Flow Communications

With 430-million profiles, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network – which makes it “extremely relevant in the recruitment space”, says Flow CEO Tara Turkington.

Although Flow has had a LinkedIn presence for some time, we only recently started to pay closer attention to this social network, which Tara describes as “the most important online platform in the world for recruitment”.

“At Flow, our people are our most important asset and we want to be attracting the best staff in the industry, so it makes sense for us to be showing potential Flowstars who we are on LinkedIn,” she says.

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Flow's LinkedIn account

Apart from being a reliable recruitment tool, LinkedIn is also a great platform for publishing thought-leadership pieces, keeping on top of industry trends, and seeing what the competition is up to. By making use of the “groups” and “forums” facilities, people can also share challenges and ideas with professional peers.

Says Flow project manager Angela Blake, “What I like about LinkedIn is the wealth of content that can be accessed. It encourages depth of thought and exploration of topics that other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, for example, don’t offer.”

At Flow we recommend that our clients use LinkedIn as part of their digital marketing strategy, as it provides an opportunity to showcase several products and service offerings on a single company page. What’s more, clients are assured that the audience they are reaching is predominantly in the professional world in which many decision-makers operate.

So, what does LinkedIn do?

This free platform was created to operate primarily in the corporate space and, as such, allows people in the working world to build themselves a professional identity online and to keep in touch with colleagues in the business community. It also enables people to discover professional opportunities, source potential business deals, and identify new ventures.

The ultimate goal of LinkedIn is to allow registered members to create and access networks of businesspeople and organisations whom they know and trust when they join LinkedIn

A LinkedIn member’s profile page features the individual’s employment history and education. Any members added to that profile are known as “connections” and are required to have a pre-existing relationship with the person to whom they are connected through work, professionally or from school days.

A member is not permitted to contact connections with whom they do not have a relationship through LinkedIn without a prior introduction, in order to maintain the integrity of the system.

Although the basic set-up is free, premium subscriptions may be bought to access members outside of your immediate circles via the LinkedIn database.

LinkedIn was launched in 2003 in the United States. As of 2013 it has been available in 24 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay and Tagalog.

From 2015 the site began generating revenue by providing access to information about its users to recruiters and sales professionals. LinkedIn is based in California in the US and has offices throughout the world, where close to 10 000 employees are stationed.

And it’s ultimately employees and sourcing the best available employee for a position that needs filling that is growing LinkedIn by the day. Personal endorsements add credibility to individuals that would have to otherwise be obtained by doing laborious background checks and calling references.

Says Tara, “Hopefully LinkedIn will help us to attract some of the best talent there is on offer. Flow is a fast-growing company and we need to find brilliant Flowstars to appoint to our growing ranks.”

Find Flow’s LinkedIn account here. Please follow and share it with your industry colleagues.

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(Image: Pixabay)
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