What I Learned After 10 Years on LinkedIn

The first time I signed onto LinkedIn was 10 years ago today. Happy anniversary to me!

In the weeks leading up to Sept. 14, 2007, I'd sent my oldest off to college and my youngest to first grade. I was ready to reboot my freelance writing business after a seven-year break. Hanging out with a group of mom friends, one overheard me talking about returning to work and said, "Oh, you need to get on LinkedIn."

So I did. The business network had hit 10 million users the previous spring but it felt like uncharted waters to me. I created a profile, started reconnecting with old work friends, and was off.

LinkedIn has grown a lot since then. Today, the service is closing in on 500 million users, has gone through umpteen updates, bought smaller services to round out what it offers, made a boatload of money selling software to recruiters, and last year, was acquired by Microsoft. But some things haven't changed. As far as social platforms go, it's still the nerd in the corner of the party talking about work. It's also still the first place people turn when they're job hunting, or returning to the workforce, just like I did in 2007.

Here are 10 things I learned using LinkedIn for 10 years:

1. New members are still joining.

And they're not all new college graduates looking for their first jobs. A close friend signed up last week as a first stop on her journey back to work after years of being a stay at home parent. Last month, another acquaintance asked to connect as he switches professions. A GE employer branding executive I interviewed for this story told me 50,000 employees there created LinkedIn profiles during a recent 12-month push to increase the number of workers on the platform, including many employees based outside the United States.

2. The old rules still apply.

If you're just getting started, you still need to fill out a profile with your skills and accomplishments. Use keywords related to what you do or want to do so your profile shows up in searches. If you haven't done paid work in a while, add volunteer work - an option I didn't have when I joined. For volunteer work, include goals you achieved or skills you mastered that employers would find attractive in a prospective job candidate. Go for a professional-looking photo, even if you're taking it on your web cam - employers expect it.

3. Connect to people you know.

Employee referrals are U.S. companies' biggest source of new hires. The more people in your network, the greater the chance someone might think of you for an opening they hear about at work. LinkedIn has made it super easy to network. The service serves up "People you may know" based on your previous work experience or contact list (if you choose to share it) and you can click on the "Connect" button that appears underneath their profile photos to send them an invitation. But I'm old school; I still follow advice I got early on to connect to people I know IRL, or to people who add a note explaining why getting virtually acquainted is a good idea.

4. Open networkers are still alive and well and send invitations to connect to anyone and everyone.

Not everybody plays by my rules when it comes to connecting. In the early days, these people called themselves LinkedIn Open Networkers, or LIONs for short. They're still around. Just today I got an invitation to connect from somebody who identifies themselves as a LION in their profile headline. People have varying reasons for doing this - they're selling something, they're friendly, they're expanding their network in advance of a job search, they read your profile & want to follow you because they're interested in what you have to say. Bottom line: you decide what work for you.

5. I miss Answers.

Before LinkedIn had a news feed and Groups, Answers was the platform's attempt to provide members with a place to chat amongst themselves - and it was fantastic. Users could compose a question, select the category it fell under - accounting, marketing, running a small business, etc. - post it and wait for replies to roll in. Kinda like Quora. Come to think of it, exactly like Quora. As a reporter, it was as goldmine. I routinely trolled Answers to keep tabs on topics I was writing about. I used it to post questions about freelancing. And I used Answers to post queries for stories I was researching (always identifying myself as a reporter) to find potential sources, often with great success. LinkedIn discontinued Answers four years ago, and I still miss it.

6. Groups is an okay substitute for Answers, but not all Groups are created equal.

Groups can be affiliated with events, schools, publications, companies. Some are created by somebody who wants a space to talk about a specific topic or industry. Early Groups I belonged to had open borders; moderators let anybody in who wanted in. But size became an problem. I dropped out of all the writing Groups I belonged to when the amount of non-professionals overwhelmed the value of the interactions that took place. I dipped a toe into Groups again recently by joined a few industry-specific groups with moderators who closely monitor membership. So far, so good - and it's become a way to meet and interact with people I might want to connect with in the future.

7. Not all LinkedIn improvements have been improvements.

Endorsements are a big fat zero, at least in my book. LinkedIn's current user interface - updated starting in January - is confusing and cluttered. ProFinder, a service that matches consumers with freelancers and other white-collar professionals, just celebrated its first birthday. LinkedIn is touting it as a success, with 70,000 freelancers working through the service. LinkedIn vets freelancers before adding them, and a concierge team reviews user requests and curates lists of potential matches, according to a company spokeswoman. That process could improve the odds that someone hiring a freelancer through ProFinder ends up with a good fit. But the overall number pales in comparison to the millions of freelancers on platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com, which rely on user ratings to identify members who provide high-quality work.

8. LinkedIn's side hustles are worth checking out.

Between 2010 and 2016, LinkedIn made approximately 18 acquisitions. One of the most notable was Lynda.com, the online education service LinkedIn bought for $1.5 billion in 2015. Lynda became the foundation for an updated LinkedIn Learning service unveiled about a year ago. My favorite LinkedIn add on, though, is SlideShare, the presentation platform that lets people create and share slide decks. I've used it for article research and created a few of my own, including one for an American Society of Journalists and Authors presentation on negotiating skills for writers I'm doing on Sept. 20.

9. It's turned into a great venue for publishing B2B content.

An acquaintance recently asked friends on Facebook if she would reach more readers posting some business-related news on LinkedIn or Medium. The overwhelming majority picked LinkedIn. They're right. By 2016, users were publishing 130,000 articles a month, according to the Content Marketing Institute. The number's probably even higher now. As the popularity of standalone blogs wanes, sharing updates on LinkedIn is just good business, especially if your business is selling to other businesses.

10. After 10 years, I don't remember all my 1,316 first-degree connections.

And I'm the one who said don't connect to people you don't know. Ha. Of course I remember friends and people I've worked with. But some LinkedIn contacts are sources I interviewed years ago, or people I connected with thinking they might help me in the future. Many early contacts have switched jobs or interests, making it harder to recall our original connection. But it's still there. Yesterday I interviewed someone who's been in my LinkedIn network so long neither of us could remember how we met. Still, the guy agreed to talk because I was a first-degree contact. For me, LinkedIn's biggest value has always been as a contact manager, fact-checking service, and searchable database of companies, trends, experts and potential sources. After all these years, it's nice to know that hasn't changed.