NOTE: As of 31 January 2013 LinkedIn (unfortunately) no longer offers the Questions and Answers feature that is covered below.

Are you active on LinkedIn? Are you effectively using the platform to build your personal brand? As the biggest professional social media network, LinkedIn should not only be your static online resume, but a living, always changing professional image of your experience and knowledge.

Building a large contacts community and actively participating in group discussions can help you position yourself as an expert in your field. But did you know that you can also do so by making use of the LinkedIn Answers section?

With thousands of professionals there to give answers to questions (for free!), offer creative ideas and provide feedback, LinkedIn Answers is a very useful function.

By leveraging this powerful LinkedIn feature you can offer valuable advice and answers to people’s question and so build your reputation as an industry expert.

It can also help you with a job hunt or to find customers for your products and services.

Sounds good? Here's what you have to do:

As I’ve mentioned in my blog posts review for last year, it turns out that my first post about why I wanted to work in PR was the most viewed one for 2012. It is also a topic that people extensively search for online and so are being referred to my blog. It’s no surprise then that I’ve decided to write an edition of this blog post every year. Here’s 2013!

It’s been a whole year since I wrote 2012 edition and since then things have changed a lot. I now have gathered months of practical experience in PR and social media and I am very happy to say that I have definitely chosen the right career path and PR is the profession for me.

Over the past few months during my PR internship I dived into agency life and I have learned a lot about writing, media relations, client liaison, social media communications, meeting deadlines, teamwork and many more. I must admit, PR is certainly a stressful profession! I am not surprised that according to a new research PR Executive is one of the top 10 most stressful jobs in the world along with firefighter, pilot and military.

On the bright side though, PR is on the rise! As this brilliant article in Management Today highlights, because “the world has changed and communications has become more immediate, more important and varied” and “incredibly transparent” PR is being put at the centre of businesses: “In the modern world... the most important commodity for a business is trust, and gaining trust is about giving people what they want. Who knows what people want? PRs do.” (I’m glad I chose this career :-))

So, enough with the talking, here are the (2013) reasons why I want to work in PR:

Why Work in PR: The 8 Reasons:

With 2012 just behind us now it’s the perfect time to think about what happened in marketing last year and learn some valuable lessons to help us be more creative and clever with our PR and social media plans and campaigns in 2013. This is why I thought I should share with you what I think was the best communications campaign of 2012 and why.

One of the most successful brands when it comes to organisational PR activities is admittedly Red Bull. For years they’ve been coming up with adventurous and sometimes pretty extreme stunts and have managed to position themselves as a brand that ‘gives content wings’. They have never directly promoted the actual flavour of the energy drink, but have instead focused on what values it offers to consumers, namely to boost energy.

And they’ve certainly managed to do so with the brilliant Red Bull Stratos – an example of PR at its best.

Happy New Year!

An anonymous company executive once said: “Profit is like health. You need it, and the more the better. But it’s not why you exist.” I would agree with this quote 100%. A successful company is not defined by its profits. Especially today, with resources becoming more finite, companies need to reevaluate the core of their business purposes – is it simply just profits that matter, or is it finding a win-win solution that would correspond with the triple bottom line ‘people, planet, profit?’

In my opinion, Milton Friedman’s philosophy “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” no longer holds true because society increasingly demands corporate conscience.

Understanding how business and society are interlinked is now crucial; companies need to find win-win solutions for both as the Earth’s resources are becoming scarcer. It is not about reducing consumption, but about finding sustainable alternatives that benefit nature, our community and organisations.