Hear Gary's Slack take on LinkedIn in an August 2008 presentation he gave to the B-to-B Marketing Committee of the Association of National Advertisers in New York City.

1. Linking in
to…
Presented by Gary Slack
to the B-to-B Marketing Committee
of the Association of National Advertisers
August 14, 2008

2. First, what about all of you?
Pop
Quiz

3. Q. What percent of you are on LinkedIn?
77%
or 30 of 39 people

4. Q. What’s the average # of connections?
46 60
for all 39 of you
for the 30 who
are LinkedIn

5. Q. What’s the connection spread?

6. Q. # who’ve received recommendations?
9 18
recommendations
in all

7. Q. # who’ve given recommendations?
9 24
recommendations
in all

8. So, what is this thing called LinkedIn?

9. So, what is this thing called LinkedIn?

10. It’s burning up the networking space
Monthly Unique Visitors
Apr-08 Apr-07 YOY Growth
Myspace 58,754 57,003 3%
Facebook 22,482 14,403 56%
Classmates Online 14,514 12,913 12%
LinkedIn 8,695 1,886 361%
Windows Live Spaces 7,869 8,349 -6%
AOL Hometown 6,362 8,497 -25%
Reunion.com 6,041 5,020 20%
Club Penguin 3,806 4,073 -7%
Buzznet.com 3,229 1,685 104%
Imeem 2,856 1,491 92%
Source: Nielsen

11. It’s built a huge lead over b2b wannabees

13. The hockey stick will only get steeper
• Now at 24-25 million registered users
– Network efforts are really kicking in
• About 80% U.S. (for now)
• More than 700,000 small-business owners
• Every FORTUNE 500 company represented
– LinkedIn claims C-level registration at every firm
• Adding 200,000-300,000 profiles a week
• 30-35 million expected by end of 2008
• 70 million possible by end of 2009
– Expansion in Europe, eyeing China
• $100 million in annual sales; $1.015 billion valuation

14. Who isn’t
(or won’t soon be)
on LinkedIn?

15. Network demographics
• Average age: 41
• Average HHI: $109,000
• College: 95%
• Post-grad: 37%
• HBS grads’ connections: average of 71
• Gender: 64% male
• BDMs: 49%
• C-Level: 7.8%
• Companies <500 employees: 36%
• # of LinkedIn pages viewed per session: 57
• Time spent per session: 12-24 minutes

16. Comparative demographics
Ave. Age Ave. HHI Comp. <500 BDMs Read Biz Mags
LinkedIn 41 $109,762 36% 47% 29%
WSJ.com 47 $101,039 30% 38% 44%
Forbes.com 47 $96,665 34% 40% 50%
BW.com 47 $96,414 27% 38% 50%
Source: @plan

17. Primary uses of LinkedIn
As
As As B-to-B
Business
Individuals Marketers
Marketers

18. Individuals
• Create a highly detailed profile (branding)
• Formalize a network of people you already know
• Connect with people you don’t know (but people in your network do)
• Find and connect with people you’d lost track of
• Join, upon invitation, other people’s networks
• Give/receive recommendations
• Ask and respond to questions (hot new area)
• Research people and companies
• Look for new career opportunities, clients and projects
• Join affinity groups (hot new area)

19. Business marketers
• Contact discovery/database enhancement
• Business development (direct or indirect)
• Advertise to very targeted segments
• Ask business questions (a la MENG) of your network
• Branding and education
• Recruitment
• Join professional groups
• Company Groups (corporate Intranets…coming this fall)

20. Contact discovery

21. Contact discovery: the importance of hubs
• “Flip” Filipowski
• Adds hundreds of names
weekly…sometimes daily
• May have 50,000+
network connections
• Probably responsible for
half of my 5,652,000
network connections
• Amplifier effect is huge
• To do database work,
find or create a “Flip”

22. Business development
Path 1: Connecting Through
An Introduction (unpaid)
Dan Nye, CEO
LinkedIn
Path 1: Connecting Through
InMail (paid)

23. Advertising
Run of Professional
24 Million Professionals
Corporate
Executives
5M members
IT
Professionals
2.8M members
197 inCrowds
Small Business
Professionals
3.3M members
Finance
Professionals
684K members
Sales
Professionals
1.4M members
Entrepreneurs
2M members
13M PVs 35M PVs 60M PVs 7.5M PVs 17M PVs 16M PVs
Custom Audience Segments
Job function Industry Company size Age
Gender #connections DMA Seniority

24. In conclusion
• Fabulous platform, incredible reach and depth
– Simplifies “discovery” of previously hard-to-find info
– Makes the world that much more transparent
– Enough “killer” apps? Not yet
• I’d encourage you to:
– Experiment more with it personally and corporately (we are)
– Invite in the LinkedIn people (Steve Patrizi and Dale Durrett)
• LinkedIn still has a lot to prove
– As an ad medium (will people notice and click?)
– As a recruiting medium (still rudimentary next to CareerBuilder)
– Can engagement be sustained beyond the novelty stage?

25. Thanks!