Linkedin Blog

This belongs to a series of posts on how websites like SalesCrunch are integrating LinkedIn functionality to add value to their users. Here’s Sean Black, SalesCrunch CEO on the integration of LinkedIn’s APIs. – Ed.

As the world’s largest professional network with more than 150 million members, LinkedIn represents an incredible opportunity for services like SalesCrunch, a next-generation online meeting platform that enables professionals to monitor engagement during meetings, collaborate with others across an organization, and measure the efficiency of meetings like never before.

We’re always looking for creative ways to help our users learn the ins and outs of LinkedIn. Knowing that the average office worker can only watch a screenshot tutorial for a few seconds before the onset of spontaneous narcolepsy, we developed a fun, retro-themed webseries for small and medium business owners with the help of FedEx.

We call it “LinkedIn’s Timeless Guide To Small Business Success.”

When I first blogged about ten ways to use LinkedIn, the site had 8.5 million total users worldwide. I’m told that now there are over twelve million small-business people on LinkedIn, which is roughly 20 percent of its total user base.

Many of these small-business people are using the site in ways you’d commonly imagine: finding leads, growing their business globally, or finding the right vendors. My buddies at LinkedIn recently provided me a list of ten additional ways small businesses can use LinkedIn:

We all know that it’s not easy to start and grow a small business. There are days you feel like you’re standing at the edge of the abyss. The key though, as my favorite author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, is “to stand as close to the edge as [you] can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Today, we’re launching a LinkedIn Group called Small Biz Nation that aims to serve as an online community resource to help meet the needs of small business owners.