Amber Mac wrote a short article on Fast Company with the five LinkedIn tips you didn’ t know (see list here).

The good news?  If you’ve been reading this blog, my LinkedIn book, or my LinkedIn DVD, you did know about them!  Here they are (see her article for her thoughts on each):

1. Use “Signal” to discover relevant news and information. I kind of like Signal, but I think it just adds to the information overload issue most of us have. Having said that, I’ve found some cool information from Signal/News… so I won’t discount it.  But it’s not my go-to place for anything…
2. Export your connections. You already know about this – I’ve been preaching it for years and years
3. Create a resume. This is from a LinkedIn App, and could be useful, but if you write a Profile the way I like to see one, it will make for a poor resume.  Resumes and LI Profiles, imho, have different purposes, different audiences, and thus have different language.
4. Start and use groups. Yes, definitely!  But you already knew this, right?
5. Customize your URL. Definitely.  It is super easy, and valuable.  Check out a post from Walt Feigensen on customizing your URL here.  I talk about this in my DVD and book, of course, and think it’s low-hanging-fruit-must-do.

So there you go – five supposed secrets, but you already knew some

Up until this week I’ve had four Powerpoint presenations on my LinkedIn Profile, via the Slideshare Application.

NOTE: all of the links below take you to a LinkedIn Profile. To see what I’m talking about you have to click the button that says “View Full Profile.”

I’ve always felt four was too many, but I’ve just had too many other things to do to get it right.

I fixed that this week (can you tell I’m doing some LinkedIn Profile maintenance? ).

Why did I have four?

Simple: Because I tied/linked my LinkedIn Slideshare application TO my Jason Alba Slideshare account, and in that account I had uploaded four Powerpoints.

When I linked the two accounts, all four Powerpoints came right over.

The problem with that is that my Profile viewers had too many choices. I really only wanted them to go to ONE of my presentations… and presenting four was not good.  I didn’t take any “before” shots, so here are two other profiles that have the same issue:

Guy Kawasaki, famous for lots of things, has two presentations.  Which one would you go to?  The point is, you have to choose:

The point is, you HAVE TO choose.  Here’s a worse example, from Dev Khare, a venture investor in San Francisco.  How many choices do you choose from here?  Does the number of choices decrease the number of views of any presentation? (I’m guessing the answer is yes)

Contrast those options with what I just changed to, this week.  How many choices do you have here?

I think providing fewer choices to the viewer to go to where you want them to go to is better than showing a portfolio. You can easily send them to your slideshare account to see all of them if you want to… but from your LinkedIn Profile, point people to where you really want them to go to without adding too many choices, confusion or noise.

Thoughts?

LinkedIn Applications – which ones do you load, which ones do you ignore?

I’ve not been a big fan of the Amazon Reading List application, in general. I think people generally put… well, what they are reading.  This may not be on-brand, and essentially becomes NOISE on an already-too-busy LinkedIn Profile.

I recommend people load this if they can identify some books that support their personal brand… but for the most part that isn’t what I see.

Here’s an instance, however, of a Reading List that I LOVE… can you tell why?

Thanks Ross, for sharing my LinkedIn DVD with your network!

It’s about time.

A couple of days ago I saw an article on CNN titled Twitter and LinkedIn hook up.  Not much meat there, but some really funny stuff (like the title of the video: “Twitter CEO: We are not a fad” – seriously, that had to be quoted?  No, Twitter is not a fad.).

Anyway, I tested it yesterday but it didn’t work for me (when I did the “allow” thing, to allow LinkedIn to tap into Twitter, it looked like it worked but it didn’t).  I tried again today and it worked great!

In a nutshell, this allows my tweets to become my LinkedIn status (like I’ve been doing in Facebook forever)… but ONLY if I put the hashtag: #in.  In think this is brilliant.. once concern I had was I didn’t want to update my LinkedIn status as frequently as I tweeted, so thank you to whoever designed that and allowed me to control which tweets became the LI status (because “I’m eating a burrito is tweetable, but not really a good LinkedIn status :p).  Here’s the permission page for that, and how I left my permissions:

I put a Status Update on LinkedIn and checked Twitter about five seconds later… and it was there – success!  Here’s what I saw (I posted this on LinkedIn, and the image below is from my Twitter page):

Once I’m done with this blog post I’ll go to Twitter and tweet it, including the #in hashtag, and it should become my LinkedIn status….

Thanks LinkedIn, for finally implementing this

Oh yeah, if you want to implement this simply login to LinkedIn and on the home page, where you set your status, you’ll see a Twitter checkbox (see below) – check it and it will walk you through the very quick process.

Earlier this week I was doing a LinkedIn presentation to over 200 business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers. I showed a LinkedIn Profile and noted the best use of the Box.net Application I’ve seen on a Profile.

One of the participants emailed me after the presentation and asked why, when he went to the Profile, he couldn’t see the Box section, even though he was a first degree connection.

Does that ever happen to you – you go to someone’s LinkedIn Profile and you don’t see all that you want to see?

I asked him how he got to that Profile and indeed, he went “the wrong way.”  There shouldn’t be a “wrong way,” but there is.  Case in point:

If I’m LOGGED IN to LinkedIn and you send me your LinkedIn URL and I click on it, I’m taken to a page as if I were logged out.  I don’t see what I want to see (I see an abbreviated version of your entire Profile, and I don’t see any of the communication links I want to (send a message, recommend, etc.).

To see all of the stuff I want to see I have to go to LinkedIn.com, put your name in the search box, and then go to your Profile.

I think that is rotten – so here’s my request to LinkedIn – please notice if I’m already logged in – if I am, don’t take me to that lame abbreviated page – take me to the page I would go to if I went there through the search…

And the case of the missing information on a LinkedIn Profile is….. solved!

Here’s a great post with 19 daily tasks for various social media platforms… 5 for Twitter, 6 for Facebook, 5 for LinkedIn, and 4 for blogs.  Understand that Chris Brogan is a pioneer in this space, and doing this has been a part of his job descriptions over the years (afaik)… doing all of these regularly (even weekly) might be way to much for the average mortal.

Nonetheless, there are great suggestions you can implement.  I don’t necessarily disagree with any of them, although I’d suggest and alternative to his 15th point (the last one in LinkedIn) …. only put slideshows or books that are relevant to your branding message, not distracting at all.  Don’t need to add more noise to your LinkedIn Profile.

I have been looking for a long time for a LinkedIn Profile that used the Slideshare Application in a super-cool way, and before my Atlanta trip a couple of months ago I finally found one I liked.  Darren Ryan is a photographer, graphics and visual branding guy who has a great slideshow presentation that has made me rethink my presentations… instead of having all of mine get sucked in from my slideshare.net account, I’m thinking of having just one solely for LinkedIn.  Right now my favorite has been pushed down on my LinkedIn profile AND from the front page of my slideshare page

Anyway, here’s Darren’s presentation:

One thing to note here, Darren is into visual arts, so it’s easier for him to create something that is visually appealing, and without bullet points.  But even if you are in accounting you can come up with something that isn’t dull, boring… even horrific!

Got one?  Show me!

Jenna Papakalos shared an idea with me, and introduced me to the “Company Buzz” application on LinkedIn.  Basically, you can set up Company Buzz with any keywords and it will show you what is being said about the keywords from Twitter.  Interesting idea, and since I don’t use anything like this for Twitter for multiple phrases, somewhat useful.

Here’s how you set it up, according to Jenna:

1. Log into LinkedIn.
2. Click on Applications on the left hand side.
3. Click on the Company Buzz (powered by Twitter) on the Applications page.
4. Install the Company Buzz application.
5. Mark the check boxes Display on My Profile and Display on My Home Page, located on the right hand side.
6. Type in your Twitter ID (or any company name, topic, etc.) in the field on the left hand side and click the Add button.
7. Any tweets tagged with your Twitter ID will show up on LinkedIn.

You can choose to show the buzz on your Profile and/or your Home Page.  Think Google Alerts, but combing Twitter with LinkedIn.  I think the view is kind of clunky, just because of the sheer volume of tweets you might see, but it could be useful.  If you are wondering about buzz for just one search term, I recommend you go to search.twitter.com.

The interesting thing about this, and other Applications, is that it really does attempt to make LinkedIn more of a sticky application, where you go not just to “find and be found,” as I’ve said for so long, but to get all kinds of information.  Are people going to LinkedIn to …

• see company buzz, when they could do it through Google?
• watch slideshows, which they would get through slideshare.net?
• read blogs, which they could do through an RSS reader?
• etc.

The power of LinkedIn is that they have a community… and if you’ve been building your LinkedIn network with people you “know and trust,” this information might be very relevent to you.

About a year ago, as I was working on the I’m on Facebook — Now What??? book, I heard many younger people were using Facebook as their entire internet experience.  They could do anything they wanted from Facebook.  It had become their “operating system.”

Could … should… LinkedIn become your “operating system?”  I don’t see that happening for me, but I’m guessing some people really appreciate all of this new functionality.