Pictured above: Jeremy Snell, ZEN founder

A recent report shows that the UK is trailing some of its European counterparts when it comes to using social media websites to network and grow their business.

The Chartered Institute of IT - charged with promoting wider social and economic progress through the use of IT in the UK - recently identified the UK as lagging behind in the use of LinkedIn, when following up on a report compiled by the leading provider of online global analytics, Nedstet. 

The report showed that the UK is currently behind Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Belgium when it comes to using the platform. The research also showed the US to be a more prolific user of LinkedIn's networking facilities.

With over 75 million users - 4 million of them UK based - LinkedIn is mainly used for professional networking and spans more than 200 countries and territories worldwide and its membership grows by a new member approximately every second.

The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. Mobile versions of the site are available, making it even easier to do business on the move.

LinkedIn also allows users to research companies, with which they may be interested in working with and provides information on their offices, often including a list of employees and their position.

President of Stafford Chamber of Commerce, Stuart Walton comments, "There's over 20,000 companies currently registered in Staffordshire and only 151 are featured on LinkedIn. The site is completely free of charge to use and I can't see why anyone wouldn't want to use it to help them grow their business".

Learning and development specialists, Zero Entropy Networks (ZEN) have been using LinkedIn for over four years and now hold training workshops to help companies get the most out of the free business networking tool. ZEN founder and director, Jeremy Snell adds, "I started using LinkedIn to enhance my professional profile and when I launched my own business it helped me surround myself with valuable contacts, some have since become clients. I had excellent feedback after the first course and now I'm about to run it again and help more business people get the best out of LinkedIn commercially."

Julie Draper, of Grindeys Solicitors attended ZEN's first LinkedIn workshop at the Moat House Hotel, Etruria last July and adds, "LinkedIn is a really useful tool and the ZEN training helped me promote our ongoing series of legal workshops with great success. In fact, we're looking to have ZEN carry out an in-house series of workshops for everyone at our firm".