Four Business-Social Networking Sites Worth Visiting

Welcome to the world of business-social networking! These sites are where you go to do business. “Social” plays second fiddle in these arenas. And, you know, there is something about this that I find to be ………… refreshing (smile).

We’ll start with the easy one. The one you should all be familiar with. If you have not been to LinkedIn, an your interest lies more with Business than it does with Social, you need to be on LinkedIn. Some call it a giant Rolodex of businesses. Even more so, it is a giant resume deposit of business people. LinkedIn is where you establish your credentials, share those with others, and connect with those with similar interests. If privacy is a concern, LinkedIn is probably your first choice for a business-social networking site. LinkedIn focuses more on individuals rather than the business itself but, if personal branding is as important as they say it is, this is the place to be. Stay with the free version.

Key Strengths: Massive membership. Establish and share just about all of your personal business credentials. Expert advice through the “Answers” section. Lots of great groups to join.

StartUpNation was probably the first business-social networking site I ever visited. While you do establish a profile on this site, the real power is in the huge amounts of helpful free articles, forums, and “how-to’s” that are found in it’s pages. This site is incredibly large. It is also very well designed with the small business entrepreneur in mind and the members are an extremely active group. Got a question? Go to one of the many, well organized forums and post it and then sit back and watch the suggestions roll in. Good suggestions. Perhaps 100′s of them. You might also wish to subscribe to both their newsletter and blog. Free.

Key Strengths: Answers to, and articles on, a wide range of business related topics.

BizNik is one of the newer kids on the block. I swear that their catch phrase used to be “Networking That Doesn’t Suck” which is what attracted me to it in the first place (smile). Now it’s “Collaboration Beats Competition”. You have your profiles but not to the extent found on LinkedIn. It tends to sort and want to connect you via region or city and when you live in Boise, ID ……. not too many folks on this site yet. Like LoopDesk, it seeks to match members to expressed needs although with LoopDesk it is companies rather than individuals (see below).  Also offers events. Subscribe to their site blog. Excellent articles on a wide variety of topics and all contributed by the members themselves so you get an enormous variety of styles and interests. Very active in this regard. I have it in my Google Reader. Attractive site layout. Free but there is also a paid version.

Key Strengths: Great articles/blog on a wide range of business related topics. Potentially a great site but only something like 30+ members in the greater Boise Metropolitan Area (smile). And, get this. Don’t ask me why but they must have one hell of a search engine optimizer. Join this site and I don’t care if you do nothing else with it, it will always be #1 in a Google Search. I’m pretty active on a fair amount of sites but ……. this is always #1 (smile).

Hot off the press, LoopDesk. This site launched very very recently. So recently, in fact, that I had never heard of it until today when the CEO reached out to me on LinkedIn and offered me a free one-year membership. After the first year fees are $29.95 per year. I figure that they wanted to capture the all important, and vast, Idaho market . As far as I can tell, I’m it. Nice to be first at something for a change (smile). LoopDesk is in many ways the opposite of LinkedIn in that it focuses on the company rather than the individual. It’s goal is to connect companies that need services with those that provide them. I have not had a chance to play with it much at all, however, I do see where it offers articles, discussions, events, and classifieds. I will say this, I like it’s clean and uncluttered user interface. Minimal profiles are, in their own way, attractive. Free for the first year.

Key Strengths: Too early to tell. Nice clean looking site.

The best part of all these sites is that, unlike Twitter and FaceBook, you don’t have to feed them constantly. No Sesame Street characters always asking for more cookies (smile).

Pretty short post for me. Pretty lucky for you (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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