Ten LinkedIn Resources

By Joel Elad from LinkedIn For Dummies, 2nd Edition

As you continue building your LinkedIn presence, you might want to take advantage of additional websites that keep you up to date on new features and possibilities on LinkedIn, as well as explore common and uncommon uses for the Web site and make you think about how to properly take advantage and enjoy some benefits from LinkedIn and social networking in general. Here are some ideas:

The official LinkedIn blog: Mario Sundar, previously a LinkedIn “evangelist” who promoted the company on his own blog, was hired by LinkedIn to run its official company blog. Every week, Mario and various LinkedIn employees put up fun, informative, and timely blog posts about new functions or changes to the site as well as success stories, case studies, and practical information to make your LinkedIn experience that much more rewarding.
LinkedIn Labs: As LinkedIn employees think up new functions and possibilities to add to the LinkedIn website, there is the need to test those ideas, see whether the community finds them as valuable or relevant as first conceived, and understand how the user community would implement these new functions. LinkedIn Labs is the special site that hosts these new ideas.
LinkedIn Applications Directory: LinkedIn launched an impressive suite of applications designed to enhance your profile, allow you to share information and collaborate more efficiently with your network, and help you make your career more productive. These applications are added to your LinkedIn profile home page and deliver specific functionality.

For example, you can add the SlideShare application and offer PowerPoint presentations embedded in your LinkedIn profile. You enable the controls to see who has access to what information. Also, new applications are being added, such as LinkedIn Polls, which allow you to create and administer polls to your LinkedIn network or the community at large.
MyLinkWiki: Here users comment on and update the width and breadth of LinkedIn’s functionality and usefulness. As you become more familiar with LinkedIn, you can contribute to this growing community as well.
RSS Feeds with Google Reader: Many active LinkedIn users maintain an RSS feed for their profile so their friends and connections can get a list of the changes and updates. You can create an RSS feed of your Network Updates to keep track of your first-degree connections on LinkedIn. In addition, LinkedIn Answers provides RSS feeds for the growing number of categories that contain questions and answers from the community.

To get these updates, you need an RSS feed reader. Google Reader is a great tool that you can use to handle all the RSS feeds you subscribe to, whether related to LinkedIn or not. You can install this free tool on practically any system. And a quick Google search for “RSS feed readers” can help you track down other feed readers to try.
Linked Intelligence Blog: When LinkedIn was growing in size and popularity during its earlier days, blogger Scott Allen put together the Linked Intelligence site to cover LinkedIn and its many uses. Over the years, he built up a healthy amount of blog posts, links, and valuable information from himself and other bloggers regarding LinkedIn and how to use it.
Podcast Network Connections: At The Podcast Network, you can find the Connections show, where show host Stan Relihan prepares a weekly audio podcast about the art of business networking.

This 20-minute podcast features interviews that Relihan does with other members of his network of connections to discuss how different social networks (like LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as new web applications) can be used to provide a benefit to any business. You can subscribe to this show and hear great interviews, tips, and stories of how other people and companies connect online.
Digsby Social Networking/IM/E-Mail Tool: Digsby promises to integrate your e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking accounts in one clean interface. After you download and set up Digsby, you can view a live newsfeed of all your friends and connections based on their events or activities on sites like LinkedIn, as well as manage chat sessions and see e-mail notifications. In the era of information overload, a tool like Digsby can help you make sense of all the messages and updates zooming to your computer screen.
Add your LinkedIn profile to your Facebook page: Some users have built up impressive LinkedIn profiles, and rather than duplicating the information on other websites (like their Facebook profile) would rather display their LinkedIn profiles dynamically so any changes to their LinkedIn profiles will ripple out automatically to Facebook without lots of work.
One update for multiple sites with Hellotxt: If you’re active on LinkedIn and other social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others), you probably hop from site to site to provide up-to-the-minute information about what you’re doing and what you want others to know. Well, instead of site hopping, you can use one function to update your status across all your social networking pages and microblogs: Hellotxt.