LinkedIn Reborn

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes… 

- By Bill Nolan

LinkedIn has recently shown that it’s up for the challenge of being a top social media marketing network. Just when it was looking as if its best days were behind it, due to a lack of interaction within the site and technical issues that gave you a headache, LinkedIn has made some important upgrades recently. While a very important feature, such as #hashtags, still isn’t an option… LinkedIn resembles the little engine that could… chugging along, refusing to give up.

Some primary glitches still plaguing the network that I’ve seen are:

• Updates from companies that you follow not showing up in the newsfeed, or appearing days late
• The inability of the system to pull a picture when you post a link (although this has been somewhat remedied as I explain below)

Other than these issues, and the fact that people hand out endorsements like they are handing out candy (which raises questions about the validity of users profiles) LinkedIn continues to hold a top 5 social media spot. I believe that many people were beginning to question it’s effectiveness as a hiring tool (remember, it was created for posting your resume’ online) and is now moving in the direction of a Google+ or Facebook platform.

Ok, now for some of the changes that have been recently made:

- LinkedIn is opening its “publisher platform” which was exclusive, to all of its members. This blogging platform will let you share your business knowledge with relatively extensive posts with all of your followers. You may be saying thats not a big deal because there are other blogging platforms right? Well, understand that LinkedIn is huge and that the potential reach for your content blows away those smaller blogging platforms!

• Another new feature that was added is the ability to override the picture that your link pulls from its source. As I mentioned above, there is a glitch which results in no picture being pulled so this is a crucial update. It doesn’t even matter if they fix the other glitch because you can manually add any photo that you want to the post! This isn’t even an option on google+ yet, by the way. And people like their eye candy!
• One final issue that I’ve noticed improving lately is the sharing feature. Typically, when you would try to share a post, 50% of the time it wouldn’t or the system would only pull part of the post. Lately though, your post shares without a problem 75% of the time. Still frustrating, but just good enough to keep my fist out of the screen!

We have been waiting for some major upgrades and promotions for the business pages. And we are still waiting.

Is LinkedIn perfect? No, but none of the platforms are. However, the fact that they are improving their network, either by fixing glitches or rolling out new features, shows they are planning to stick around and that is a good reason for your company to maintain a presence on LinkedIn.