I have been coaching high-quota Sales Professionals for many years and believe LinkedIn is one of the most important free sales tools available today.

Remember, LinkedIn is a professional tool for solving tasks.  It is not a cold calling list or directory of your target clients.  It IS a first place to check for current and future contacts and business, due to the high quality of the data when it is present. Since each profile is about an individual, automatic self-interest is generated for being well-represented on the web. 

With literally hundreds of emerging Social Media related communities populating the internet on a daily basis, you almost always find a handful of organizations attempting to forcefully tap into the traffic, reputation, and resources of those communities.

Now please don't misunderstand my true message in this blog post. I truly believe in the core benefits of social media branding and marketing, such as "viral" and "grassroots" marketing, but I do not agree with marketers that take the "Guerrilla" part of "Guerrilla Marekting" too far, and ultimately turn their campaigns into more of a blitzkrieg type of "warfare marketing" campaign.

For our Hiring Manager perspective, I welcome Leigh Anne Lanier. Leigh Anne is Director of Retail Services for Verizon Wireless. In addition to her accomplished 13-year career managing, hiring, and training dedicated, high achieving team members for Verizon and Alltel, she was honored as a 2008 “Movers and Shakers” recipient presented by the Triangle Business Journal and was the 2007 inaugural recipient of the “Alltel Leader of the Year” award.

Q: I am struggling with depression now that I’ve been laid off. When not looking for work, I spend a lot of time and have been open with my friends and family and they have been supportive, but I feel like I need more. Any suggestions?

A: Depression is an understandable and tough problem during a job search. Here are some things that I suggest to my unemployed clients that have proven helpful in getting them through the ups and downs of unemployment:

It is amazing what kind of conversations can get started to Twitter. If you pick a provocative subject to tweet about you get to see how many people pick up on what you are saying. This happened to me recently. I have been thinking about all the Federal Government has done to try to stimulate the economy. I have been amazed that there has been very little offered to small business. You may already be aware that small businesses employ America, not big business. To understand just how many small businesses employ Americans I visited the Census website and looked at the most recent results which were from 2004. I was shocked. There are 2,777,680 businesses in America that employ 1-4 employees! That is more than all the businesses employing 5 or more employees in the US! While the answer seems simple, it really isn't but if these small businesses were able to employee one more person they would be able to replace the 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 and then some.

I took this Tweet out to Twitter and this is what came of it.

Greg Hyer - Did you know more businesses in the US employ 1-4 people than the total of businesses that employ 5-500 people?

Things you should and shouldn’t do when you don’t like your boss (and vice versa).

Not getting along with your boss is always difficult, but during a down economy, the consequences can be devastating. Working under the fear of a job loss brings on stress, further impacting job performance when you need to be demonstrating your best efforts. In good economies, the option to leave and pursue other employment is a viable and healthy alternative. So, what can you do in bad market cycles? Take a deep breath, step back from your emotions, and consider the following:

1. Absolutely don’t quit without a firm offer in hand, no matter how bad it may seem now. The long-term effects of unemployment can be more harmful than a stressful work environment, to say nothing of the loss of income, health insurance, and possible family problems.

This article's content was gathered from a discussion on the Linking Raleigh, NC discussion board on LinkedIn.

Marc DeWalle made an interesting observation while attending the group's event on 11/3 to help job seekers improve their profile for a job search. Read it here: http://www.northcarolinastartups.com/2008/11/04/1740/ His observation was that there was no real interest shown from those attending to go out on their own to start their own business. What are your thoughts on starting your own business? What are your fears and can they be overcome? What kind of support do you need and do you know where to get it from?