Introduction In todays internet era, needs of both the youth as well as professionals are rapidly exploding.

Barely a decade ago, social media almost nonexistent. Today one has several options that include face book, twitter, LinkedIn, android, instagram, Gmail, yahoo, tumbler, Skype, PayPal, whatsapp, etc. to choose from. Many of social media websites were developed by commoners who are not experts in computer programming or the latest computer related languages and operating systems. Not only these social networks have become a life changer, for the individuals who developed them they have provided hundreds of millions of us dollars and in some cases they have made them become billionaires in 5 to 7 years which require at least 3 to 4 decades in the conventional manufacturing or services. Every business requires not only large number of customers but highly satisfied customers. All the social media networks aim at providing the required services to the customers. This helps them to get more customer information and data base. The customers also get a platform to interact and market their products and services using the social media.

LinkedIn is a key platform for us in being able to reach quality consumer or business professionals.
Rod Strother Director, Digital and Social Centre of Excellence, Lenovo

LinkedIn has been described by online trade publication TechRepublic as having "become the de facto tool for professional networking".[75] LinkedIn has also been praised for its usefulness in fostering business relationships.[76] "LinkedIn is, far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today," according to Forbes.[77]

Photo: Sam Woolford / shutterstock

Linkedin can be a great way to promote your home business. Here are a few reasons why:

LinkedIn is a network with 65 million business professionals around the world. The average LinkedIn member has an average annual household income of $109,000. One person creates a LinkedIn login every second. Nearly 50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority for their companies. It's easy to see why LinkedIn is considered the world's largest audience of influential, affluent professionals in one place. Like other forms ofInternet marketing, marketing a small or home business on LinkedIn is relatively inexpensive and provides a lot of bang for the buck. If that's the market you are trying to reach, you need to get in the game.

Getting Started with LinkedIn Marketing

In order to get started with marketing your business on LinkedIn, you'll need to:

Understand how LinkedIn works. Create a LinkedIn login, if you're not already a member. Create a great LinkedIn profile to put your best forward when people come to check you out. Ideally, create a LinkedIn company page for your business. You'll have the opportunity to do that as you are completing the resume section of your LinkedIn profile, and your company page will be automatically linked to from the resume in your profile.

With these LinkedIn basics in place you can get started on marketing yourself and your business to LinkedIn members.

Passive and Aggressive LinkedIn Marketing Methods

There are two main ways to dive into LinkedIn business promotion - using a passive approach or taking a more aggressive stance. Let's explore both, but keep in mind that, like anything else, the more time and effort you put into your LinkedIn marketing efforts, the bigger the rewards.

Passive LinkedIn Marketing

Simply by creating a LinkedIn profile, building your connections and keeping your account updated, you can get the attention of potential clients and customers. The passive approach can pay off by:

Giving you exposure to people hunting for products or services. LinkedIn's search features allow others to find you, and just like Google search, the use of LinkedIn search is an important, well-used feature of the network. Getting you you introductions. Your LinkedIn business connections can give you an in with people and businesses you might not otherwise be able to reach. Displaying your recommendations from others on LinkedIn. Recommendations are word-of-mouth testimonials to you and your business. They provide credibility that encourages people to do business with you.

Aggressive LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn does provide possibilities for more proactive marketing of your home business. To take full advantage of the possibilities the network has to offer consider:

Posting regular status updates. Talk about what you're working on and who you're working for. Include updates that would be of interest to your target customers and clients. Active group participation. Join groups related to your business and your interests and participate in discussions there for increased exposure. Discussion participation can help establish you as an expert in your field. Don't spam the groups as you'll run the risk of getting tossed out. You'll also tarnish the reputation of your business. Send messages and invitations to those in your network and to other group members . Again, don't be a spammer or a pest. Answer questions. Log in to LinkedIn, click More and select Answers. You can also search for answers on your topic by using search and selecting Answers from the drop-down list of areas to search. Click the Open Answers tab and see if you can provide a good answer to someone else's question. This establishes your credibility as an expert. Always be honest and answer to the best of your ability. Others looking for answers to the same problem will notice you.

Try LinkedIn advertising. Paid advertising on LinkedIn is still a relative bargain. In fact, from time to time LinkedIn sends out offers for a free month of paid advertising. You may as well take advantage of it, try it out and see if it works for you. Consider upgrading to a paid LinkedIn membership. This will give you additional contact options and other benefits that may be a good fit for what you're trying to accomplish. Just click the Basic Account Upgrade link from the top left of any LinkedIn page after you've logged in to get more information on the benefits available exclusively to paid members. There are three levels of membership available, the first two fairly reasonable, the third quite expensive.

Adding LinkedIn to Your Marketing Strategy

Adding LinkedIn to your marketing strategy can be a great idea. If you have the time, you can learn to do everything yourself. If not, you might consider hiring a specialist or virtual assistant to handle some of the tasks for you. Admittedly, LinkedIn doesn't work for every type of business, but it can work for most and should be given full consideration if you want your business to succeed and grow.

You may not see results at first, but as you build your network and become more active, you could find that marketing on LinkedIn is a very smart thing to do.

http://homebusiness.about.com/od/socialmediamarketing/a/How-To-Use-Linkedin-forMarketing.htm

How to Market Your Business through LinkedIn

By Joel Elad from LinkedIn For Dummies, 3rd Edition LinkedIn can play a significant role in the effective marketing of your business. LinkedIn's value as a marketing tool gets a lot of buzz from most companies finance departments, especially because they see LinkedIn as a free way o f marketing the business. Although you don't have to pay anything in terms of money to take advantage of most of LinkedIn's functions, you do have to factor in the cost of the time you put in to manage your profile and use LinkedIn to the fullest. Marketing your business on LinkedIn involves working through your own network, employing both your current list of contacts as well as potential contacts in the greater LinkedIn community. Your efforts should also include making use of links from your online activities to your LinkedIn profile and promoting your business online from your LinkedIn identity. Here are some things to keep in mind as you develop your LinkedIn marketing strategy:

Encourage every employee to have a LinkedIn profile and to link to each other. Extending your network in this way increases your exposure outside your company. And if anybody in your organization is nervous about preparing her profile, just tell her that LinkedIn can be an important asset in their professional or career development. You can mention that even Bill Gates has a LinkedIn profile.

Make sure your business websites and blogs are linked to your LinkedIn profile. By offering your website visitors a direct view to your LinkedIn profile, you're allowing them to verify you as an employee of the company because they can see your experience and recommendations from other people. They might also realize they share a bond with you and your business that they never would have discovered without LinkedIn.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile links back to your business website and blog. You not only want your visitors and potential customers to be able to verify who you are, but you also want them to go back to your website and do business with you! Make sure you, and every employee of your company who's on LinkedIn, includes a link to your business's website and the company blog. If you have a search engine expert working for you, that person may complain about something called a two-way link, which is a link from your LinkedIn profile to your website and a link from your website to your LinkedIn profile. This practice, known as reciprocal linking, hurts your search engine ranking. If so, have that person identify which of the two links is more important and implement that link.

Make sure that your most popular keyword phrases are in your company or personal profile. Use sites such as Wordtracker or Good Keywords to find the hottest keyword phrases in your field. If your business is doing any online ad campaigns, make sure those keyword phrases are the same as the ones in your profile. Presenting a consistent image to customers makes you and your company look more professional.

Develop relationships with key business partners or media contacts. When you search for someone on LinkedIn, you can be precise about who you want to reach. If you know that your business needs to expand into the smartphone market, you can start reaching out to smartphone companies such as Apple, Samsung, and HTC. If you want to increase your visibility, reach out to media members who cover your industry.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-market-your-business-through-linkedin.html

use of social media

Social media essentially functions to allow people to make their voices heard, but unfortunately for businesses the things that their customers have to say may not always be complimentary. With that in mind, more and more businesses are turning to use

social media less for promotion and marketing, and more for customer service. Social media allows businesses to have a pulse for what their customers are thinking and feeling, and allows for easy social interaction. But does it really give customers valuable customer service, or it is marketing by another name? Here is a guide to using social media effectively for customer service, but also noting where social media can sometimes fail to meet your needs. Using complaints to your advantage The search functions of Facebook and Twitter, combined with the use of hashtags, makes it easier than ever for companies to monitor what their customers have to say about them, and intervene if necessary. Tasking someone within your company with trawling through tweets should not be an after-thought, it should be a task of high importance. By catching someone who is complaining indirectly about your company, you can intervene, make them happy, and turn a complaint into a happy ending. Not all customers who are unhappy with your company will ring up, but they will more than likely tweet about it as well as giving you bad word-of-mouth. Catch that bad word-of-mouth before it spreads, and you will do wonders for your reputation. Embrace informality and do the job well The informal nature of social media often makes for easier social interactions, which can make delivering customer service over social media a less tiresome and more productive experience. Informality also works for customers too: many expect corporate accounts to be marketing-only and computer-operated, so it can often be a pleasant surprise for them when they great real interaction from you. Informality also serves to root out smaller complaints that you may not otherwise register. Social media customer service is becoming more common, but that doesnt mean that everyone is doing it well. In fact, many companies provide worse customer service via social media than they do by other means. Ensure that the service you provide by social media is just as good, if not better, than your other offerings. Do the job, and do it well. Creating meaningful conversation Many customers will contact you over social media to deal with a specific problem that personally belongs to them: their order didnt arrive on time, you overcharged them, etc. However, by searching social media plat forms you can also pick up on other, more generic and subtle comments that can be of extreme value for your business. If you see someone expressing their wish for you to stock bigger sizes, or commenting that you should stock a certain brand, then you can act upon that. Create conversations with your customers and see what they want from you. Its the best way to grow as a business and actually deliver what people want to see. Promoting positive feedback Customer service is not all about complaints, and often customers will be very happy with the service they receive. People tweeting about your company to this effect are effectively providing you with trustworthy free testimonials, and they make for great marketing points. By just retweeting a couple of people who are happy with you and thanking them for their custom, you can cement a returning visitor and create some positive buzz at the same time. Of course, this can work in the exact opposite manner as well. Whilst businesses can promote positive feedback, it is just as easy for customers to promote negative feedback. British Airways customer Hasan Syed did just that when he paid to promote a tweet discouraging people from using BA after they lost his luggage. The tweet was so visible that BA had contacted Mr. Syed within hours offering a personal apology and also eventually found his missing luggage. So remember, while social media can be powerful in your hands, so too can it be powerful in the hands of your customers. Managing handover There comes a point in any social media customer service interaction were the limitations of social media chat come into view. Many people for example would not feel comfortable discussing personal information on a corporate Facebook page, or sending things like card details over Twitter direct messages. With that in mind, any company who uses social media also needs to perfect their handover or scale-up procedure to help transfer complaints to more appropriate mediums like email or a telephone answering service. This can be troublesome however as many customers use social media because they have had a poor previous experience with your traditional customer service channels. So what does this demonstrate? Social media should be a point of effort in your customer service strategy, but it cannot be your only customer service delivery channel and therefore you should also invest in ensuring your phone and email customer service provisions are excellent too.

http://socialmediatoday.com/ashley-williamson/1844026/does-social-media-suffice-customerservice

LINKEDIN LinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner,[2] previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri). Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board.[2][16] LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York, London, and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures,[17] Bessemer Venture Partnersand the European Founders Fund.[18] LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006.[19] Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment.[20] In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company.[21] In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion.[22] In 2010, LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland,[23] received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion,[24] and announced its first acquisition, Mspoke,[25] and improved its 1% premium subscription ratio.[26] In October of that year Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups.[27] By December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.[28]

Membership[edit]
As of 2013, LinkedIn has more than 259 million members in over 200 countries and territories. [2][8] It is significantly ahead of its competitors Viadeo (50 million)[48] and XING (10 million).[49] The membership grows by approximately two new members every second.[50] With 20 million users, India has the fastestgrowing network of users as of 2013.[citation needed] In January 2014, the countries with the most LinkedIn users were:[8][51]
Country Users Penetration

United States

93 million

29.90%

India

24 million

2.02%

Brazil

16 million

7.69%

United Kingdom 14 million

22.41%

Canada

9 million

25.82%

France

7 million

9.91%

Italy

6 million

9.88%

Spain

6 million

11.54%

Mexico

6 million

4.72%

Australia

6 million[52] 23.88%

Features
One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. However, if the invitee selects "I don't know" or "Spam", this counts against the inviter. If the inviter gets too many of such responses, the account may be restricted or closed. This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.

Users can not upload their resume any more. This was a feature but became redundant in late 2012. It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.

Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates. Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification. Users can now follow different companies and can receive notifications about the new joining and offers available.

Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs that they would like to apply for. Users can "like" and "congratulate" each other's updates and new employments. Users can see who has visited their profile page.

The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either an existing relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in the EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.[54] The feature LinkedIn Answers,[55] similar to Yahoo! Answers, allowed users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature was free, and the main difference from the latter was that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known. As of January 31, 2013, the LinkedIn Answers feature is no longer supported. LinkedIn cites a new 'focus on development of new and more engaging ways to share and discuss professional topics across LinkedIn' as the reason for the retirement of the feature. Another LinkedIn feature is LinkedIn Polls. In December 2011, LinkedIn announced that they are rolling out polls to their one million groups.[56] In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.[57] In October 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to open its social network of 30 million professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. It is testing a potential social-network revenue modelresearch that to some appears more promising than advertising.[58] On July 23, 2013 LinkedIn announced their Sponsored Updates ad service. Individuals and companies can now pay a fee to have LinkedIn sponsor their content and spread it to their user base. This is a common way for social media sites such as LinkedIn to generate revenue.[59]

Applications
In October 2008, LinkedIn enabled an "applications platform" that allows other online services to be embedded within a member's profile page. Among the initial applications were an AmazonReading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart, WordPress and TypePad application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.[60] In November 2010, LinkedIn allowed businesses to list products and services on company profile pages; it also permitted LinkedIn members to "recommend" products and services and write reviews. [61]

Mobile[edit]
A mobile version of the site was launched in February 2008, which gives access to a reduced feature set over a mobile phone. The mobile service is available in six languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.[62] In January 2011, LinkedIn acquired CardMunch, a mobile app maker that scans business cards and converts into contacts.[63] In June 2013, CardMunch was noted as an available LinkedIn app.[2]In August 2011, LinkedIn revamped its mobile applications on the iPhone, Android and HTML5. Mobile page views of the application have increased roughly 400% year over year according to CEO Jeff Weiner.[64]

In October 2013, LinkedIn announced a service for iPhone users called "Intro", which inserts a thumbnail of a person's LinkedIn profile in correspondence with that person when reading mail messages in the native iOS Mail program.[65] This is accomplished by re-routing all emails from and to the iPhone through LinkedIn servers, which security firm Bishop Fox has serious privacy implications, violates many organizations' security policies, and resembles a man-in-the-middle attack.[66]

Groups
LinkedIn also supports the formation of interest groups, and as of March 29, 2012 there are 1,248,019 such groups whose membership varies from 1 to 744,662.[67][68] The majority of the largest groups are employment related,[69] although a very wide range of topics are covered mainly around professional and career issues, and there are currently 128,000 groups for both academic and corporate alumni. Groups support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the group owners and managers. Since groups offer the ability to reach a wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam solutions, there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exist a range of firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose. LinkedIn has devised a few mechanisms to reduce the volume of spam, but recently took the decision to remove the ability of group owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to determine if they were spammers. Groups also keep their members informed through emails with updates to the group, including most talked about discussions within your professional circles. [67][70] Groups may be private, accessible to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read, though they must join in order to post messages.

Job listings
LinkedIn allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided. These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a list of present and former employees. In July 2011, LinkedIn launched a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with LinkedIn" button on job listing pages.[71] The new plugin will allow potential employees to apply for positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes. All applications will also be saved under a "Saved Jobs" tab. [71]

Skills
LinkedIn allows users to endorse each other's skills.[when?] This feature also allows users to efficiently provide commentary on other users profiles network building is reinforced. However there is no way of flagging anything other than positive content. LinkedIn solicits endorsements based on algorithms that generate skills members might have. Members cannot opt out of such solicitations, with the result that it sometimes appears that a member is soliciting an endorsement for a non-existent skill.[72]

Influencers
The LinkedIn Influencers program launched in October 2012 and brings together 300+ of the world's top thought leaders to share their professional insights with LinkedIn's 259 million members. Influencer is an invite-only program that features notable leaders from a vast range of industries including Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, Rahm Emanuel, Jamie Dimon, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates.[73][74]

Business units[edit]
LinkedIn derives its revenues from three business divisions: Talent Solutions: Recruiters and corporations pay for:

Branded corporate page on LinkedIn, complete with careers section. Pay per click-through Job ads that are targeted to LinkedIn users who match the job profile. Access to the database of LinkedIn users and resumes.

Marketing Solutions:

LinkedIn advertisers pay for pay per click-through targeted ads.

Premium Subscriptions: LinkedIn users pay for:

LinkedIn Business for business users LinkedIn Talent for recruiters LinkedIn JobSeeker for unemployed LinkedIn users looking for a job LinkedIn Sales for Sales Professionals.

Some elements of the various subscription services are also on a pay per use basis like InMail.

Success stories of linkedin

How LinkedIn Changed My Career Path

Talent development is my passion. Its such a rewarding experience to guide people through their personal development and see them achieve their career goals. Thats why I pursued a masters degree in Human Resources Management while working as a Store Manager at Starbucks. After earning my degree in July 2012, I looked for a new career where I could use both my background in operations and my education in human resources. For more than a year, I used online job listings to find new career opportunities. Each time I applied was more frustrating than the next I either never heard back or was told I wasnt qualified. I knew I had to try something different, so I turned to LinkedIn. Once I updated my profile, I started connecting with people I had worked with in the past and with recruiters at companies I was interested in working for. I was

amazed that LinkedIn gave me unparalleled access to recruiters. I could InMail recruiters directly, allowing them to review the qualifications on my LinkedIn profile right away. As I was exploring my 1st and 2nd-degree connections, I came across a recruiter for Pacific Dental Services. I researched the company and discovered they were looking for an Operations Manager, a job that seemed perfectly suited for me. I sent the recruiter an InMail, and got an immediate response we set up some interviews and I landed an opportunity of a lifetime. Im now working as an Operations Manager at Pacific Dental Services, a company that supports dentists so they can concentrate on taking care of their patients. In my role as an operations manager, I help dental practices run more efficiently and ensure great experiences for their patients. I love so many aspects of my job. I love being in the dental field, helping patients improve their oral health, learning new things every day, and how invested senior leadership is in my personal development. Above all, I love my team and feel privileged to work with such talented individuals on a daily basis. In just two weeks on LinkedIn, I experienced the type of career change I was dreaming of. The ability to interact directly with recruiters and employers helped me get my foot in the door. This opportunity has completely changed my career path, and I am forever grateful to LinkedIn for paving the way.

http://blog.linkedin.com

Finding Top Talent in Unlikely Places

Sometime last Fall, I noticed a get-out-the-vote initiative in Silicon Valley. It was a highly localized effort entitled Measure W that was focused on raising funds for an elementary school expansion in Menlo Park that would help relieve increasingly overcrowded classrooms. In addition to passing by an overwhelming majority (~75%), it was a memorable campaign for at least three reasons: First, the email portion of the campaign was highly relevant. The content was always engaging and consistently refreshed, as were the voices in the emails: the note came from a teacher one week, a concerned parent the following week, a local official the next. At all times, the content came across as genuine and authentic, as if the people behind it were talking directly to their audience. Second, the push for Measure W was seemingly everywhere, without being overly intrusive -- emails, door knobs, take home flyers, etc. Somehow, the team behind the campaign knew exactly how frequently to target its audience without crossing the line into spam. Third, it was timely and intelligent. For example, the urgency and frequency of the messaging steadily increased as the date of the election drew closer, seemingly recognizing the peak time to maximize share of mind and subsequently, the likelihood I would vote. And that's exactly what I did. Despite having a scheduling conflict the morning of the election, I ended up stopping by our local polling place to cast a vote...while on the way to the airport. You read that right. The campaign proved to be so effective, that not only did I remember to vote that day, I did so while driving to SFO to catch a flight to NY for a business trip. Throughout the process, from the onset of receiving those initial campaign emails, it was clear that this had been one of the most effective get-out-the-vote campaigns I had experienced at any level -- local, state or national -and that if given the chance it would be great to one day meet the talent behind the initiative. The next day in New York City, I repeated that same sentiment to our head of corporate communications while relaying the entire story to her. And that was the end of my experience with Measure W. Or so it seemed.

Several weeks later, I attended my first local school board meeting along with several other members of our site council. We were there in a show of support for our elementary school's principal and vice principal as they presented their annual plan to the board. As expected, they did an outstanding job. However, that wasn't the most memorable part of the evening. Shortly before completing the presentation, about 15-20 people came rolling into the room, about half of whom were kids under the age of 12. It was hard to imagine what they were doing there or why they were so exuberant. That's when the board chair thanked the principal for his presentation, and then began to read a resolution honoring the volunteers who had lead the effort behind Measure W. There were five of them, all mothers, and they had brought their children and husbands with them that night so they could share the recognition. The serendipity of the moment was not lost on me. After the resolution had been passed, I raised my hand and asked to make a comment (turns out school board meetings are open to the public and attendees are permitted to speak). After a brief introduction, I shared my experience and observations, and concluded with a heartfelt thank you to the team behind the effort. After the meeting was over, I met up with the group and half jokingly asked whether or not they'd be keeping the band together, reinforcing how talented they were and how much demand there would be for such a unique and highly effective skill set. We said goodbye, and I drove home, reflecting on how amazing this confluence of events had been. Later that night, I received invites to connect on LinkedIn from a number of the people I had just met. After reading their profiles, it became abundantly clear why they had been so successful with the passing of the measure. To a person, they were all extremely accomplished in their respective fields of education, government, business development, data science, etc. One of them, Katie Ferrick, wrote to inquire about potential opportunities. Turns out, she was considering a transition from the public to the private sector and was wondering if I knew of any available roles in marketing, communications, or community affairs. I gladly referred her to a few different people at LinkedIn, including the same head of communications I had initially shared the story with in New York City. A couple of months later, she hired Katie to lead our community relations efforts. The moral of the story? Sometimes you never know when you're going to find top talent. It helps to keep your eyes and ears open, even in the most unlikely of times and in the most unlikely of places.