Though there are many popular social networking sites out there, LinkedIn continues to be the leading social media platform for making social and business connections. It’s a great way for professionals and business owners to connect, engage, and interact with each other, and information shared within the site is usually very valuable and informative, unlike other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where posts tend to be more on the personal side.
Just recently, both Facebook and Google+ have rolled out some new features, and it seems LinkedIn isn’t planning on being left behind, updating and upgrading as well. It recently acquired IndexTank, which provides real-time hosted search technology, and plans to improve the internal search within LinkedIn in the months to come.
This is definitely cause for excitement among LinkedIn users. An excellent search feature can really help direct sellers and small entrepreneurs in their branding campaign, as they will be able to search for and react to information about their brand as well as those related to it. This could also help them in gaining valuable feedback on how other people see them, and find new connections and network with fellow entrepreneurs who can potentially become partners and colleagues.
Another new feature that LinkedIn has released is the ability of companies to post status updates on LinkedIn, which is somewhat similar to how Facebook company pages can post updates that will appear in people’s newsfeeds. This is an excellent addition to LinkedIn that people are excited about. Users can now get company updates right in their newsfeeds, so that they’re always updated with the current news and ongoing events of the companies they’re following.
What does this mean for direct sellers? Well, it’s definitely a great way for them to make sure that they’re always kept up to date with any happenings in their company. Since you’re also given the ability to like and comment on the update, this also helps with your branding campaign as it can foster recognition of your name as you participate in discussions and comment on posts.
You can engage with both your company and its entire network through these company updates. Don’t be a wallflower – be part of the conversation so you can gain new prospects and generate new leads. Maximize this new feature by building better relationships with your company and network.
LinkedIn has also recently acquired a whole slew of other services, and many are still speculating on how these will improve the social networking site for professionals and business owners. Their recent acquisitions include:
- Connected, a personal relationship contact manager. No plans yet on how this will be integrated with LinkedIn, but it will be interesting to see what the site comes up with in the coming months.
- Cardmunch, an iPhone app that can digitize business cards. Again, it’s still up for speculation how LinkedIn plans to use this on their site.
- ChoiceVendor, a provider of reviews and ratings of B2B service providers.
- mSpoke, a technology that recommends content, and which is actually already a LinkedIn Today feature on people’s homepages. The technology suggests new articles that may be of interest to the users.
Social networking sites are really pushing the limits on what they offer to the people, so users should definitely use these new additions and features to their advantage. For direct sellers, LinkedIn continues to be a great way to connect with other professionals and network with your peers, so it’s really important that you understand these new updates so you can utilize them in your branding campaign.
As a direct seller, you don’t just represent yourself - you’re also representing your company. So it’s important to make sure that your values are on par with the company you’re representing. Also, you should make sure that you’re always updated with the current news and events of your company so that you aren’t left behind. With this new feature of LinkedIn’s, you can easily subscribe to your company’s status updates so you don’t miss out on any important information it wants to deliver.
So to direct sellers: make sure you aren’t left behind by the additions and upgrades that the social networking sites you’re part of are releasing. Learn and understand them so you can utilize them in your branding campaign.
LinkedIn will surely be rolling out even more features in the nearby future, so watch out for them.