Following yesterday’s interlude about settings, we’re back to Part II of LinkedIn’s applications! I’ll focus on a few important ones, and briefly talk about the ones that might not be as meaningful for you.
We’ll start with Company Buzz.
Company Buzz
We’re going to be talking more about Twitter in a later series of posts, but I’ll give you a very quick overview. Since Twitter says it best, here’s what they say about themselves:
Twitter is a "real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting." You "simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations."
"At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you – you can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context, and embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos, and other media content."
This includes links. In terms of business use of Twitter, they say:
Twitter connects businesses to customers in real-time. Businesses use Twitter to quickly share information with people interested in their products and services, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and influential people."
So what does this have to do with LinkedIn? Well this Company Buzz application lets you find relevant trends and comments about your company (and others) on Twitter. You can customize it by modifying the topics it has and adding news ones to watch – think client names – see historical charts that help you track "buzz" over time, and use top words associated with your topic – like "intellectual property law" to see related tweets.
All of this can also be done through other third party Twitter applications, but we won’t get into that right now.
For full information about the application, see their LinkedIn page.
Let’s add the application so you can see how it works:
Since this application is more FOR you than about you, it will only be displayed on your LinkedIn homepage, and not on your profile. As we did before, we’ll click the "Add application" button to add it.
This will take you to your Company Buzz home page on LinkedIn, which is where you can customize your searches:
On the left hand side is where you’ll be able to customize your searches – we’ll do that in a moment. In the middle, you’ll see recent updates about your chosen company in real time (these will not automatically update, but there will be a note at the top, as there is here, to "Show x more recent updates…").
And on the right hand side is the links that are trending as they relate to your search.
This Company Buzz page is defaulting to searching "LinkedIn," but that’s not useful to me. So I’ll set up some new searches.
There are a LOT of search options here (there are more at the bottom of the page as well), so you can see that you can really customize your searches.
We’ll start by deleting "linkedin" from the search box. Below that, you’ll see that Company Buzz offers you suggestions for what you’d like to search. We’ll start with their first one – to search "International Lawyers Network." When I click on this, you’ll see that the updates change, as well as my search options:
The updates column includes both what I’ve shared through Twitter, and what I’ve shared through LinkedIn. If other people are mentioning the ILN, they will appear in this column as well. I can refine this search if I’d like to, through the options on the right.
Perhaps I only want to see what I’ve shared, or posts from everyone else – if someone that is connected to you by the 1st or 2nd degree has shared something about you, these options will go from grayed out (which means you can’t select them), to allow you to select them.
In order to narrow down my search, I would click the checkbox of the item I wanted to refine it by.
So to see only posts by me, I would click that checkbox:
That would remove all of the posts from the center column except for the ones by me. If at any time you feel you’ve narrowed your search too much, you can uncheck the box easily to return to the previous search page.
Similarly, you can search by company, by location, by industry, by time, by school, by group, by topics, by seniority, or by update type. I’m sure you can extrapolate how this could be useful for you, but let’s take a quick look.
Let’s say that you’re a corporate attorney who’s interested in finding out what people have been saying about the UK Bribery Act. You would go to the search box in the top left corner, and put "UK Bribery Act" and click enter or click the magnifying glass to search.
A new page of updates comes up.
On this page, you can see all the updates for anyone talking about the UK Bribery Act. But that might be too much information for you.
You can see on the lefthand side that no one in your network is talking about it – this in and of itself might be important to note. But if someone in your network is talking about it, it’s useful to refine your search to see who that person is. Perhaps you can connect with them to discuss it further.
Perhaps you’d like to refine your search by company – maybe you want to know what the Dow Jones is saying about the Bribery Act. You’d click the checkbox next to Down Jones to see the four updates that they’ve posted:
Here, you can see that Magalie Pimentel has commented that there was a webinar on August 3rd with the UK Ministry of Justice and the Dow Jones. If you’d seen this before the webinar, you may have wanted to sign up. Since it’s after the webinar, you may want to contact Magalie and see if she has a recording that you could see. If you’re on Twitter, you could connect with her, or search her name on LinkedIn to see if you could connect with her here.
You’ll see that Marc Kelly mentioned the webinar as well. He might also be a good connection, and you can see based on the information in the updates, that Marc is sharing this information through LinkedIn, so you could connect to him further on here.
Then, we’ll uncheck the box to go back to the full list of results.
Another way you might be interested in refining these results is by location. Let’s say you’re a lawyer in London and you want to know what people in London are saying about the UK Bribery Act. In that case, you’d click the box next to "London, United Kingdom" to see those results:
Here, you can see who in London is talking about the Bribery Act. Three of the updates in this list are posted to groups (you can tell because the group name is hyperlinked in between parentheses after the poster’s name). There are a few options here – you may want to click on the group name so you can get an idea of what they’re discussing and whether you want to join the group (more on groups in a future post). You may want to click on the article or link posted to see if it’s of interest to you, and whether you might want to a) share it with your LinkedIn connections, b) share it with a short comment with your LinkedIn connections, or c) if you’re blogging, use it as a jumping off point for a blog post of your own.
You can also reach out to anyone you may want to connect with who seems to be sharing valuable information on the Act.
Again, we’ll back out to the full results by unchecking the box. There are still more ways to refine your search!
You can look at the results of your search by industry – LinkedIn will automatically populate these searches with whatever the available industries are within the results. So if it appears in this list, someone in that industry is talking about it. You may be more interested in what someone in the financial services industry has to say about the Bribery Act than what your colleagues in the legal services industry are saying – see if your clients’ industries are talking about this.
You can also search by time – see what’s been said in the last hour, the last day, the last week or the last two weeks. This way, you’re getting the most timely information on the subject.
In some cases, you may want to refine your search by school. Again, this list will be populated with the schools attended by those who are coming up in the results. If you see your alma mater, it might be interesting to refine the results to see who’s talking about the Bribery Act and shares a school with you. You can connect over the school link, and then delve into the Bribery Act.
You can also search by group – perhaps you’re wondering what the FCPA/Anti-Corruption Compliance Group is saying about the Bribery Act. Or maybe you’re only wondering what those participating in the Bribery Act group itself are saying.
There are three more ways to refine your search as well:
You can search by topic – don’t be alarmed by the # shown here. In Twitter, users use the # to designate a topic. They’ll include it in their tweets to make searching for that subject area easier (that’s a simplified explanation, but we’ll get into more depth when we discuss Twitter). But here, you can see that the topics include bribery, in, insurance, corruption and fcpa. (As an aside, any time you see #in, that basically means that the person wants their tweet to be included in LinkedIn – it’s not necessarily a useful search topic).
Again, you may be interested to see what those commenting on insurance have to say about the Bribery Act, or those commenting on the FCPA.
Even more importantly, you can search by seniority. This would be particularly helpful if you see that a client or potential client company is talking about this – you can refine the search to see what the senior members of the team are saying about the Bribery Act, so you can reach out to them directly.
And you can further refine your search by the type of update – are people updating groups, or sharing with their network?
This is just one small example, but I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities in searching your name, your firm’s name, your client’s names, and even subject areas that you’re focused in – instead of having to do the research yourself, LinkedIn & Company Buzz are doing it for you. It can really make your online networking through LinkedIn far more targeted, and help to make you a thought leader if you’re sharing the hot information that people in your industry are talking about.
Now, I’m sure you won’t want to have to remember to come back to this page, and to put in all the search parameters you want to each time. Fortunately, you have the ability to save the search, which will update to your home page.
At the top of the updates list, there’s a "Save" button:
Click on this, and a new window will pop up that will let you save this search:
As you can see, you can designate the name you’d like to save the search as, and then click Save.
That way, whenever you do return to the Company Buzz application, the search will appear as an option in the upper left hand corner.
Just click on this to return to your UK Bribery Act search again.
You can also "Share" your search results with your network. Click on the share link, and a new window will pop up:
Here, you can post this to your updates, and even add your own comments. Maybe something like "There is a lot of interesting conversation happening around the UK Bribery Act – what are your thoughts and concerns?" This lets your network know that you’re paying attention to what’s being said, that you’re interested in sharing it with them (even though it’s not your own generated content), and it gives them the opportunity to engage with you, because you’re asking them a question. So feel free to share away!
Once you’ve added Company Buzz, it also appears on your home page:
You can see that mine is automatically set up to search "International Lawyers Network" – this is the default, not something I set up myself. Under the search button, you’ll see "change" with a down arrow. This offers you a pre-set search for any company or school in your profile:
So for me, it’s International Lawyers Network, Traveloria, girls WRITE!, Target Research Group, and Hamilton College. Maybe I want to see what’s being said about Hamilton. In that case, I’d click on the name in this list. Tweets about Hamilton will then appear in this window:
You can click on individual Twitter names here to see a list of their previous tweets (within LinkedIn, it doesn’t take you over to Twitter).
Or, if you’d prefer to do a different search, you can search in the box that they offer you at the top. Perhaps you want to look up one of your clients:
Just type their name into the search box and click "Search." This will take you back to a similar Company Buzz page as before, where you can further refine your search if you wish.
It would be excellent if, at some point, Company Buzz included your saved searches in the drop down menu on your home page, but at this point, that doesn’t happen. It’s still a very useful tool though!
Google Presentation
I won’t go into too much detail about the opportunities available with Google Presentation, as it’s very similar to SlideShare, which we discussed in the last Applications post. Instead, we’ll just talk about adding and using it. You can see full details about the application on their page.
As we’ve done with other applications, we’ll click "Add Application" on the page linked above to add Google Presentation. It has both a profile and home page version. Once you’ve added the application, you’ll be taken to a new page:
You’ll see that Google Presentations give you two options – to upload a PowerPoint file or to use Google’s free online application to create your own presentation and then post it to your profile. The presentation that they have embedded in this page (starting with the above image "Getting started with a Google presentation for your profile") will give you additional information on how to do this.
To upload a file, click either the first link that says "Upload a Powerpoint file" or the second link in the lefthand box that says "Upload" or click the button that says "Upload a .ppt."
A new window will open up in the left hand side pane. You’ll click "Choose File" to locate the presentation you want to upload, and then click "Upload:"
This will upload your presentation and you’ll have a couple of options – to edit it, post it to your profile, or send it out to your network:
Posting it to your profile will allow people viewing your profile to click through the presentation. Editing it opens the presentation in Google Docs, and allows you to use their tools to edit the actual presentation. Sending it to your network will allow you to share the presentation directly with your connections – this would be particularly useful if you’re working on something that you only want a few people to see, or have a presentation that explains your services that you can share with clients (though I’ll caution here that anything you share with clients really should be tailored to THEM and not about you).
At this point, I’ll mention that I’ve noticed that it’s not clear how you can delete a presentation that you’ve uploaded. So you may want to be picky about the presentations you’re sharing if you decide to include this application.
The other option for using Google presentations is to create a presentation right in Google docs:
If you’ve uploaded a presentation already as I have, the option to create will only appear in these two places. However, if you’re starting from scratch, it will also appear in the left hand pane, where "Geneva" is listed currently.
Click one of those options and Google docs will open, allowing you to create a presentation. Once you’ve done that, you can save and share it, and return back to your LinkedIn application.
Let’s take a quick look at how this application will appear on your home page and profile. On your profile, as long as you have a presentation uploaded, you will see something like this (note that you have to have chosen "post to profile" for a presentation to appear in your profile:
You can click through the slide show here (as can anyone viewing your profile), and you can use the link below the slideshow to change the presentation you have on your profile. Clicking this link will take you back to the application page that we were just on.
On your homepage, there will be a smaller version of the presentation with the ability to view on your profile, edit the presentation, or change it:
Since there’s a lot to be learned from these two applications, I’ll leave today’s tutorial at that. I’d love to hear your feedback in terms of using these applications, and which ones you’re finding particularly useful in your practice! Tomorrow we’ll be back with more applications!