Three Simple LinkedIn Features You MUST Consider For Your Website

Make it easier for website visitors to promote and connect with your organisation.

LinkedIn have recently made available a new range of facilities that can be integrated with websites. The three features I recommend you implement are:

Member Profiles - Facilitates the display of Profile Summary Cards for selected LinkedIn members e.g. company staff. Your website visitors will also be able see how they're connected to the displayed personnel. Profile Summary Cards will not only encourage prospects to make initial contact with your organisation but will also help to grow stronger relationships with your existing clients.

Company Insider - This feature shows your website visitors which company employees are in their LinkedIn network. Once again, making it easier for people to build stronger ties with your organisation.

Share on LinkedIn - Provides a simple way for individuals to publish favourable comments. The button provided allows visitors to send a LinkedIn Status Update without leaving your website. The update automatically includes a link to your website and space for comments.

For website visitors to experience the personalised aspects of the above features, they will of course need to be logged-in to LinkedIn. However, it is no longer uncommon for businesspeople to remain continuously logged-in to key services, such as, Google and LinkedIn.

The features highlighted are free and relatively simple to implement. They provide an innovative way to grow relationships with both clients and prospects. What are you waiting for?

How do you implement these features?

To access these features go to the LinkedIn Developer Network. This sounds a bit daunting but don't worry, the features I've selected have been made as simple as possible to implement.

The above link will take you to a page showing the various LinkedIn website "plugins" that are available. Select the feature you require via the "Get it" button, enter some basic information, then click "Get Code". You will be provided with the HTML code required for your website.

If you're already doing your own basic website support, entering this HTML code should be plain sailing. Alternatively, it is a simple task for your website development company.

You will notice that there are some other "plugins" which are available from LinkedIn. Some of these may also be attractive for your website but just be aware that they require significant HTML expertise to implement.

Share Files The Easy Way

Just select the files you want to share via your browser.

Ge.tt is a recently launched free file sharing service which makes the whole process as simple as possible. Once you have selected the file you wish to share, Ge.tt provides a website address (URL) which you can pass on to people who may wish to download the selected file. 

The stand-out benefits of Ge.tt are:

• Simple drag-and-drop process to load files to the Ge.tt website.
• Immediate access to the service which uses your web browser only, no software to install.
• Supports almost any file type including documents, pictures and videos.
• No file size limitations (although some web browsers may only handle up to 2GB files).
• File downloads can be started immediately, even before your file is fully loaded on to the Ge.tt website.

Your files may be deleted from the Ge.tt website if they have not been accessed for over 30 days. If you want to get some larger items distributed quickly, however, this is a great way to do it.

Hint: If you're on the Ge.tt website and want to get back to the file sharing page, just click the the Ge.tt logo.

Dump That Email Footer

Many, many emails now include a footer imposing conditions, disclaimers and instructions related to the email.

By James Cridland

Do you ever read them? Should we be wary of their contents? Is the footer on your emails valid?

According to The Economist "Many disclaimers are, in effect, seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally, and thus are probably unenforceable". Click here to read their full article "Spare us the e-mail yada-yada".

So, should we discard email footers altogether? Has anybody come across a legal case reliant on the contents of an email footer? Your comments are welcome.

How to use LinkedIn to Boost Search Results for your Business

Having your business well positioned in Internet search results is a great way of improving sales opportunities. So when the chance arrives to easily improve your search results, grab it!

By MarioSundar

Just such an opportunity has arisen because Google are ramping up their use of information that is posted on social media websites. LinkedIn and Twitter are two of the most highly "ranked" social media sites and what's happening on these sites is going to increasingly influence search results. Interestingly, many feel that Facebook may be much less significant because they don't allow Google to view all of their data.

An example of the search power of social media websites is often seen when searching for a specific company. The personal LinkedIn profiles of employees at that company are often right up there alongside the company's own website.

Here are 5 STEPS* that will allow you to take advantage of the rising importance of social media websites:

1) Create a Twitter account at https://twitter.com/. It's pretty straight forward just enter your name and email address, then create a username and password.  

Don't worry! I'm not going to suggest you spend all day tweeting. But as you'll see in the next step, there is a way to use Twitter without any extra work at all.

2) Connect you LinkedIn account to your new Twitter account. On LinkedIn go to "Settings" then "Profile" then add your Twitter username under "Manage your Twitter settings". Once this is done your LinkedIn status updates will automatically go out on Twitter as well. Great web search exposure with no extra work!

3) Establish a Google Account at https://www.google.com/accounts/. This simply needs you to enter an email address and create a password.

4) Then complete your Google Profile at http://www.google.com/profiles/ . A short cut here is to cut and paste the "Summary" section from your LinkedIn profile to the "Introduction" section of your new Google profile.

5) Connect your Linkedin account and your Twitter account to your Google profile. You do this by inserting your "Public Profile Address" for each account into the "Links" section of your Google Profile. Public Profile Addresses are the actual website addresses for your profiles. They will look something like http://au.linkedin.com/in/NAME and http://twitter.com/USERNAME

* You may not even need to take all 5 of the steps if you already some of have the appropriate accounts established.

GOOGLE PROFILE

The above steps will do two things to improve search results for you and your business. Firstly, your status updates will get exposure on both the LinkedIn and Twitter websites. Secondly, Google will better understand your presence on social media and who are your business contacts. Scary? Well yes, slightly. But consider that Google are now giving preference to information associated with you, IF they know your connected to the person doing the search On that basis, it really does pay off if Google are aware who are your business contacts. Google do also commit to not sharing your private information with any other third party.

To further help your web search rankings remember to also do the following: continue to increase your LinkedIn connections; publish regular LinkedIn status updates; make sure all employees have LinkedIn profiles with customised weblinks to the company.

NO TIME? Implementing the above steps yourself really is worthwhile and will cost you nothing. However if you don't have the time or inclination, for $110 we'll carry out the above 5 step process for you. Just email me at richardc@business-connections.com.au to have this done.

Can you suggest other ways to improve search results using social media? Please comment below.