MMLGF 7: LinkedIn Groups activity included on Linkedin Search

In previous posts on this MMLGF Series I talked about using the information you and your LinkedIn groups produce by adding it to your public profile. That way you can do marketing about yourself (or maybe about your company services as well, or even your objectives whatever those would be) even better than now.

 

This issue is very important because you can show yourself better and actively but I guess there is somewhere your LinkedIn groups’ activity should be included: LinkedIn Search.

 

How your LinkedIn groups’ activity can be used in Search? I imagine lot of ways but I guess there are some places where/when that feature should be included:

• You answer a question and your answer was classified as a good one, then some related words (maybe using some keywords included in the question) can be added to your keywords so you can be found when someone looks for that precise keyword.
• Like LinkedIn Recommendations we can think about having some “expertise” from your activity / number of answers / questions so you can make a gift to someone that you know or consider he/she has great expertise. It’s like a recommendation that impact directly into your chance to be found when someone makes a search.

 

For sure those ideas would bring more participation and traffic to LinkedIn because what you do is used by LinkedIn for you directly and indirectly. With directly, I mean what you do will let you do direct marketing about your needs and I consider indirect usage when LinkedIn takes some keywords on your good answers on a topic at a LinkedIn Group and add these as a way to find you.

 

This is post #7 of the (M)aking the (M)ost of (L)inkedIn (G)roups (F)unctionality (MMLGF) Series.

MMLGF 5: Your LinkedIn Groups at your LinkedIn home page

Showing LinkedIn Groups’ activity into your public profile is with no doubts something really useful as a way of marketing yourself. But doing marketing of yourself must be followed by some tool that let you manage, work and monitor the stuff you are trying to promote.

Accessing LinkedIn Groups you are member of into your home page (not your public profile) would make your home quite more useful and dynamic than now. For example, we can think about adding it:

· Specific group’s information, like details, questions, member list, etc. for each group

• · Last questions asked in each or all groups.
• · Links to questions you asked or answered to get direct access to them.
• · List of group members who are more involved with it.

Accessing your LinkedIn groups from your LinkedIn home, getting some information about them and sharing some of your LinkedIn groups’ activity at your public profile should add great value not only to you but also to LinkedIn. You are adding value because you are promoting yourself better, and also having direct access to what you are interested about. LinkedIn is also adding value because offering a better access to your groups let you interact, participate and promote yourself better, and that cause more traffic, more information and more value to LinkedIn website.

 

This is post #5 of the (M)aking the (M)ost of (L)inkedIn (G)roups (F)unctionality (MMLGF) Series.

MMLGF 4: Showing your LinkedIn Groups activity at your public profile

LinkedIn public profile let users to show who they are, what they do and what are their interests and history. LinkedIn Groups are groups to collect and contact people with similar interests. So, if LinkedIn groups new version coming up in late September or my idea of LinkedIn groups I’m posting on this MMLGF series include some functionality like a Question and Answer section, why not to include each user activity into their public profile?

 

That way asking and answering into LinkedIn groups will not only help you and others in specifics topics you are talking about but also will let you promote the activity you have on each and every LinkedIn groups you are subscribed to. So, what are the benefits? Well, I think if you choose to publish that information into your public profile is because you have something positive about you and what you are doing to show there so anyone looking for you can see it.

 

I mean, the current version of LinkedIn groups just let you put you have some interests on something, but if you do something interesting into those LinkedIn groups you are subscribed to, why not to show you are doing something there? I guess doing that (including LinkedIn groups’ activity) will let you show more information about what LinkedIn public profile is about: show who you are, what are your interests and most important: what do you do.

 

I don’t know if this idea is good but with this, LinkedIn groups’ participation will help everyone into promote their own activity and, consequently, add quite more value to your LinkedIn public profile.

This is post #4 of the (M)aking the (M)ost of (L)inkedIn (G)roups (F)unctionality (MMLGF) Series.

MMLGF 1: Features that LinkedIn Groups must have

To start this series of blog post about “Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups Functionality” or just MMLGF I choose an easy topic to talk about: desired (or needed) features.

Nowadays LinkedIn Groups just have a name that is written into each and every member’s profile so anyone looking at your public profile can see you have “something” in common with the LinkedIn Group’s intentions you are member of.

What if LinkedIn changes that and give us, users, the chance not only to show we have that relation with the LinkedIn groups we are members of, but also to participate, collaborate and promote ourselves there? And also, what if we think about in adding value to ourselves when participate / collaborate / promote / whatever in those group? That way the more you are on them the more you get from there.

Going back to the features, I think it would be great if LinkedIn Groups offers us:

• An easy URL to access the group (for example: http://groups.linkedin.com/groupName/ )
• A group home web page or small website with some important information for group members and non-members.
• A forum like the Linkedin Q&A section or even better: a Forum where people can talk, ask, answer and communicate in a free way.
• The chance to upload/download some files (documents, pictures or whatever) about the group or any specific topic.
• See and Search members
• Exporting groups information (like feeds in nowadays Q&A LinkedIn section) so users can read that information from their RSS readers, mobile phones or the way they want to.

With these features and many others you can imagine, comment or think about I guess LinkedIn will get lot of activity back to its website while now goes to Yahoo, Google or Facebook groups.

On the next MMLGF post I will talk about “What we need to get and find on LinkedIn groups”. Hope you go on reading me and please just leave any comment you want so I know what you are expecting from this MMLGF series.

This is post #1 of the (M)aking the (M)ost of (L)inkedIn (G)roups (F)unctionality (MMLGF) Series.

Great Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeover at Linkedintelligence

Some days ago Scott Allen wrote a post in his blog (Linkedintellingence) announcing he will start a Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeover and telling everybody interested to sign up. Well, due just to luck I was the first to sign up and today I saw he started yesterday doing those Profile Makeover…

Big (or more than that) was my surprise when I see my name in the post title: “Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeover – Fernando Arámburu”.

I take a deep look at what was happening and I saw he did a great (really great) look at my profile and as a result he wrote some issues about how I can improve it. Really amazing!!!  I mean, usually if you want to improve your profile or resume, you have to pay for that, and I get that just for free. But that wasn’t all because first, I get also some other comment adding more value to this profile makeover and second he will be doing more linkedin profiles makeover so everyone will learn not only about mistakes or “bad” things others do but also, and quite more important, about how to fix them.

I don’t know how busy he is but if you are still on time just sign up to Scott Allen’s Extreme Linkedin Profile Makeover by putting some details about yourself like name, surname and linkedin profile url into his original post about this Profile Makeover. If you are not still convinced, just take a look at what he did with my profile and after that I guess you will be wanting to sign up.

Imagine: Making the Most on Your LinkedIn Profile

Scott Allen wrote in his blog a post about some changes LinkedIn made about websites on LinkedIn profiles. He explained there with lot of details about this feature and how this feature can improve the look of our profile.

That post, make me remember that some time ago, while I was having a chat with one of my connections I asked him something like: “what if we can make links and put some pictures or just edit HTML into our LinkedIn profile?”

Can you imagine it? I guess that little change on our “edit profile” function can elevate our own profile quite a lot. Why? Because we will be writing on our profile just what we want. We would be putting images, links, links to brochures or projects in which you worked, editing text and marking as bold some text, putting titles or just whatever we want. So, we wil be having a chance to put on linkedin profile our business profile, and a cleaner way to sell, offer or express what we really want to.

 

I think… that will be “Making the most of your LinkedIn profile”