There are nearly 40 million users on the professional networking site Linkedin.com. When out and about, speaking, networking or helping people with social networking, the most common issue seems to be How to use linkedin for the specific intent the user is trying to achieve.

The reason I think you hear this so much about LinkedIn versus other social networking websites is probably because of the primary user base. FaceBook’s user base is primarily younger, having started within the college ranks as a communication platform. Linkedin; however, is a little different. LinkedIn’s primary market has been professional level 30+ year olds. The intent of LinkedIn has been to build a platform for professionals to network and refer others. This is a very different concept from building a communications platform, which is what most social networking site are built around.

Because LinkedIn is so different, and it’s primary user base is a little older than the recent graduate, whose use of social networking, instant messaging, texting, etc is almost second nature, professionals on the other hand have had to spend a little extra time to pickup and learn these tools. We weren’t brought up on them. It’s not how we naturally communicate. Our primary electronic communications tool has been email. Whereas social networking and sites like FaceBook are the email of the younger generations.

So, How to use LinkedIn is about LinkedIn training for the rest of use. There are lots of great LinkedIn trainers, and lots of LinkedIn Tutorials. On

How-to-use-linkedin

, we’ll aggregate some of the best videos, blog posts, questions and answers, and anything else we can come up with to show you how to use linkedin.