September 27, 2012

LinkedIn Interview Podcast

If you missed our 62nd Web Wednesday Social Mixer, you can listen to the raw, unedited version of the interview with Olivier LeGrand, APAC Head of Marketing Solutions for LinkedIn, by clicking on the play button below. (Warning: the occasional swearword nudges its naughty way into the conversation!).


September 26, 2012

LinkedIn Localises with Lanterns and Mooncakes

LinkedIn is proving that it can 'go local' as it expands its offices across the world.



For their recent "BrandConnect" advertising industry event in Hong Kong, we were greeted by nicely poised "LinkedIn Lanterns" on the sampan/ferry across to Top Deck:


And rewarded with LinkedIn Mooncakes upon departure:


We'll be giving out some of these mooncakes as lucky draw prizes at tonight's Web Wednesday HK - Social Mixer V62. If you haven't done so yet, do sign up to let us know you're coming. As of 4pm today, we have 130 attendees via LinkedIn and 60 via Facebook. (I guess the former truly is a more suitable platform for B2B networking!).


A wide range of professionals will be attending tonight, not just the Digerati. Take a look at the breakdown of industries below - I can't work out why some are listed as "unknown", don't we all know what industry we work in?




September 21, 2012

LinkedIn Unplugged at Web Wednesday

Calling all serious connectors and business networkers, 



For our 62nd Social Mixer, we have the pleasure of inviting Olivier LeGrand, APAC Head of Marketing Solutions for LinkedIn, which operates "the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 175 million members in over 200 countries and territories".

Sign up on LinkedIn (yes, they do have an event app too!). As of 21st September, 48 people have signed up via this app already.

[Thanks once again to the creative folk  at Digital Butter for producing the backdrop image above].

We will be looking at the adoption of LinkedIn in Asia, how it is being used to bridge business connections across national boundaries and what types of communities are most active in each Asian country. This year, LinkedIn set up sales offices in Singapore and Hong Kong, so we will also be finding out what they sell and to whom. Expect some cheeky questions about their stock price! 



In my research, I dug up an old post from November 2010 entitled, "LinkedIn - Facebook for Suits"! Do take a look as I introduced several services that have become the norm now.

Here are some additional statistics that I pilfered off their press site (I removed the dates as they are repetitive, most are "as of Q1 2012"):

  • 2 new members sign up to join LinkedIn every second.
  • 62% of LinkedIn members are located outside of the United States.
  • LinkedIn is available in 18 languages: English, Czech, Dutch, French, German,
    Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
    Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
  • Of total 175 million members, 25M in Asia Pacific, 16M in India, 3M in Australia, 4M in Southeast Asia, 1M in Indonesia and 1M in the Philippines and 400,000 in Hong Kong.
  • LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches in 2011 and are on pace to surpass 5.3 billion in 2012. (So, it's worth optimising your profile!).
  • LinkedIn counts executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members; its corporate hiring solutions are used by 85 of the Fortune 100 companies.
  • More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.
  • More than 75,000 developers are using LinkedIn APIs to create innovative tools and services
    for professionals.
  • There are more than one million unique publishers actively using the LinkedIn Share button on
    their sites to send content into the LinkedIn platform. 
  • LinkedIn members are sharing insights and knowledge in more than one million LinkedIn
    Groups.
  • 23% of unique visiting members come from mobile apps, versus just 10% one year ago. That number reaches 27% when including mobile visits to the website.
This month's mixer is slap in the middle of Social Media Week, which is held simultaneously in 13 cities around the world. Please do sign up and support some of the other exciting events happening during the week. The event will kick off at 6:30pm and finish at 9:30pm with the interview starting at around 7:15pm. 





Share the love and come connect with the local Digerati! We are taking questions in advance on Twitter, using the hashtag "#wwhkv62".