Where LinkedIn Works for Me

I've been a long time user of LinkedIn, but only recently have started getting the benefits I always expected. I'm sure that many of you have read Guy's article Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn. His suggestions are all good suggestions, but what I've been finding is that I end up using linked in primarily for two kinds of things:

1. Keeping track of who I know (and keeping their emails updated), and
2. Finding people to discuss specific topics

I'm sure there are better ways to keep track of folks, but when I was planning to do a get together, my list of LinkedIn contacts was a great place to start. Sometimes, I'll use LinkedIn to contact my network, but mostly I still just go to their profile and email them.

When I was looking for speakers for an event last fall on Web 2.0, LinkedIn was a great way to reach out. When I recently was looking to find people who had experience with using social networks to reach people for what might be considered guerilla marketing efforts, again LinkedIn worked great.