I’ve been a LinkedIn user since June 2003, but even as an active user I keep finding new ways to get things done on the site. Since we continue to roll out new features and functionality on a weekly basis, I guess it’s not that surprising. Still, it’s always fun when I find a new way to use LinkedIn.
Since everyone is getting ready for a great 2008, I thought this might be a good time to share one new trick I learned a few weeks ago: How to do mutual introductions on LinkedIn.
I am sure you know the scenario: you have two connections, A & B. A & B don’t know each other, but you know each would benefit from the introduction. The question is, how do you do it?
The answer: LinkedIn messages.
In November, LinkedIn introduced on-site messaging to the platform. This means that you can go to any profile page, click the “Send a message” button right next to the photo, and send a quick message to any of your direct connections. This type of one-to-one messaging is incredibly valuable, and has become one of the ways that I easily keep in touch with contacts when I need to communicate with them.
However, LinkedIn messaging also supports one-to-many messages, which means you can send a single message to up to 20 of your connections. Simply click the “include others on this message” link on the message window, and you’ll be taken to a full form where you can add other connections or email addresses to your message. A very speedy type-ahead feature automatically guesses the name that you are typing by looking at all of your connections.
So, now, when I want to make a mutual introduction, I just follow these steps:
Go to the profile of Person A
Click “Send a message”
Click the link “Include others on this message”
Type in the name of Person B
Write my message
As soon as I click send, both of my connections get a message in their LinkedIn inbox and through email with the message. As an added bonus, if I select the checkbox on the message form, both people can also get easy access to the other person’s email address. Person A & B can either respond to everyone using a LinkedIn message, just to me, or even reply through normal email.
As a shortcut, you can actually do this even more quickly by just clicking directly to your LinkedIn inbox on the site, and then clicking the menu item to “compose a message“.
When we launched messaging, we didn’t intend it to be used specifically for mutual introductions, but it’s a common enough request from our users that it’s great to see that you can now do it on the platform. We’ll be looking for ways to make this even easier and more effective in 2008.
Whether you’re out front stumping or behind the scenes running a political campaign, LinkedIn should be an effective part of your e-campaign strategy. LinkedIn can connect your candidate with voters, fundraisers, and volunteers.
It can communicate your campaign’s message to highly influential business professionals, targeting voters in specific geographic areas. And it can trigger conversations that mobilize grassroots support for any candidate.
1. Create a positive online brand.
Use the “Profile” sections to distinguish your candidate from the pack, to extend the communication lines of a government official, or to tout the successes of a campaign consultant.
Check out these examples: John Ensign (Junior Senator from Nevada), Barack Obama (US Senator, Presidential Candidate), David All (Media strategist). Claim the “name plate” web link like these profiles do, and move your profile to the top of a Google hit list.
2. Communicate effectively with key voters
Use LinkedIn’s “InMail” or “Invitation” functions to reach influential voters, including high-level executives and professional audiences. The average LinkedIn member has a household income of $109,000; 75% are 29 or older.
3. Identify voters and key contributors.
Use the “Advanced Search” function to find and target voters and potential contributors in specific geographic areas, at specific companies, or within specific industries.
4. Research business issues.
Use the “Answers” feature to get pertinent input from LinkedIn’s 16 million engaged business professionals on issues that matter to them—and to answer their questions.
5. Highlight endorsements.
Use the “Recommendations” feature on your candidate’s profile to post endorsements from key interest
and constituent groups.
6. Drive traffic to your site.
Use the “Websites” link on that profile to direct viewers to your candidate’s or campaign consultant’s website or blog.
7. Mobilize support.
Create a “Groups” page for your candidate or official to promote top issues and concerns directly to supporters.
8. Generate virtual word of mouth.
Create a digital bumper sticker on your candidate’s “Groups” page that supporters can add to their profiles.
9. Provide greater access to voters
Add a LinkedIn logo to a candidate’s home page that will allow voters to one click to get to your LinkedIn profile and connect with like minded voters.
10. Recruit staffers and volunteers.
Use the “Jobs & Hiring” feature to turn up the right people to work on your campaign.
This past week, saw a lot of press and blog attention showered on our most recent announcements; LinkedIn’s redesigned home page (featuring LinkedIn News) and LinkedIn’s Intelligent Application Platform. Given below are the highlights of that coverage (Top 5 from Press and Blog posts respectively):
LinkedIn said it wants to be a hub for business information.
“When we look forward to 2008, we see people and professionals more and more going beyond the connections and actually using LinkedIn to make themselves more productive on a daily basis,” said Adam Nash, senior product director, in a video on LinkedIn’s blog.
LinkedIn will open up its service on Monday to outside software developers, starting with
BusinessWeek magazine, to transform itself from an online contacts and referral database into an indispensable daily tool for business users.
Perhaps with that goal in mind, Mountain View, Calif.-based LinkedIn is rolling out a new look and new features today. LinkedIn will deliver customized news feeds based on the company and industry in which a user works and introduce applications to help professionals connect,
collaborate and share information, said Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang.
As a better destination, LinkedIn would experience higher levels of user engagement and more page views, which in turn would translate into greater advertising revenue.
It’s a sensible upgrade, building on LinkedInâs business focus. Over time, LinkedIn will look more like a personal professional portal than simply place to network with business associates.
LinkedIn’s new features now put it a step ahead of the competition. In sum, LinkedIn is trying to cement itself as the center of business networking by creating a set of features that make its large database of business relations more valuable.
This is something we’ve been really looking forward to. There’s so much potential here. The coolest thing LinkedIn announced was the Business Week Partnership
For a more in-depth chronology of blogosphere coverage, check out TechMeme’s thread on the day of the announcement.
Wondering what announcements we made earlier this week? Here’s a recap of all the announcements (with video interviews):
In this post, I’d like to focus on the salient features of LinkedIn News since a lot has already been said about it this past week. As you’re probably aware of, your LinkedIn Network is a valuable resource that enables you to draw on the collective wisdom of your colleagues, business partners and others in your professional world. LinkedIn Answers was the first step in fulfilling that goal and with LinkedIn News we’re taking it to the next level.
LinkedIn News starts by delivering news about key daily topics: your company, products, industry, and competitors, drawn from more than 10,000 publishers and blogs. Then, we use the wisdom of your “crowd” of colleagues to determine the handful of articles that are the most important to your business — the articles you need to read each day. LinkedIn News Beta is currently available to a select group of users, and will be expanded to all LinkedIn members in the new year.
Here are some of the basic elements of LinkedIn News you’ll notice:
1. Company News Snapshot:
The first thing that draws your attention when you log into LinkedIn is the minimalist LinkedIn News summary section that has the five most widely read articles in your company network. We regularly cycle through the Top 5 news articles in the following four categories:
* Most popular
* Latest about your company
* Latest about other companies in your space
* Latest about your industry
2. There’s more — a lot more News:
For those of you who’d like to see more than the five relevant, most widely read articles in your company network; no worries. We have hundreds of thousands of news articles and blog posts that you can check out as you click through. We even have them arranged by the most read every (a) day, (b) week or (c) past two weeks.
Our goal with LinkedIn News is to help over 17 million professionals (as of Dec 2007) fully utilize their network to increase their work productivity. LinkedIn News is designed to ensure that professionals see what they need to know each day to be more effective and clued in to what others in their networks are thinking about. It ensures that the most relevant and urgent news are top of mind for professionals as they start their work day.
Let me know if you’ve any feedback or suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment.
As you’ve learned from previous posts (here and here), today we’re announcing the beginning of Beta testing for a new LinkedIn homepage. Here I am in conversation with our community evangelist, Mario Sundar, describing what’s different in the redesigned homepage.
• A Cleaner Design – We’ve really tried to simplify and clean-up the page, making it easier to pick out the information you need.
• New Navigation Elements – We’re also experimenting with a new style of navigation. Instead of the tab system on the site today, we’ve implemented a set of drop-down menus for the key site functions (People, Jobs, and Answers) and an additional personal navigation area for managing your own Profile and Network.
We hope that this updated style makes it easier to navigate the site and serves to better highlight the key functionality of LinkedIn to all of our members. As we complete the Beta testing, we hope to bring this navigation to the rest of the site as well.
• Professional Dashboard – Right below the personal navigation area, is your new professional dashboard reflecting your key profile and network information.
We hope that this dashboard serves as an easy reminder of the current state of your LinkedIn profile and network – allowing you to easily manage your LinkedIn professional identity and your network contacts.
• New Customizable Application Modules – Last but not least, right below the advertisement in the right column is a new area for customizable application modules. This where you can install applications that leverage your LinkedIn network to deliver the opportunities you need.
There are 3 modules available right now (with many more to come soon):
o People Search – allows you to search for people in your network that can help you accomplish your professional goals
o Job Search – allows you to search for jobs that are of interest
o Answers – allows you to monitor the questions LinkedIn members are asking their networks and the responses they are getting.
When you first look at the page, you’ll note that we pre-installed some modules that we thought might be interesting. You can edit the searches that these modules conduct by clicking on the “edit” link next to the module’s title and can add additional modules via the “Add a Module” button at the bottom. You can also remove modules by clicking the “x” button in the module’s title and even drag-and-drop the modules in order to rearrange them.
Anyway, we hope you enjoy the changes. Feel free to let me know what you think via comments on this post.
Several months ago, we announced we are working on APIs and a platform strategy for software developers to integrate with LinkedIn and display their application within LinkedIn. With the OpenSocial announcements, you can now see a lot more about how you can write applications that run inside LinkedIn. So, if you are a developer, what opportunities do you now have?
The Opportunity
There is a compelling opportunity to build on the LinkedIn platform, whether you are trying to augment your application with LinkedIn features or deliver your application into the LinkedIn web site. LinkedIn is a business network of nearly 17 million professionals, growing faster than one million new members per month. And people use LinkedIn for one purpose: to improve the way they do business. Have a great business-focused application? Something that improves productivity? You won’t find a more receptive or larger professional audience than you will at LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn, you will get that productivity application in front of more people faster than any other way on the Internet.
One Platform, Two Uses
The LinkedIn Intelligent Application platform enables two things:
• Bring LinkedIn to your application. Using LinkedIn APIs and widgets, you will be able to integrate LinkedIn into your application by accessing information from a LinkedIn user’s network. Using this model, you can augment your web site with LinkedIn features, creating more utility on your site and the chance to stand out from the crowd.
• Bring your application to LinkedIn. You will be able to write professionally-oriented applications that run inside LinkedIn.com for maximum visibility in a purely business network. We have announced support for Google’s OpenSocial platform and will add other models in the future.
APIs and widgets bring LinkedIn to your application
Over the past months we have been talking to hundreds of partners about how they would like to integrate LinkedIn into their applications. It’s become clear that there is a very strong need to let LinkedIn users take their network with them as they use the web to be more productive. Most every task we do on the web could be augmented by including the help, filter, or aggregate knowledge or our professional network.
So, we will provide a set of REST APIs and widgets that will let you build applications that include your user’s LinkedIn network. For example, when someone comes to your application and authorizes your application to use their LinkedIn account, you’ll be able to use their profile, their network, other LinkedIn profiles, network update feeds, and many other aspects of their LinkedIn account to enrich your application with pure professional networking.
The Open Social platform brings your application to LinkedIn
You will be able to build and run applications inside LinkedIn. We have announced support for Google’s Open Social platform and will include other ways in the future as well. In this model, you’ll be able to create an application that uses your own UI and back end and is augmented with the LinkedIn APIs. These applications will display within the LinkedIn.com web site and will be aware of the current LinkedIn user and his/her network. You’ll be able to create applications that run on user’s home and profile pages and more in the future.
But to leverage this distribution engine, you have to have a business productivity application. We recognize that business people have social lives and there are places for that. LinkedIn will remain focused on improving the productivity of people doing business and we’ll work with people fitting that standard.
Contacting Us
We’ll be phasing all of this in over the coming months and to get involved with the Intelligent Application Platform either for APIs, widgets, or hosted applications.
If you want to develop an integration on your application or website, go here
If you want to develop an application that runs on LinkedIn, go here
Given below is a brief introduction from Adam Nash, Sr. Director of Product, who I was able to catch in our soon-to-move-in expanded work spaces.
Here’s what to look out for in the redesigned homepage:
1. Company News:
Start each work day by reading the most relevant news articles about
your company, your industry, and your competitors through a Company News feed ranked by relevance and popularity within your company network.
Also, the five most read news articles (or blog posts) show up on your homepage and you can click through to see more. You can also browse through the articles that have been read the most by your colleagues this past week or in the past 2 weeks thereby providing you a complete history of the hot business topics in your professional world.
In addition to having a new, much slicker look-and-feel, the homepage has also been redesigned to become your professional dashboard where you can view the most important information you need as a professional. For now, you can add any of the following three modules:
a. People b. Jobs c. Answers
This group of modules is also the online real estate where you’d add the applications created as part of the Intelligent Applications Platform (read more about it here). My personal favorite is the ability to add any one of the categories under LinkedIn Answers as a separate module. I’ve just added LinkedIn Answers from the Blogging category that I can check each day when I log into LinkedIn.
The other key part of your LinkedIn homepage is the network updates section, which we refined recently. Click here to read more about it and click here to watch Chris Richman, Product Manager, describe the feature in detail.
Given below is a brief introduction from Adam Nash, Sr. Director of Product, who I was able to catch in our soon-to-move-in expanded work spaces.
Here’s what to look out for in the redesigned homepage:
1. Company News:
Start each work day by reading the most relevant news articles about your company, your industry, and your competitors through a Company News feed ranked by relevance and popularity within your company network.
Also, the five most read news articles (or blog posts) show up on your homepage and you can click through to see more. You can also browse through the articles that have been read the most by your colleagues this past week or in the past 2 weeks thereby providing you a complete history of the hot business topics in your professional world.
In addition to having a new, much slicker look-and-feel, the homepage has also been redesigned to become your professional dashboard where you can view the most important information you need as a professional. For now, you can add any of the following three modules:
a. People
b. Jobs
c. Answers
This group of modules is also the online real estate where you’d add the applications created as part of the Intelligent Applications Platform (read more about it here). My personal favorite is the ability to add any one of the categories under LinkedIn Answers as a separate module. I’ve just added LinkedIn Answers from the Blogging category that I can check each day when I log into LinkedIn.
The other key part of your LinkedIn homepage is the network updates section, which we refined recently. Click here to read more about it and click here to watch Chris Richman, Product Manager, describe the feature in detail.
Recently Fox Sporting Network, filmed two of the LinkedIn teams (Design and IT) involved in a four-square face-off, in a program that chronicles the rise of four square as a game played increasingly at tech companies in the Silicon Valley.
So, if there are any other companies boasting of a four-square team, let us know and we can have another face-off! Many of you are probably aware of us giving away four-square balls as a giveaway during the Lunch 2.0 that we organized this past summer. Below are similar articles on LinkedIn, Fun, Lunch 2.0 and Four Square.
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