LinkedIn May Boost Sales, But It Will Cost You

LinkedIn's new tools can help small firms generate new leads, but the $25-a-month service lacks the features of rival programs.
By Jonathan Blum ,

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn recently introduced new tools that aim to help small businesses manage customer relationships.

Last year,

Twitter

created a system of lists that allows users to contact specific followers, potentially reinventing how you relate to your customers and employees.

Facebook

announced new privacy policies for three tiers of Web relationships: friends, friends of friends and everybody else. Companies can now create private Facebook pages that target sales staff and encourage collaboration.

But the biggest news in client management is the new and improved

LinkedIn

. The Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking company rolled out an ambitious new interface late last year. The service continues to deploy many customer management features as part of its new pay tiers, which start at $25 per month.

I spent that last month giving the new LinkedIn a test ride.

What you get:

LinkedIn offers a tantalizing glimpse at new ways to manage customers.

While far from perfect, Linked deserves credit for offering an Web-based sales tool that's complex but easy to use. Simply go to the "profile organizer" link on the contacts page on your LinkedIn account. There, you can store profiles of potential contacts, update their information and keep a log of your communication. It's free to try for 30 days.

While Salesforce.com or NetSuite offer stronger features, there's no beating the lead potential of LinkedIn. Everybody on your list is at least a friend of a friend, which makes every name a potential client.

What you don't get:

Your return on investment for using LinkedIn is unclear.

As a zillion-year-old journalist with a Roledex of 4,000 contacts, I was impressed to be an introduction away from 5.16 million LinkedIn users. But am I actually making money from LinkedIn? Not yet. My month-long test hasn't generated a single referral.

LinkedIn's commitment to customer service is also questionable. Basic customer-service queries and formal press requests -- which usually elicit responses from big companies like

Google

(GOOG) - Get Report

-- were ignored by LinkedIn. The company seems to lack the warm bodies necessary to manage its own customers. And who wants that?

Bottom line:

The new customer-management tools on LinkedIn are cool. With reasonable effort, it can give you a sales-oriented social network. But the service isn't cheap at $300 a year and it lacks the features of Salesforce.com.

Even so, LinkedIn is worth a test drive.

--

Reported by Jonathan Blum in New York

.

Jonathan Blum is an independent technology writer and analyst living in Westchester, N.Y. He has written for The Associated Press and Popular Science and appeared on FoxNews and The WB.

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