Archive for January, 2009

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During 2008, LinkedIn established their mobile version of the rapidly growing social network.  As such, LinkedIn users can use a full version of the LinkedIn network via their mobile device.  Some of the key features and applications are:

Full Search Capabilities - The capability to perform full search functions of LinkedIn profiles including full bio and pictures. This on the go feature is extremely beneficial in recalling and connecting with business prospects prior to key meetings or conferences.

Research Function – While out of the office, the LinkedIn mobile user can review contact information and check on an individuals common contacts they have with other professionals.  This knowledge facilitates the referral process that can assist in making new business introductions more efficient and productive.

Invite Function – This real time introduction function allows for new business invitations at soon as the contact is made using just their email address. Now, instead of exchanging business cards with new contacts, you can now, at the time the meeting occurs, get connected.

Receive Data - With LinkedIn mobile, you can now receive regular Network updates about your connections while on the go

International Languages – LinkedIn mobile currently supports the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.

By now, you should be familiar with all of the social networking aspects that LinkedIn offers. LinkedIn has helped so many professionals get in touch with each other and forge new relationships. Many jobs have been found through the use of connections and members have been well placed in their respective company networks. LinkedIn remains to be one of the largest networks of professionals seeking to build their careers.

LinkedIn is, however, more than just connecting with others and building relationships. Here are 5 other ways that can help you as a member of LinkedIn.

Have your questions answered

Similar to Yahoo! and Google Answers, LinkedIn offers an area where members can type in questions that can be seen by all members of LinkedIn regardless of connections. Since LinkedIn is a network of professionals, you can expect to get better answers than other sites like forums.

Conduct reference checks

LinkedIn is a great source for looking up companies and individuals for reference purposes. All you need to do is fire up the Reference Check Tool and just search for a person or company to see some information about how long they worked there and other backgrounds. It is great for crosschecking the legitimacy of profiles since LinkedIn is officially networked to some top resource sites like BusinessWeek.

Obtain information on competitors

Knowing your competitors’ progress and connections can be advantageous in taking your team above them. By taking the time in getting information on individuals and their connections belonging to rival companies, you can highlight their main strengths and weaknesses and find ways to work around them.

Get indexed in search engines

Since LinkedIn has a high Google page rank, you can take advantage of this by setting your profile on public and filling it with as much information as possible. What happens is all that information is indexed by Google and other bots while taking in keywords in the process. This gives you an opportunity for non-registered LinkedIn users to see your profile just by doing simple searches that may match your profile’s description. It also makes it easier for people to find more information about you and don’t know where to look. You can even use this to advertise other websites and gain exposure through LinkedIn.

Find more information about people you’ll meet up with

If you are going to have a huge meeting with a few top executives of a company, try to learn more about them by searching in LinkedIn. Even if their profiles may not be listed, you can do other checks such as searching for the company and see any familiar names there. It is important to know the backgrounds of the people you are about to do business with so you can make better decisions and judgment.

These 5 ways are sure to help and encourage you to use LinkedIn more for any business related tasks. Use these methods to your advantage so you can have the edge over competitors and other people in your network. You can really stand out if you utilize the LinkedIn network using your own creative ways.

LinkedIn has always been about linking to people that you trust. But you may have a website or personal blog of your own which is open for people who may not understand what LinkedIn is. By now, your LinkedIn profile should be filled with stuff that you want outsiders to see so you can find more trusting people who may be interested in your services. Snapping on a link telling them to join LinkedIn doesn’t work all the time, but now through the use of widgets, you can bring content that’s in your LinkedIn profile into your webpage, blog, or other social networking profile page.

Official LinkedIn Widgets

These LinkedIn widgets are made by the site developers themselves. These widgets are exclusively for LinkedIn members only. Those who aren’t members of LinkedIn won’t really find any use of these widgets. However, with over 30 million members registered in LinkedIn, there will always be a high chance that some of your website visitors are LinkedIn members, so consider using these widgets wherever possible.

Company Insider

If you are planning to advertise your company that has people with LinkedIn profiles in them, add the company insider widget so you can let your users discover if they are connected to any of the people in that company. This makes it convenient in letting people make inquiries to the people that they trust. Place it around job sites and other blogs so that people can see the ones they know that are hiring.

Share on LinkedIn

If you have a website or blog that needs some extra exposure, add a Share on LinkedIn widget. You never know, you may have visitors who are actually members of LinkedIn. They can just click that link and then it will be instantly shared in their network. This will not only bring you additional quality traffic, but it may bring about new possibilities for people to connect with you via LinkedIn.

You can see these widgets at: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=developers_widgets

Unofficial LinkedIn Widgets

Some 3rd party developers decided to help bring LinkedIn profiles to the public so webmasters can show off their professional information to those who may never heard of LinkedIn. This is a great way to invite people to LinkedIn while at the same time, discover useful information about yourself.

LinkedInABox – http://www.linkedinabox.com/

LinkedInABox is a very simple and highly useful widget that should be placed in any company page. If you are hoping to bring people into the company you work for or want to advertise something to a wide audience, using this widget can save you much time from building a small profile snippet. With this widget, you can fetch all of the data from your already complete profile and have it presented in a catchy manner.

LinkedIn Badge – http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/linked-in-badge

If you don’t have much space in your page, you can always put a LinkedIn Badge instead using this widget. Unlike a standard image, you can customize the size and easily change some settings like the name and URL. Since you can make your LinkedIn profile available to the public, you can use this as a space saving alternative to LinkedInABox.

Try out a few widgets and let your LinkedIn profile reach out to a wider audience.

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If you’ve installed the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar you can easily create contact records by highlighting the contact information you want to collect and then clicking “Grab.”  You can add, change, or delete information after the record has been added.  To save the new contact to your Outlook Address Book by clicking “Save and Close.”

The LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar Dashboard is designed to keep in touch with your important contacts.  Consider some of these benefits:

• Profile updates.  You’ll automatically be notified when anyone in your network updates theirs.
• Keep up-to-date.  The Toolbar will also make sure that your Outlook Address Book includes the latest contact information – a great timesaver.
• Email magic.  Sending a lot of emails?  The Dashboard will track your activity and then make recommendations of other folks to invite to your network based on email addresses to which you’re sending correspondence.

Reminder Service:  Are there contacts you haven’t connected with in a while?  Not to worry.  With the Dashboard reminder feature will let you know.

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Recently, LinkedIn added some new features which will help to streamline your online experience:

1. The Build Network Wizard, formerly named the Build Contacts Wizard now allows you to invite your contacts at the end of the process.
2. You can now automatically turn logging off and on and you will also receive a prompt from the tool as to whether you want to send “crash logs” to LinkedIn.  It might be a good idea so they can get the fixes into the system as soon as possible.

The LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar offers a variety of features and functions designed to make connection with others fast and easy.  And, what’s even better is that the Toolbar is absolutely free.  So if you use Outlook, consider installing this time-saving, network-connecting tool!