LinkedIn: Powering Sustainability Professionals and Revolutionizing Volunteerism

LinkedIn is About to Revolutionize How We Volunteer "We all know LinkedIn to be in the business of connecting talent with opportunity.  Now, they are expanding their mission to include the non-profit sector. In the fall of last year, LinkedIn added a Volunteer Experience & Causes field to the LinkedIn Profile. Members can now share volunteer experiences, causes they care about and organizations they support with their professional networks. Through this initiative, LinkedIn is putting a stake in the ground that volunteerism can and should be a part of everyone's professional brand, and they are passionately trying to get the word out."  

With LinkedIn’s new initiative—LinkedIn for Good. it makes sense that this form of social media engagement would be an ideal platform to connect with sustainability professionals. How so? As the post, Is LinkedIn the Best Place to Find Sustainability Professionals? explains:
 

1. LinkedIn connects you to individuals, not companies.
Sustainability professionals move around at an astonishing pace, and so connecting with them personally is much more strategic than trying to get an "in" through a company's sustainability department (or a general email to their website or blog). You can easily look up people by name, company, or keyword (think: sustainability consultant, or renewable energy).
  2. LinkedIn allows you to refer people, or ask for referrals.
Instead of foisting yourself upon an unwitting person, LinkedIn allows you to harness the power of your network to get introduced via "a friend of a friend." Similarly, when someone contacts you, you can see whether you are already mutually connected (up to several degrees of separation). There are a lot of people calling themselves "sustainability consultants" so this ability to do an informal reference check can be invaluable.
  3. LinkedIn lets you continue the conversation in groups.
Once you're connected to people (or even if you aren't connected to them) you can join thousands of different groups--and literally dozens of sustainability-related groups that range from CSR to Green Packaging to Sustainability MBAs. Jump in and get involved -- post comments, suggest articles, link to Twitter, etc.

As mentioned in our  business sustainability programs aimed at social media success there are numerous LinkedIn groups to share information, engage, and connect with others leading in the business sustainability space. Three groups to consider include:

Strategic Sustainability Consulting provides organizations with the tools and expertise they need to actively manage their social and environmental impacts. We specialize in helping under-resourced organizations implement sustainable solutions usually reserved for large, multinational companies.

SustainAbility is a think tank and strategy consultancy working to inspire transformative business leadership on the sustainability agenda. Established in 1987, SustainAbility delivers illuminating foresight and actionable insight on sustainable development trends and issues

The International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) is a non-profit, member-driven association for professionals who are committed to making sustainability standard practice. Members share resources and best practices, and develop themselves professionally.

  If you are looking for more information on how to use LinkedIn to grow your sustainability practice of create social media success for your business, consider checking out our 8 -week, self-guided, online course called Social Media for Sustainability Professionals. It includes an entire section devoted to LinkedIn (with additional sections focused on websites, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Google+ and more!).    Home to one third of the earth's trees, the Taiga is the largest land-based biosphere and encircles the globe. Its immense oxygen production literally changes the atmosphere and refreshes the planet. It is this continuous renewal that has shaped Taiga Company's vision to drive similar change in the business world. Taiga Company seeks to be the "oxygen for your business".