LinkedIn astutely recognized the value of establishing partnerships with popular social and business networking sites and blogs some time ago. The announcement of the new partnership recently forged with Twitter demonstrates LinkedIn’s continued efforts to offer its users valuable application interoperability options that can further their professional persona development online.
The new partnership with Twitter allows you to Add Twitter to your LinkedIn profile. So now you can post (tweet) a comment, an announcement or question on Twitter from within LinkedIn.
Conversely, you can allow a tweet made on the Twitter site to be reflected in your Network Updates from within LinkedIn. If you want a tweet you made on Twitter to be reflected in your Network Updates within LinkedIn just add #in to the end of your post (see example below) and click update.
The integration of the two services provides you with more ways to develop your professional identity on the web. Biz Stone, co-founder of LinkedIn, in a video introduction to the new partnership, says the integration of Twitter “allows you to inject in LinkedIn a fresh ‘here’s what’s going on’” to let visitors know what you are currently involved with in your professional life.
Whether you’re tweeting within Twitter or LinkedIn, both tools give you the opportunity to communicate your news, activities, concerns, interests, actions, blog posts, publications, questions, newsletters, videos, photos, presentations or whatever you want to share to a larger, more attentive audience (because they opted to be there). According to the September 2009 US marketshare report on the Top 10 Social-Networking Websites & Forums issued by MarketingCharts (the sister publication to MarketingVox, MediaBuyerPlanner and Retailer Daily), Twitter ranks 5th overall in marketshare, representing over 130,000 users out of 10 million internet users sampled for September.
In October 2009 LinkedIn boasted an extensive network of 50 million professionals worldwide.
If you are new to either of these free services I suggest you visit www.Twitter.com and www.LinkedIn.com and open an account in each. If you’re not sure how to get started, talk to a marketing professional to help you strategize ways to effectively use the services to further your business or your personal professional persona online.
