LinkedIn Hits a Home Run With Great New Features in 2011

 2011 was quite a year for LinkedIn. In March, they surpassed 100 million members and are now growing at a rate of one million users each and every week. In May, they were the first social media site to go public, starting off at $45/share and going as high as $122 before settling in around $90. As of this writing, shares are trading in the 70's. Congrats to Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, and the rest of the LinkedIn team for one whale of a year.

You may be saying, Big deal. Good for them, but what does that have to do with me? I am just one of 135+ million members. Well, it is a big deal because both of these bits of information should keep them in the game longer and allow them to continue to grow and improve the platform. The longevity of LinkedIn is critical to all of us who are investing our time and effort and growing our networks on the site.

With those thoughts in mind, I decided I would be like the thousands of experts in the world who put together a year-end "best of" list for their area of expertise. Not only am I going to share the best new LinkedIn features of 2011, but in typical Wayne fashion I will also give you my thoughts on how you can best use them to grow your business along.

So, ladies and gentlemen (drum roll, please), here are the\ best new features released by LinkedIn for 2011.

Company Status Updates

This feature is just one of many great enhancements to the functionality of the company page (previously called the company profile). If you haven't begun formulating a strategy for using this feature, you are missing the boat - what could be a really big boat.

It is similar to the individual Status Updates, which I consider to be the number one way to stay in front of your connections with great information. However, instead of communicating with your connections, the company Status Update enables companies to communicate with followers.

Strategy Tip:

Add a company page, decide who is going to be your voice for your company Status Updates, encourage followers, and share your best stuff with those followers. If you don't think people who follow you for the sake of listening to your knowledge and expertise will ultimately consider you and your company in their buying decision as well as recommend you to their friends, you just don't get how business in the new online world works. They do and they will.

Alumni

This feature is a major enhancement to what used to be called Classmates, and it is very popular because people enjoy doing business with and want to help people who attended the same school they attended.

With the Alumni feature, you can now more easily search by all schools you have attended and years attended. However, searching is not limited to the years you attended the school. You can discover where alumni work, what they do, where they live, and other miscellaneous profile information.

Strategy Tip:

List all schools you have attended on your profile, including high school and any industry specialty schools, access the Alumni feature, and then get out your old college sweatshirt and hat and start networking.

Skills

This feature was added to make it easier to find individuals who have specific skills. LinkedIn added a Skills page to the overall site and now allows you to add a Skills section to your profile, where you can list up to 50 specific skills you possess.

I haven't found the Skills page itself to be particularly helpful as of yet. However, including Skills in your profile will help you in the LinkedIn search rankings for the keywords you include and will highlight those skills on your profile. Both of these are great reasons to do this.

Strategy Tip:

Add the Skills section to your profile, and include words that describe the skills you have amassed over the years as well as the words that are most critical to you on a going-forward basis. These words are not just the general functions you do, like finance, but specific details, such as budgeting, cash flow analysis, tax preparation, or even specific software you know how to use. Keep in mind you are trying to come up with the words someone will use when searching the LinkedIn database to find a person just like you.

In addition, check out the Skills section on LinkedIn and do a couple skills searches to see if you can gather any information that might lead you to other skills you may want to consider including.