Well, you’d be wrong. Turns out LinkedIn, the social networking Web site for business, is where all the cool PR people are hanging out. Not only that, more and more of your media contacts are creating LinkedIn profiles as well—which means that you have a new way to build relationships with them.

LinkedIn—which reports 13 million registered users worldwide—allows users to create profiles that detail their professional backgrounds and personal interests. Users can then invite other people to become part of their list of connections. (Or they also can be invited to join someone else’s list.)

Patrick Rafter, principal of Rafter Communications in Boston, says he’s on LinkedIn about an hour every day. “Its principal value to PR pros is that it offers a free, Web-based way to research people you want to know more about,” says Rafter. “Being able to read the profiles of individual freelancers, writers, editors, analysts, pundits and conference organizers is enormously valuable. The more I know about someone before I pitch them, the more succinct and effective my pitch will be.”

Since media contacts are popping up on LinkedIn, there’s an opportunity to connect with them—as long as you follow the rules. Brian Conway, an account executive with screengrab, Weber Shandwick’s interactive practice, has nine media contacts in his list of connections (and two connections via his profile on Facebook, another social networking service).

“In four cases, the journalists requested to be linked to me,” rather than Conway initiating the request, he says. “I’m glad that it can be a two-way street.”

In most every case where he’s invited a LinkedIn journalist to become part of his group of connections, Conway has done some work with the person—or at least had some prior contact. “I’d be reluctant to approach someone without knowing anything about them,” says Conway. “That would be too much like you’re a crazed fan.”

David Chatham, account director at Capstrat, a strategic communications firm in Raleigh, N.C., also treads gingerly when extending a greeting to a journalist on LinkedIn. “I would stay away from a blind introduction,” he says, adding that he might ask a mutual acquaintance to handle the virtual meet-and-greet.

From a media relations standpoint, one of the most valuable features of LinkedIn is the ability to keep up on what your contacts are doing, Chatham says. “In the tech beat especially, there’s been so much turnover,” he explains. “There’s a lot of value in being able to connect with people over time,” and find out when they’ve gone on to a new gig.

Reading a LinkedIn profile for background research isn’t just a boon for media relations—it can impact every aspect of your PR work, even outside of LinkedIn. Steven Shimek, vice president of business development for Ruder Finn on the West Coast, says LinkedIn not only gives him the business background a contact’s, but also some valuable conversation points.

“I was a swimmer at UCLA,” Shimek explains. If he comes across a profile for a marketing executive at a potential client company, and that person expresses an interest in the sport, Shimek has a hook to make a conversational comment if he does a cold call about new business.

“It changes a cold call to a warm call,” he says. “People will say, how did you know that about me? And I’ll tell them that I found it on their LinkedIn profile. They’re flattered that you took the time to do the research.”

Be quick about answering media queries on LinkedIn

If you’ve ever rushed to answer a journalist’s query on Profnet and been rewarded with ink, you’ll appreciate the value of LinkedIn in connecting you to the media—provided you’re quick to the keyboard.

Andrew Graham, senior associate at New York strategic communications firm Greentarget, found this out when he answered a question posed by LinkedIn member Matt Sarrel, a technology analyst and a contributing editor at PC Magazine. (LinkedIn allows members to pose questions to their connections—bringing the query to a wider group of business experts than you could corral on your own.)

Sarrel was seeking case studies on how small and medium-sized businesses used technology—and at the time, Graham was working with a software company that had such a case study. Graham zipped the case study over to Sarrel, and the editor interviewed the client and his customer the next week for an upcoming issue of PC Magazine.

The icing on the cake: Sarrel is now one of Graham’s connections on LinkedIn, and the editor will no doubt give due consideration to Graham’s pitches in the future.

To make this kind of relationship-building work, says Graham, you need to move fast when a question pops up: “If I had not been among the first practitioners to respond with the content, the coverage would have been about a different vendor.”

If you’re a LinkedIn member, you can see new questions from the community by frequently logging into the site, and clicking on the “Answers” tab. If you’re tech-savvy and you’ve set up an RSS feed, you can get the questions delivered to your RSS reader as soon as they’re posted.