Profit to brands via professional social networking site

Whether it’s to keep in contact with friends or family to advance your career, in today’s tech crazed generation you are likely on at least one social network. While Facebook, Twitter,and Google plus are extremely popular, these platforms are just a socializing medium and they might not be able to help you professionally. That’s when professional social networking site comes into picture. Vertical professional networks are likely to be the most attractive to highly skilled knowledge workers.

It is a type of social network service that is focused solely on interactions and relationships of a business nature rather than including personal, non-business interactions. If you think about it, it is a great way to either find work or get ahead in your career as well as gain resources and opportunities for networking. Businesses mostly depends on resources and information outside company and in order to get what they need, such as employees or clients as well as potential opportunities they can resort to networking for professionals.

The notion of a social network for every type of employee might be far-fetched, though. It’s not as if coffee baristas have a compelling need to join a network of other coffee baristas. Think software engineers (GitHub), mechanical engineers (GrabCad), data scientists (Kaggle) and academics (Academia.edu and ResearchGate). GitHub revolves around the capability to commit code and Academia.edu offers the capability to share research papers. Indeed, content creation and sharing are central use cases for these networks. Professional social networks serve as a place for people to “do” things that other networks might not cater to.

When it comes to the social impact that professional network services have on today's society, it has proved to increase activity. According to the SNCR three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions. Reliance has increased for essentially all respondents over the past three years. Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals. There are more people collaborating outside their company wall on professional social networking site than within their organizational intranet.