that is why it is the leading site for professionals and it has more than 150 million members worldwide. LinkedIn is a good place for people to go, especially students like us, because it can help us to find a job, develop our business if that is the direction you want to go and can help brand yourself. There are a few different accounts that you can sign up for, but the free basic account is what most people have because it still offers you everything that you might need. So my suggestion is to try out the basic account first before you start paying for an account service that you won’t really need.

After reading this book I then signed up for my free account. This process was so simply it only took about 3 minutes, if that. If you can sign up for a Facebook or Twitter account, you can sign up for a LinkedIn account. It just asks you for very basic information in the beginning, which you can add more detailed information later if you want to which is recommended so you can start getting your name out there. Once you put in your email address it then looks through your contacts in that email address to see if there is anyone you can connect with through LinkedIn. I would recommend LinkedIn to anyone in the business/professional field. Although almost all of us have a Facebook account, I feel that it is more for your personal life. LinkedIn gives you a more professional way of contacting people that maybe you would like to get a job with or try to have them take a look at your business or resume.

I felt that this book was good with giving me the information that I needed to sign up an account. The only thing that was a weak point for me was all the detailed information that was included in the book only because I don’t see myself using all of the access it offers until I am really ready to get into the work force which will be a couple of years from now. If you are looking to learn about the ins and outs of LinkedIn, this would be a perfect book for you and it is an easy and quick book to read.