Research from business messaging app Guild reveals that professionals don’t view LinkedIn as a valuable networking tool, but rather use it for sales, marketing and recruitment.
Some 62% of users said they use less than one fifth of their contacts.The survey showed that users are realising the value in networking on LinkedIn comes from quality not quantity. This is due to many surveyors identifying that they’ve never met most of their connections, resulting in little to no business value.
Some 45% said LinkedIn is more tied to sales and marketing and more than half of the surveyors said they use LinkedIn for recruitment.
Ashley Friedlein, CEO and founder of Guild, said: “The use of LinkedIn has greatly changed since it launched nearly 17 years ago. In the early years there was a sense of membership and belonging and the quality was higher. Due to a natural tendency to accept new contacts to grow our networks, many users now find themselves with an experience that is too noisy. Senior people, in particular, get a lot of sales approaches and few would now choose to run high value groups or networks on LinkedIn.”
Guild surveyed 2,016 LinkedIn users in the UK during January. Guild is an app designed for businesses and professionals to communicate via messaging.
