Last week I gave a talk to a group from National City Bank about LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals. Everyone who attended the talk seemed to have heard of LinkedIn and to have received invitations to join; some people told me they received a couple new invitations every week. Yet the majority of the group weren’t sure what the site was about or how to handle invitations, much less how to get any benefit from the site.

I don’t think these people are alone. Although LinkedIn is easy to join and to use, the concept of it escapes a lot of people at first.

I used to think of LinkedIn as an address book on steroids, with the key advantage being that everyone is responsible for keeping their own contact information up-to-date. It would be a great tool even if there were all it did.

But it’s much more powerful. That’s what my talk was about.

You can download my speaker’s notes for the presentation here: Intro to LinkedIn by Cynthia Closkey. (You’re free to extend this presentation and adapt it, but please link back to me or credit me when you do.)

I’ll elaborate on the key topics from this presentation here on the blog over the next few days.

I’m indebted to Zale Tabakman and his presentation "Seven Ways to Generate Business with LinkedIn" for a number of the ideas in this presentation. His approach differs slightly from mine; he’s been quite successful, so you’ll want to see how he uses LinkedIn as well. I cribbed a few more ideas from Guy Kawasaki’s blog post "Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn," another excellent resource.