How to optimise LinkedIn's new company pages

Despite its no-nonsense, all-business remit, LinkedIn isn't afraid of cutting a dash in the office and has updated its image in a number of ways recently.
Unlike the changes we’re seeing on some other social networks, LinkedIn’s have all been genuine improvements which put functionality and community first.
This week saw major changes to a feature that’s previously been rather frustrating for managers: Company pages.
LinkedIn has always concentrated on putting the individual first, so building a unified company presence on the site has had unique challenges in the past. Hopefully this makeover will give companies a chance to give their branding a more dynamic presence.
Having just updated Econsultancy’s LinkedIn page, I thought it would be good to run through the major changes and look at ways to optimise your business page on LinkedIn...

1. Banner images

The first change you’ll spot when you log in to your company page is a request to upload an image.
On closer examination this turns out to be a banner, much like Facebook’s timeline cover image. Here you’ll want something bold and eye-catching. If you aren’t a supermajor with an instantly recognizable logo, then consider adding information including a strapline to your banner.
Here’s one I made earlier for Econsultancy:

Images should be under 2MB in size, and will be cropped to fit a 646px X 220px space, so make sure you’ve got a rectangular banner to avoid chopping the bottom off your lovingly crafted logo. If you have large blocks of colour, a .PNG file should avoid any flattening.
As mentioned, this is a great chance to finally get your branding front and centre on LinkedIn. 

2. The news feed

In the past, company updates on LinkedIn tended to be a rather drab affair, with small images and grey text that was often difficult to read. We currently have a couple of thousand users following us on the network, but it’s always been rather difficult to engage in any meaningful way.
The news feed updates have been given a bright, airy makeover, with room for larger, more attractive images, and new targeting options, meaning we can now update specific groups of followers about events in their area, as well as contacting all of our followers at once with news and content from the blog:

In addition, about 24 hours after you’ve posted you’ll see some useful post metrics popping up, with clear figures for impressions, clicks and engagement:

This is useful as it means you can gauge the effectiveness of your page updates easily, separating them from the homogenous mass of traffic that comes to your site from LinkedIn and optimising accordingly.
Make sure you plan ahead so that content you post here ties in to your wider strategy. We match ours to our Daily Pulse newsletter, highlighting particular stories, events or training accordingly.
Based on current figures, these updates create far more interaction then advertising, so it’s worth spending time tweaking these posts for the best response.

3. Company profile

Scroll to the bottom of your recent updates and you’ll notice that your company profile also appears on the front page:

Make sure you have a quick run through and update any information here as required.
I know that this tends to be the kind of housekeeping task that gets pushed to the bottom of to do lists, but it’s now one of the first things visitors to the company page will see, so make sure it shows you in a good light.

4. Products, places, careers and more…

All of the information you have previously listed on your page are now far more visible, with sidebar links to your products and services, career information and more:

Make sure you’ve added location information to the sidebar on the right of the page, and if possible update your products and services list with your most popular items – again, they’ll all display on the homepage.
Finally, you can also add employee or recruitment information here.

What this means for page managers

You now have a genuine opportunity to engage with people following your page in a targeted and far more relevant way. You can offer specific advice, and use optimized content to attract new followers.
LinkedIn has always put an emphasis on the individual, and it’s important that page managers use this as an opportunity to engage on a personal level with followers whenever possible.
LinkedIn is still making tweaks but the platform seems to have been paying close attention to the mistakes of others, with new features that combine some of the best parts of Facebook and Twitter, but with a distinct business focus that could make this especially valuable for B2Bs who may have struggled to make headway on Facebook in the past.

Matt Owen is Social Media Manager at Econsultancy. You can follow him on Twitter , add him to your circles on Google Plus, or hook up on LinkedIn.

Link

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From Evernote:

Google Reader: cómo compartir Noticias en Linkedin Clipped from: sergio-rivas.com

Pantalla Resultado, clásica de Linkedin conde compartir en Grupos o a personas

EL Resultado : actualización de Linkedin

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Como encontrar en Linkedin los grupos mas numerosos(+500K)? - al hilo del anterior post-

Es ponerse a cacharrear y salen las cosas....asi que mi recomendacion; cacharrear.
Efectivamente hay grupos de +100.000 como decia en el anterior post, y de + 500.000 contactos (en ingles)
Fijar los parametros de la busqueda como os lo indico en la imagen (amarillo a la izquierda)...y salen.
Si quereis saber los españoles, pues eso, indicadlo en la busqueda

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Cómo saber en Linkedin el numero exacto de Contactos a partir de +500 ?

Seguramente te habrá ocurrido cuando accedes al link de "contactos" de una persona, aparece "+500". ¿pero cuantos tiene realmente?

Ten en cuenta que ese "+500" le aparecera al que tenga 501 o 18.000. Al seguir el link veremos su listado de contactos "paginado" y abajo las opciones de ver siguientes paginas. Será tan sencillo como contar el numero de paginas  y multiplicarlo por 25 que son los contactos que muestra por página.

 La calidad de nuestra actividad en las redes sociales aunque no se mide solo por las cantidades, sí que es un buen indicador. La importancia de este numero no es solo el numero de contactos directos que tenemos, sino las posibilidades de contacto "indirecto". Como se ve en mi ejemplo, con 6.300 contactos directos, indirectamente tengo visibilidad sobre + 16 Millones de personas.

¿y esto para que sirve?
Cuando hacemos una busqueda sobre Linkedin, solo se nos devuelven los resultados de los que estan en "nuestra red" (hasta el 3º grado).

¿Atajos?

En la version Premiun (de pago, muy recomendable para aquellos vinculados a la venta, Dueños, RRHH, buscadores de empleo,...) tenemos un añadido. Nos permite buscar contactos (y visualizar) aquellos que comparten grupos con nosotros aunque no esten en nuestra red (3º grado).

¿y?

Asi a priori, si ingresamos en un grupo de +100.000 personas (que los hay), repentinamente tenemos visibilidad y posibilidad de contacto sobre esas +100.000 personas ... y sobre todo de añadirle a nuestra red (uno de los requesitos que a cumplir para invitar a alguien a entrar en contacto puede ser estar en el mismo grupo)



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+500 ofertas Empleo en Linkedin (España)

Convencido! todavía se le saca poco partido a Linkedin y sobre todo a esta sección de Empleo, tanto por las empresas como por los candidatos

Las imágenes siguientes (basadas en los distintos filtros que nos permite Linkedin) nos pueden dar algunas lecturas sobre las ofertas

·          actualmente hay 511 ofertas en España,

·         la mitad metidas ayer mismo (cercanía con el arranque de septiembre)., sin ir más lejos, Accenture ayer metió 154 de múltiples perfiles

·         Son las grandes empresas (Accenture, Microsoft, Indra, Michael Page,…)las que más lo usan

·         Por funciones laborales, la tecnología se lleva la palma, seguido de consultoría y ventas

también podremos desglosarlo por sectores y ubicaciones

Moraleja: aprovechemos las cosas buenas de las redes sociales (que las hay) , que cosas para distraernos (malas??) y generarnos ruido (en muchas ocasiones "deseado") tienen de sobra

·        

Creado con Microsoft OneNote 2010
Un lugar para todas sus notas e información

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6 tips to help you best utilize LinkedIn for your job search

Job Seekers

LinkedIn is the best tool to help you land that dream job. Follow these tips to help you best utilize LinkedIn for your job search.

Ensure your profile is complete and up-to-date

Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to showcase your skills and talents and help the right people and opportunities find their way to you. As your professional representation online, you can set it to be discoverable through the millions of searches on leading search engines and on LinkedIn.
Be sure that your profile is up-to-date with your latest work information and you have a well-written summary that touches on your experience, interests, and where you’d like to go. Start updating your profile now.

Users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn!

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Your connections should represent your “real world” network

When your network represents those you know and trust, you can utilize them for recommendations, and ask for introductions into a job or opportunity that you are interested in.
Your first step is to Import your address book and add those trusted connections who are already on LinkedIn. To complete your network, invite the contacts that are not on LinkedIn to join

Use the address book importer to import your address book directly from web-based email clients such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, or use the Outlook address book importer.

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Search on LinkedIn Jobs

LinkedIn Jobs has thousands of job listings for each category. You can search using keywords, title, company, and location to find the perfect opportunity for you.

Leverage the elements on your profile to help make yourself stand out. Getting recommended and having a strong network builds your professional credibility and helps you get hired.

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Message Key Network Contacts

Use an “inside connection” to help get you access to company or job you are interested in. When you browse to a job listing on LinkedIn Jobs, you can see which of your connections are at that company. Leverage these connections to help you find the right contacts at the company you are interested in.
You can also use the Advanced Search to find a user by keywords or companies. You can directly contact users through inMails or request an introduction through one of your contacts if you have common connections.

Another great way to use LinkedIn is to research your recruiters or interviewers. You can learn more about their background to have an edge over the other candidates.

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Demonstrate your Expertise on LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers is one of the best places on the web to share business knowledge. You can ask and answer questions on specific subject matter.
By demonstrating your expertise on LinkedIn you earn recognition that helps you build your credibility.

The more points of expertise you gain, the higher you appear on lists of experts.

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Use the JobsInsider Toolbar.

Once installed, the JobsInsider toolbar integrates into your web browser, so when you are viewing a job listing on an external job site, you can automatically see your inside connections at that company.  Download the toolbar today.

These inside connections can help you through informational interviews or by introducing you directly to the hiring manager.

via http://www.linkedin.com/

 

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How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a better, faster mobile app

This morning, LinkedIn launched its gorgeously overhauled mobile app. We’ve already told you all about the new features, but for developers, the most exciting part is what’s going on under the hood.

The app is two to 10 times faster on the client side than its predecessor, and on the server side, it’s using a fraction of the resources, thanks to a switch from Ruby on Rails to Node.js, a server-side JavaScript development technology that’s barely a year old but already rapidly gaining traction.

Also, the development time was unusually fast.

“It was fast by all standards,”  LinkedIn’s mobile development lead Kiran Prasad told VentureBeat. “I’ve worked at startups and big companies like Yahoo, and yeah, it was fast.”

Part of the development speed was due to the fact that the team knew ahead of time exactly what needed to be built. “We really, soundly knew what we wanted to do at the beginning,” said Prasad. “To build a product when you have two years’ worth of data on user behavior makes it a lot faster.”

Using HTML5 for the mobile web & native apps

One part of the development speed was due to the way the team used HTML5 in the web app and reused a bunch of the same code in the native applications for iOS and Android.

“There’s this battle between HTML5 web apps and native apps. But we’ve interspersed HTML5 in the native app, where web-based content excels. The things that are hard to do in HTML5 are a scrolling infinite list, so we went native with that.”

The reuse of HTML5 code across all three applications (mobile web, iOS and Android) will speed up iterations of the app, too. “We can grow our feature set more quickly without having to do a whole new client build,” Prasad said.

In addition to HTML5, the team also used a handful of lesser-known free and open-source tools, such asBackbone and Underscore, in developing the apps.

“The way our mobile web app works is it’s all rendered on the browser side. The value of that is you send less data back and forth, so it’s much faster.”

Also, the app is insanely lightweight. “If you take our entire app and you combine all the framework pieces and zip it, it’s under 50K,” said Prasad.

“We don’t use the browser’s caching system, so once you’ve brought the app down, unless we’ve changed something in the app, the most you have to download is 1K. So especially for international users, it’ really important to not make a bunch of extra traffic.”

To speed up performance on the mobile web app, Prasad told us, “Connections are all stored locally, also for speed and so if you’re offline, you can still access them.”

How Node rules the roost — unless you’re crunching data

We quizzed Prasad about his team’s use of Node.js, the Joyent-sponsored, server-side Javascript technology that’s been all the rage among many startup-centric developers we know.

“On the server side, our entire mobile software stack is completely built in Node,” said Prasad. “We use a ton of technologies at LinkedIn, but for the mobile server piece, it’s entirely Node-based.

“One reason was scale. The second is, if you look at Node, the thing it’s best at doing is talking to other services. The mobile app has to talk to our platform API and database. We’re not doing massive data analytics. Node showed us huge performance gains compared to what we were using before, which was Ruby on Rails.”

The improvements the team saw were staggering. They went from running 15 servers with 15 instances (virtual servers) on each physical machine, to just four instances that can handle double the traffic. The capacity estimate is based on load testing the team has done.

Still, Prasad admits Node isn’t going to be the best tool for every job. “We have a recommendation engine that does a ton of data crunching; Node isn’t going to be the best for that,” he said.

But with a technology so relatively new (Node didn’t truly take off until mid-2010), is LinkedIn concerned about bring a somewhat untested technology to an already at-scale app?

“There’s definitely that concern,” said Prasad, who himself has been using Node since January 2010, before he worked at LinkedIn.

“We did an analysis of a number of platforms — Ruby, Node, Java, Scala. We’ll continue to use it and see how it does. That’s how we’ll make our technology choices. In our culture, we’re encouraged to try new technologies. No one’s going to shoot you in the head for trying something new.”

On the other hand, getting to play with a trendy new technology is like candy for most developers, and Prasad said the opportunity was definitely a hiring incentive. LinkedIn brought some V8 engineers on board, and the company’s Ruby on Rails developers converted

“If you look at the community of Node devs,” said Prasad, “there are a lot of transplants from the Rails world.”

To learn more about the bottlenecks and tech issues the team encountered while working with HTML5 and Node, stay tuned to the LinkedIn engineering blog for a series of technical posts.

via venturebeat.com

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Perdidos en las redes sociales: ¿dónde prefieres compartir?

via Territorio creativo

Linkedin para relaciones profesionales, Facebook para las personales, Twitter para poderlas mezclar si lo deseas y Google+ para empezar a probarlo todo y con todos, de nuevo. Y falta por ver la red social de Microsoft. Buffff… Responder a dónde se comparte o se consume más contenido, dónde hay más usuarios o quién tiene más seguidores y por qué parecen ser hoypreguntas viejas. El problema del futuro (más para las marcas y posiblemente no tan grande) es que nadie sabe realmente por dónde irá ese futuro, pese a todas las intuiciones que tengamos.

Quizá la solución del mañana para las personas sea mucho más sencilla de lo que pensamos. Quizá compartir nuestras ideas, fotos o links sea tan fácil como elegir el botón de la red social donde queramos ‘colocarlas’, en todos los archivos y herramientas o aplicaciones, al 100%. Para los que pretenden influir de forma general (marcas, organizaciones, líderes, etc.) la cosa se complica un poco. ¿Apostamos por todas las plataformas? ¿Deducimos o analizamos dónde puede ser más rentable? ¿Debemos crear contenido más específico para cada una de ellas?

Podemos observar pequeñas pinceladas para no estar tan perdidos en el futuro. Matices para poner entre comillas porque si algo hemos aprendido de estos últimos años es que aún somos bebés en redes sociales (aún nos preguntamos por qué compartimos online), que las plataformas sociales influyen en parte de nuestro comportamiento (nunca he hecho públicas tantas fotos mías) y que, pese a todo, seguimos adorando las relaciones personales estrechas o cercanas (estemos o no a miles de kilómetros). Vamos a ver esas pinceladas:

Nos gusta probar todo lo nuevo pero también perdemos rápidamente el interés inicial por las nuevas redes o herramientas, sobre todo si no representan una gran novedad. Ese será el reto de Google: darnos la posibilidad de hacer algo nuevo, sea o no sea más sencilla de usar que Facebook. Tras las primeras semanas, el índice de crecimiento de Google + descendió un poco (¿lógico?) y aún le queda por avanzar, como revelaba un estudio de Experian Hitwise a finales de julio. En una encuesta a casi 5.000 usuarios un 7,5% aseguraba haber eliminado su perfil en Facebook tras haber probado Google +. Tristán Elósegui se lo preguntaba a los propios seguidores. La última cifra de usuarios en Google + de la que se habla llega hasta los 25 millones. Instagram tiene 5 millones.

Queremos gestión personalizada y eficiente de nuestras relaciones. Es fundamental para la adopción y difusión de una red social, sea más fea o bonita. Es lo que muchos pedían a Facebook y lo que parece el acierto de Google + con sus círculos. Queremos ‘limpiar’ bien nuestra red, llegar a optimizar lo que queremos consumir y lo que queremos compartir. Eliminar el ruido inútil rápidamente y no tener que leer durante 15 minutos un ‘timeline’ de Twitter para encontrar un link interesante. Hace unos días hablaba de ello Nova Spivack (de Mashable) en su blog. Yo aún también me pierdo en mis propios círculos.

Buscamos siempre contenido de valor y los usuarios cada vez más demandan de las marcas eso mismo. Los posibles compradores en las redes sociales siguen pidiendo otro tipo de marketing, alejado de la publicidad tradicional. Se volvía a subrayar en un reciente informe de Custom Content Council y, bien, eso las empresas que deciden apostar en internet lo saben, en su mayoría. Sin embargo, cuando hablamos de contenidos para los ‘smartphones’ habréis tenido la sensación al bajaros una aplicación hecha por una marca y probar sus contenidos que estos tenían muy poco valor.

Se crea lo que parece más complejo y defrauda lo que parece más simple de ‘meter’ en una app de empresa que parecía ofrecernos mucho más. Conclusión: eliminar app y gran pérdida de oportunidad. En una encuesta de HiveFire a ejecutivos, la mayoría tenía claro que los contenidos en marketing también requieren planificación, estrategia y manos expertas que los lleven a cabo. ¿Volvemos a preguntarnos qué es lo difícil de crear?

Os pido que compartáis vuestras sensaciones personales a la hora de usar hoy las redes sociales, pero también que penséis en cómo creéis que las vais a usar o deberían usarlas las marcas en el futuro. De momento, en Social Media Marketing lo importante es saber reaccionar, planear y ejecutar. No exactamente en ese orden.

¿Aún os sentís cautivos de la plataforma social y sus reglas? ¿Cada vez se parecerán más unas a otras en un ejercicio de normalización de lo que funciona? ¿O cada red social tenderá hacia una especialización? Lo único que tengo claro es que seguirán mandando los usuarios. Y eso es bueno.

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Cómo deVorar noticias vinculadas con MI red profesional? mas Linkedin!

Recientemente Linkedin ha habilitado un area donde podremos ver las noticias que nuestra red de contactos (1º,2º nivel) recomienda o ha leido vinculado a twitter.

Ya de inicio en FrontPage te propone una serie de noticias y tematicas que podremos ir ampliando y elegiendo posteriormente las que mas nos puedan interersar

Cosas interesantes 

- ver quien  ha compartido determinada noticia y sus comentarios

- cuantos han leido esa noticia

- seguir tematicas o fuentes de noticias concretas (cnn, bloomberg,..)

- compartir noticias via Twitter, en las propias actualizaciones en Lkdn o a los grupos en los que estamos

- y lo mejor de todo, su busqueda y los criterios de segmentacion en base a la red: ubicacion,empresa, perfil (gerente, propietario, Directivo,..) etc

Chapo!

Como compartir una notica: en las actualziaciones, en Twitter, en grupos o a personas en Lkdn o fuera

QUien ha compartido esta noticia y sus comentarios, con opciones de segmentacion (empresa, Sector, Ubicacion)

Sin duda, creo que lo mas potente es la busqueda de noticiasy sus multiples (y muy utiles) criterios de segmentacion

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33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business

Interesante articulo sobre usos de Linkedin para la empresa (y muy facilmente aplicable!! No hay excusas!) animo!

Is your LinkedIn account mostly sitting idle? You can do so much more with it than simply look up contacts: find gigs, sell products, expand your networks, grow your business and gain free publicity.

Here are 33 ways to use LinkedIn more effectively.

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or Twitter stream into your profile.
3. Do market research and gain knowledge with Polls.
4. Share survey and poll results with your contacts.
5. Answer questions in Questions and Answers: show expertise without a hint of self-promotion.
6. Ask questions in Questions and Answers to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think.
7. Publish your LinkedIn URL on all your marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects learn more about you.
8. Grow your network by joining industry and alumni groups related to your business.
9. Update your status examples of recent work.
10. Link your status updates with your other social media accounts.
11. Combine your social media approach: when someone asks a question in Twitter, respond in detail on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
12. Use the search feature to find people by company, industry and city.
13. Start and manage a group or fan page for your product, brand or business.
14. Research your prospects before meeting or contacting them.
15. Share useful articles and resources that will be of interest to customers and prospects.
16. Don’t turn off your contacts: avoid hard-sell tactics.
17. Write honest and valuable recommendations for your contacts.
18. Request LinkedIn recommendation from happy customers willing to provide testimonials.
19. Post your presentations on your profile using a presentation application.
20. Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
21. Ask your first-level contacts for introductions to their first-level contacts.
22. Interact with LinkedIn on a regular basis to reach those who may not see you on other social media sites.
23. Set up to receive LinkedIn messages in your inbox so you can respond right away.
24. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere, with a summary of why it’s valuable to add to your credibility.
25. List your newsletter subscription information and archives.
26. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
27. Post discounts and package deals.
28. Import vCards and contacts from other applications to find more connections.
29. Export your contacts into other applications.
30. Buy a LinkedIn direct ad that only your target market will see.
31. Post job listings to find qualified talent.
32. Look for connections related to a job you want.
33. Find vendors and contractors through connections.

fuente http://gigaom.com/collaboration/33-ways-to-use-linkedin-for-business/

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