Getting started with LinkedIn Answers

One of the key features of LinkedIn, is the ability to leverage the "wisdom of the professional crowd" by using a popular feature called LinkedIn Answers. Mike Lin, our senior UI designer, outlines the first five steps one should follow when using LinkedIn Answers for the first time:

1. Post your own question to a website or blog:
LinkedIn Answers now has a ’share this’ link which appears at the lower right hand corner under each question. Click on ‘Share This’ to e-mail the question to a friend, add it to del.icio.us or digg, orgrab a permalink to a publicly viewable URL.

2. View all your Questions & Answers:
From the homepage of LinkedIn Answers you can click on the ‘View all your questions & answers’ link in the My Q&A module (located in the upper left hand corner), or on the ‘My Q&A’ link (located in the global navigation panel).

3. Managing your Questions:
By clicking on your question within My Q&A (see above), you have a few options for managing your question depending on whether or not it’s open or closed.

For open questions, you can:
• Extend the closing date

• Forward this question to people who might be able to help answer it

• Close the Question

For closed questions, you can:
• Choose a different best answer

• Completely hide question

• Re-open this question to answers

4. Subscribe to categories via RSS:
Have a favorite category that you like to answer in? You can subscribe to RSS feeds via several blog aggregators (such as Bloglines) or copy the RSS link to subscribe to an aggregator that’s not listed.

Simply use the ‘Browse’ module in the left hand column to navigate to the category you’re interested in subscribing to, and you should see a link to that category’s feed.

5. Search Answers:
There’s a great depth of knowledge that’s already been collected within LinkedIn Answers. You can use the pull-down in the search box to search LinkedIn Answers from most pages on the site.

Besides working and blogging at LinkedIn, Mike also manages one of the few community blogs on a San Francisco neighborhood called Potrero Hill. Check out other Mike Lin posts on our LinkedIn blog, here and here.