Last year I wrote a blog post entitled This Is Why LinkedIn Sucks, the title of which tells you everything you need to know about my sentiments at the time.

I don’t really do New Years’ Resolutions but lately I’ve decided to make an honest effort to take LinkedIn more seriously. I feel like I need to take some responsibility: if I don’t “get” a social media platform then it means that the fault probably lies more with me.

So with that in mind I’ve been tidying up my LinkedIn profile, posting things of interest, sharing the things of interest that my contacts have posted, and trying to find the levers to pull to make LinkedIn work.

And I’m starting to find that it’s a useful way to stay in touch with my far-flung professional contacts in the same way that Facebook works for my personal ones.

I still think the one-word endorsement concept is a poor substitute for a real, meaningful long-form endorsement by someone who can vouch for your work in a paragraph. But I’ve already made that point before so I won’t belabor it.

My advice, and not just relating to LinkedIn is this: when you encounter something new, try to find the upside. Oftentimes whether something can benefit you or not depends entirely on your outlook.

And if you want to connect, you know where to find me.