Jake

Jake

Post image for New LinkedIn research reveals which professionals conquer their to-do lists

New LinkedIn research reveals which professionals conquer their to-do lists

by Jake on May 23, 2012

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with 161 million members worldwide, today released data about professionals and their daily to-do lists. The study examined how professionals in different industries tackle tasks planned for a given workday; the differences between men and women’s to-do list habits; and global insights on where professionals keep to-do lists and what gets in the way of completing them.

LinkedIn surveyed more than 6,500 professionals globally. The study showed that the likelihood that a professional will complete their to-do list varied by industry. Professionals in agriculture claim to be the most productive, with 83 percent of agriculture professionals stating they regularly fulfill most or all of their planned tasks. Professionals in the legal industry had the lowest completion rate on their daily plans, with 66 percent of respondents accomplishing most or all tasks.

Art industry professionals (40 percent) agreed the most with this statement, “I tend to be distracted easily.” Agriculture industry professionals agreed the least with that statement; only 18 percent of professionals in the agriculture industry are easily distracted.

  • The study shows that 63 percent of all professionals frequently create to-do lists.
  • Seventy-one percent of women say they frequently keep to-do lists.
  • Only 60 percent of men say they frequently keep to-do lists.

Globally, 50 percent of those who jot down to-do lists do so by hand, while 45 percent create them electronically. The remaining five percent reported storing their lists in alternative places, like “In my mind only,” “Piles of files,” or other locations like whiteboards or chalkboards. When it comes to checking the boxes on their to-do lists, only 11 percent of professionals globally reported accomplishing all of the tasks they plan to do in a given workday. Survey respondents pointed to unplanned tasks (such as unscheduled phone calls, emails and meetings) as primary cause for not completing all items on their to-do lists.

“No matter what industry you’re in, you can’t avoid surprise phone calls, meetings or other unplanned tasks that can get between you and your to-do list, but you can amplify efficiency throughout your day to get it all done,” said LinkedIn’s connection director, Nicole Williams. “Summon the collective intelligence on LinkedIn to work smarter and solve challenges quickly. Save time by arming yourself with insights before meetings.”

Follow these “to-dos” to save time in your workday and cross more tasks off the list:

  1. Make meetings more efficient
    Check out meeting participants’ LinkedIn Profiles ahead of time to get a sense for what they bring to the table. Past experience and specific skills of your meeting cohorts could come in handy to creatively solve a problem — thereby keeping your meeting time to a minimum.
  2. Crowd source your challenge
    Use LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups to tap into the wisdom of your LinkedIn network or the rest of the 161 million LinkedIn members. By posing questions and starting discussions you’ll be able to assemble solutions in record time.
  3. Get up to speed in an instant
    Rather than visiting various news sources each morning, get your daily news fix in one place via LinkedIn Today. Customize LinkedIn Today so you get news that’s relevant to you and your clients. Access LinkedIn Today from your desk, iPad or phone by downloading LinkedIn Mobile.

Learn more about LinkedIn’s professional to-do list study and download an infographic on LinkedIn’s Blog.

Post image for Are You A Linkedin Stalker? Hide Your Identity

Are You A Linkedin Stalker? Hide Your Identity

by Jake on May 14, 2012

As I am sure many of you have seen, especially those with paid Linkedin accounts, on the right hand side of the home screen when you log in is a box showing who has viewed your profile. It shows the number of recent views and if you have a paid account you can click on the link and see who exactly has been taking a look art your profile.

This shows several different types of information depending on the users settings who have been looking at you. It could be just a company or industry that you can see, but often as not you can see the full profile of the person who has been stalking you on Linkedin. As you would expect these are often recruiter’s profiles which is a bit of a surprise, as you would imagine they would want to conceal this.

Now on occasions you will notice the term ‘Anonymous’ come up against who has viewed you. What a lot of people don’t realize is that you can infact go into your settings if you have a premium account and set it so as anyone you look at cannot actually see that you have been sniffing around their profile.

To do this all you need to do is go to the settings page and then navigate to the link for ‘Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.’

A pop-up appears and all you need to do now is to select the option you require. By default and Linkedin recommends is that you show who you are, but depending on what you use Linkedin for this may not be the best option. For a recruiter or someone sourcing client leads you may wish to remain anonymous. You may not want to say when you call the contact that you saw them on Linkedin as its just another cold call.

If you select ‘totally anonymous’ then the prospective contact will see none of your details, allowing you to not appear as just another Linkedin stalker.

For those in the sales industry this setting is a very important one, as experienced sales professionals will well understand for reasons of their own.

It can be quite interesting seeing who has looked at you and wondering why? I have received countless cold emails or calls where the person has not admitted to looking at my profile but I can see full well that they have. Some have even denied it asking me if I happen to have a profile.

Yes I do is my response, as you know all too well as you looked at me today. Bye is my next response generally.

Post image for LinkedIn Announces First Quarter 2012 Financial Results

LinkedIn Announces First Quarter 2012 Financial Results

by Jake on May 5, 2012

Mountain View, Calif. — May 3, 2012 — LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE: LNKD), the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with 161 million members, reported its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012:

  • Revenue for the first quarter was $188.5 million, an increase of 101% compared to $93.9 million in the first quarter of 2011.
  • Net income for the first quarter was $5.0 million, compared to net income of $2.1 million for the first quarter 2011.  Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $16.9 million, compared to $5.8 million for the first quarter of 2011.  Non-GAAP measures exclude tax-affected stock-based compensation expense and tax-affected amortization of acquired intangible assets.
  • Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $38.1 million, or 20% of revenue, compared to $13.3 million for the first quarter of 2011, or 14% of revenue.
  • GAAP EPS for the first quarter was $0.04; Non-GAAP EPS for the first quarter was $0.15.

“LinkedIn’s solid performance in the first quarter built on the company’s momentum in 2011,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “We saw strength across all key metrics from member signups and engagement to significant revenue growth across our three product lines.”

First Quarter Financial Details and Operating Summary
LinkedIn reported revenue of $188.5 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012, an increase of 101% compared to the first quarter of 2011, and the 7th straight quarter of greater than 100% year-over-year growth.

  • Hiring Solutions: Revenue from Hiring Solutions products totaled $102.6 million, an increase of 121% compared to the first quarter of 2011.  Hiring Solutions revenue represented 54% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 49% in the first quarter of 2011.
  • Marketing Solutions: Revenue from Marketing Solutions products totaled $48.0 million, an increase of 73% compared to the first quarter of 2011.  Marketing Solutions revenue represented 26% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 30% in the first quarter of 2011.
  • Premium Subscriptions: Revenue from Premium Subscriptions products totaled $37.9 million, an increase of 91% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Premium Subscriptions represented 20% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 21% of revenue in the first quarter of 2011.

Revenue from the U.S. totaled $120.8 million, and represented 64% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.  Revenue from international markets totaled $67.6 million, and represented 36% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.

Revenue from the field sales channel totaled $101.5 million, and represented 54% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.  Revenue from the online, direct sales channel totaled $87.0 million, and represented 46% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.

GAAP net income for the first quarter was $5.0 million, compared to net income of $2.1 million for the first quarter of 2011.  Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $16.9 million, compared to $5.8 million in the first quarter of 2011.

Adjusted EBITDA was $38.1 million for the first quarter of 2012, or 20% of revenue, compared to $13.3 million for the first quarter of 2011, or 14% of revenue.

GAAP EPS was $0.04 based on 111.3 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding compared to $0.00 for the first quarter of 2011 based on 51.5 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding.  Non-GAAP EPS was $0.15 based on 111.3 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding compared to $0.06 for the first quarter of 2011 based on 97.1 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding.

“LinkedIn grew over 100% for the seventh consecutive quarter and achieved records for adjusted EBITDA, operating and free cash flow,” said Steve Sordello, CFO of LinkedIn. “We remain focused on investing in our technology and product platform as well as expanding our business in new international markets and customer segments.”

For additional information, please see the “Selected Company Metrics and Financials” page on LinkedIn’s Investor Relations site.

First Quarter Highlights and Strategic Announcements

  • In January, LinkedIn began an early rollout of Talent Pipeline with five charter customers including PepsiCo, Pfizer, Red Hat, Netflix, and First Citizens Bank. Available to all Recruiter customers in Q2, Talent Pipeline allows recruiters and hiring managers to manage, track, and stay in touch with all their target candidates regardless of source.
  • In February, LinkedIn launched the Follow Company button for the more than two million companies with active LinkedIn company pages, making it easier for professionals to follow those companies on LinkedIn from anywhere on the web.
  • In March, LinkedIn introduced a new version of People You May Know. This new streamlined tool makes it even easier for professionals to grow their networks through a simpler, more visual user experience.
  • In the first quarter, LinkedIn continued its global growth strategy by adding two new languages (Czech and Dutch) to the LinkedIn platform, and an office in Madrid.

Business Outlook
LinkedIn is providing guidance for the second quarter of 2012, and revising guidance for the full year 2012 on revenue, adjusted EBITDA, depreciation and amortization, and stock-based compensation.

  • Q2 2012 Guidance: Revenue for the second quarter of 2012 is projected to range between $210 million to $215 million.  The company expects adjusted EBITDA to range between $40 million and $42 million.  The company expects depreciation and amortization to range between $18.5 million and $19.5 million, and stock-based compensation to range between $18 million and $19 million.
  • Full Year 2012 Guidance: The company has revised upward its expected revenue range to $880 million to $900 million from the prior range of $840 million to $860 million.  The company has also revised upward its expected adjusted EBITDA range to $170 million to $175 million from the prior range of $155 million to $165 million.  The projected range for depreciation and amortization has increased to $75 million to $85 million from $70 million to $80 million, and stock-based compensation has increased to $80 million to $90 million from $65 million to $75 million.
Post image for Linkedin Buys Slideshare

Linkedin Buys Slideshare

by Jake on May 4, 2012

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with 161 million members worldwide, today announced it agreed to acquire SlideShare, a leading professional content sharing community.

The transaction is valued at approximately $118.75 million, subject to adjustment, in a combination of approximately 45 percent cash and approximately 55 percent stock. Subject to the completion of customary conditions, the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2012.

Founded in October 2006, SlideShare helps professionals discover people through content, and content through people. SlideShare users have uploaded more than nine million presentations, and according to comScore, in March SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors, ranking it among the most heavily trafficked sites for professional content.

SlideShare is also enabling the sharing of presentations across the Web; nearly 7.4 million presentations hosted by SlideShare are embedded across more than 1.4 million unique domains.

“Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity,” said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. “These presentations also enable professionals to discover new connections and gain the insights they need to become more productive and successful in their careers, aligning perfectly with LinkedIn’s mission and helping us deliver even more value for our members. We’re very excited to welcome the SlideShare team to LinkedIn.”

Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare commented, “We built SlideShare to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content. What we can build with LinkedIn, the largest professional network on the Internet, is the most natural extension of this vision. I am excited about what we can build together.”

Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s Senior Vice President of Product and User Experience, blogged about the acquisition at http://blog.linkedin.com/topic/slideshare/, and a SlideShare presentation outlining the deal can be found on LinkedIn’s SlideShare page at: http://www.slideshare.net/linkedin/linkedin-and-slideshare and on the investor relations section of the LinkedIn website at: http://investors.linkedin.com/.

Post image for Linkedin For iPad Finally Arrives

Linkedin For iPad Finally Arrives

by Jake on April 29, 2012

So Linkedin has finally launched its very first iPad app this week and they have brought a whole new look and feel to the world’s leading business social media platform.

The calendar widget has to be the biggest new feature which is on the left side of your home updates screen. From here, providing you have given permission, it pulls in calendar appointments from your iPad and displays the profiles on Linkedin of the people you are meeting with.

The overall layout on the new iPad app is pretty cool as well. “This was a chance to go back to the drawing board,” says Mario Sundar, LinkedIn’s social media manager. “To design it for how people use the iPad: morning and night infotainment.”

It runs on a clean and simple interface with just three options, updates, profiles and inbox. You will now see updates and stories being presented almost as if they are on Flipboard.

The new app will also integrate with Google Calendar as well as Exchange calendar too.

This app has been a long time in development and it has been hugely anticipated. It’s finally here and well worth having a play around with if you happen to be a Linkedin devotee. If you are not one, well download it anyway as it’s a great tool for getting your morning news and arranging your day.

Linkedin now receives more than 22% of its traffic from mobile devices, a big increase on the 8% this time last year.

Photo courtesy of Sean ManEntee via Flickr. Some rights reserved

 

Post image for LinkedIn Rolls Out Talent Pipeline To Recruiters Worldwide

LinkedIn Rolls Out Talent Pipeline To Recruiters Worldwide

by Jake on April 25, 2012

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 150 million members, today announced the roll-out of LinkedIn Talent Pipeline to its thousands of corporate recruiting customers worldwide. Talent Pipeline enables recruiters to easily manage all of their talent leads in one place, regardless of the source, helping them recruit top talent more quickly. Talent Pipeline will be included for free as part of LinkedIn’s flagship Recruiter product.

Talent Pipeline addresses a new reality facing recruiters. In a quickly changing business environment, recruiters need to react faster to hiring needs. Simultaneously, the rise of social media and other new sources of potential candidates are driving a shift toward more direct sourcing and recruiters expanding their search beyond active candidates to include ‘passive’ candidates; those professionals not currently looking for their next career opportunity. Professional networks like LinkedIn have made it possible to recruit passive candidates at scale for the first time.

Identifying and building relationships with these potential hires before they enter the formal job application process enables companies to react faster to hiring needs as they arise. In fact, 92 percent of senior leaders in human resources and talent acquisition in the US regard recruiting passive candidates as central to or a part of their recruitment strategy, and 61 percent plan to increase their focus on recruiting passive candidates this year, according to recent research conducted by LinkedIn*.

This strategy makes pipelining a top priority, but the proliferation of sources – from business cards collected at conferences and recruiting events to niche job sites and referrals – makes it difficult for recruiters to track and stay up to date with all their leads. Current pipelining tools fall short, according to 86 percent of survey respondents.

“With the rise in sources of passive talent, recruiters need a simple and intelligent way to grow, track, and stay in touch with their talent pipeline,” said Parker Barrile, head of products for LinkedIn Hiring Solutions. “We’re dedicated to building best-in-class products to help recruiters connect talent with opportunity worldwide, and Talent Pipeline is the next step. It’s an easy extension of the sourcing that recruiting teams already do on the network today.”

Most passive candidates have not applied for a job in the past, so they are not in a company’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Many recruiters currently track leads in spreadsheets, which don’t allow for collaboration, or databases which quickly grow stale. Talent Pipeline solves these problems, enabling recruiters to:

  • Import leads and résumés into Recruiter, which are then compared to LinkedIn’s network 150 million members and paired with the relevant profile, which members keep updated even when they aren’t job hunting
  • Search, tag, and share records across the recruiting team like any profile sourced on LinkedIn. And with new tools for adding a lead’s source and status, recruiters can report on and improve the efficiency of their pipeline activities.
  • Evaluate and build relationships with leads, based on the insights provided by the LinkedIn profile, including shared connections, activity updates, recommendations and shared groups.

LinkedIn worked with a number of large recruiters to develop Talent Pipeline, including PepsiCo, Pfizer, Red Hat, First Citizens Bank and Netflix. Existing customers of LinkedIn Recruiter will begin seeing Talent Pipeline incorporated into the platform over the coming weeks.

“This solution will transform what’s possible for our recruiting organization,” said Jim Schnyder, senior recruitment lead at PepsiCo. ‘In Talent Pipeline, we now have a centralized system in which we can create talent pools – based on LinkedIn searches, but also from other sources that we upload to the Recruiter platform, such as our own spreadsheets, random files, and more – that are globally accessible, searchable and editable.”

Post image for Linkedin Opens Hong Kong Office

Linkedin Opens Hong Kong Office

by Jake on April 25, 2012

Linkedin has announced this week the opening of a new office in Hong Kong which is it 25th globally and 9th in the Asia Pacific region.

A company statement released on Tuesday by Linkedin informed the world that the establishment of a local presence in Hong Kong reflected the company’s continued growth in the Asian region.

There are currently over 25 million users of Linkedin in the Asia region and it opened an office in Singapore last May which currently serves as its regional headquarters. They also have offices in Tokyo, Bangalore, Melbourne and Perth within the region with several local language sites such as Japanese and Korean.

“We are thrilled to be expanding our footprint in the region at a time when professionals in Hong Kong are placing a growing emphasis on social media,” said Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s managing director and vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan.

“With more than 2,400 regional company offices and over 1,300 regional headquarters, Hong Kong’s skilled talent base and reputation as a leading international center of finance and business make it an important market for LinkedIn, given our aim is to connect the world’s talent with opportunity.”

The Hong Kong office will support around 500,000 users in the territory and currently employs around 6 people.

Post image for How To Catch A Head Hunters Eye – Top 10 Tips

How To Catch A Head Hunters Eye – Top 10 Tips

by Jake on April 22, 2012

So you are on Linkedin and maybe not quite actively looking for work, but happy to keep your eyes open just in case the right opportunity comes along to progress your career.

Do you sit there some days wondering why head hunters call your colleagues but never reach out to you? Well I think most people actually don’t really know what head hunters do day to day. It certainly helps to be good at what you do for a living because that way you’ll end up being recommended to a head hunter via someone in their network. But the odd fish will still slip through the net as they say and so it is a wise option to ensure you have an attractive profile on somewhere like Linkedin so as head hunters can proactively find you.

So let’s take a look at 10 things you could do right now to add a little sparkle to your Linkedin profile and start courting approaches from head hunters.

Job Title – An obvious place to keep up to date but it is amazing how often people over look this one. I’d recommend you use an industry standard title here. ‘Public Happy Maker’ may be amusing to some, but if you are a social media manager, then say so. This is one of the first things a head hunter will use as a search criteria when engaging on a new search for talent. This is quite possibly one of the most important elements to your profile so make sure you get it right.

Keywords – Most head hunters will bring their search results back based on relevancy so you want a good mix of keywords representing what you do within your profile. Now don’t go getting spam happy as all user generated content should be written for humans and not search spiders. But saying that, if you do SEO for a living, make sure your profile and job description mentions this a few times. Ensure that other skills you have are mentioned too. Don’t rely on someone ‘reading between the lines’ as more often than not they will just skip to the next profile. Sticking with SEO, if you know web analytics make sure it’s mentioned. Doing on and off page? Get that in too. Mention HTML, link building etc.

Languages – Linkedin has a profile section for adding languages spoken. So many people leave this blank even when they do actually have a second or third language. Keep this up to date as a very high percentage of searches require secondary languages to be spoken.

Endorsements – Social proof is a powerful selling tool. Get recommendations from your former employers and colleagues. Get them from your current work place too. It is a real advantage to have some glowing work based references on your Linkedin profile.

Achievements – These should be added into your profile summary description and the relevant work experience sections. Do you speak at industry events or write for major news sites or blogs? If so add this in. Have you achieved massive savings financially for your employer? Companies like to see things like this. If you saved a competitor of theirs several million then you could do the same for them. Highlight this.

Applications – These are little gems often ignored by people on Linkedin. They can give your profile a major boost if used correctly, from things like wordpress integration and amazons reading list which help drive engagement, to apps such as slideshare where you can showcase presentations of previous work. Check them out on Linkedin and get a few added to your profile to make you stand out even more.

Work History – Keep this up to date and accurate. As with your current job title, make sure all previous are industry standard so a clear history of experience can be seen by a head hunter or potential employer. Keep dates accurate and write a paragraph outlining what you did and achieved there. Check that the company name you enter is the correct one for that employer too as head hunters often search based on particular employers as they have a reputation for only hiring the very best people.

Education – It is amazing how many people don’t think this is relevant once you have been in work for a while. But let’s be honest here, many companies have hiring policies for graduates only or will only look at people from certain universities. Update this and ensure you put in your grade. If the grade is left blank people will presume you failed or got a very low grade. In some countries education is more important than experience (Japan) so if you attended somewhere such as Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, MIT or Harvard make sure it is on your profile.

Groups – Being in the right groups on Linkedin is key. Use them to engage with other members in discussions and you will soon get onto head hunters radars as they prowl these groups looking for strong talent. It also makes it very easy for them to contact you directly on Linkedin. Pick groups relevant to your industry.

Contact Details – Lastly add some contact details to your profile. Maybe set up an email address on the likes of Gmail that is purely for Linkedin so that head hunters can drop you a mail. No point putting on your work mail as it may not be secure and could be open to abuse by less reputable recruiters. For this reason I would not have a phone number publically listed either. You can add one though and set it so that only 1st degree contacts can see it.

If you take action on these 10 tips you will soon have a well rounded profile on Linkedin and be in a position where you can start to field head hunters calls and see what other opportunities are out there.

Photo courtesy of USFWS Pacific via Flickr. Some rights reserved

Post image for Top 10 Largest Linkedin Groups

Top 10 Largest Linkedin Groups

by Jake on April 17, 2012

The power of groups on Linkedin should never be under estimated as it is one of the most powerful networking tools available on the site. There are well over 1.2 million groups on Linkedin so that gives you a fairly large field to play in although do remember, you are limited to joining 50 only. Due to this it is a good idea to choose wisely depending on what it is you are looking to gain from Linkedin.

If you are looking to find sales leads or hunt talent for clients or company, then it is beneficial to join the right groups that are relevant to your industry. It also helps massively if that group has a huge number of members rather than just a couple. Not that small groups are pointless, far from it. A small but highly targeted or niche group that suits your game plan is still worth engaging with.

If you bring up the groups option on Linkedin you will find that just about every conceivable niche is represented, so you should be able to find a few that are relevant to you.

A great reason to be in a large group is also the networking potential if you are looking to grow your 1st degree contacts. Now don’t go spamming people at random as this will simply get you a restricted account in no time. I get invites all the time claiming that we worked or have done business together. It’s a clear lie to try and get into my network and at best I’ll click ignore, but if someone pushes their luck I will report as spam.

But if you honestly want to network, then there is nothing wrong with making a connection and saying hi, we are both in XYZ group and I thought it might be beneficial to connect as we have a shared interest. You are far more likely to get an acceptance this way. Also, if you engage in the community discussions regularly with quality and relevant insights, then you will really boost your chances of the target person accepting your invite.

So which groups are the biggest and how many members are in them? Well let’s take a look at the top 10.

Job Openings, Job Leads and Job Connections!

#1 LinkedIn Jobs, Career and Networking Group: HR human resources recruiter recruiter’s executive executives managers management consultants consulting business marketing sales information technology finance media telecom healthcare open networkers education alumni US UK Europe Canada Asia India USA

770,147 members

Linked:HR (#1 Human Resources Group)

Leadership CHRO professional management executive executives consultant consultants coaching training HRIS SHRM ASTD corporate recruiter recruiters recruitment recruiting headhunting headhunters staffing hiring health care workforce safety employer employers employment engagement career education

640,422 members

LinkedIn Accounting OFFICIAL

Join the conversation with 500,000 other Accounting professionals. All contributions here are moderated to keep the conversation at a high level of quality. There are over a million groups on LinkedIn – discover other interesting groups at http://lnkd.in/GYML.

499,584 members

LinkedIn Residential Real Estate OFFICIAL

Join the fully moderated conversation with 500,000 other Residential Real Estate professionals. All contributions here are moderated to keep the conversation at a high level of quality. There are over a million groups on LinkedIn – discover other interesting groups at http://lnkd.in/GYML.

497,095 members

LinkedIn Entertainment OFFICIAL

Join the fully moderated conversation with 500,000 other Entertainment professionals. All contributions here are moderated to keep the conversation at a high level of quality. There are over a million groups on LinkedIn – discover other interesting groups at http://lnkd.in/GYML.

441,337 members

eMarketing Association Network

Largest marketing group with 411,000+ members. Managed by the eMarketing Association, the world’s largest Internet Marketing Association. Focus on Social, eMail, Search and Web Marketing. Open to all interested in business marketing. Join us April 3rd – 4th in San Francisco for the eMarketing Event.

417,521 members

Social Media Marketing

This is the LARGEST and most active social media group on LinkedIn.com with amost 300,000 members as of January 2012, and 20 special interest subgroups. It is intended for interactive advertising, marketing and other professionals who are actively engaged in social media and community websites.

350,589 members

The Recruiter Network – #1 Group for Recruiters

Recruiter: #1 LinkedIn Recruitment & Career Networking Social Media Group. Network with recruiters, find a job or headhunter. Read recruiting, HR, staffing, & employment news. Recruit talent, find jobs, careers, executive, alumni, and professional connection. Members in US UK Europe Canada India USA

318,994 members

The Project Manager Network – #1 Group for Project Managers

#1 Project Manager Social Media Group & Community on LinkedIn. Find PM jobs or a job in a PMO. Discuss methodology, management of projects. Research PMP certification, Prince2, CMMI, PMI PMBOK, RUP, Six Sigma, ITIL, IEEE, Agile & Scrum, Software, PDU career education. USA, Canada, UK, India, Europe.

304,171 members

Telecom Professionals

The group for Telecoms & Media discuss: New Devices & Technology, Mobile Content & Apps, Billing, IPTV, Cloud Computing, LTE, WiMax, Connected TV, Pay TV, Telecoms Marketing & Advertising, PR, Jobs, Events, Social Media, VOIP, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbian, 3G, Wireless, SaaS, Broadband, OSS.

260,675 members

Now I’ll be honest, if you apply some advanced Boolean logic to the group members here you will find a lot of them contain a lot of recruiters and HR professionals. But they are still huge groups and depending upon your Linkedin strategy will give you access to a vast number of people to connect with and leverage off their connections.

So take a look and play around with the group function. Use it correctly and you can really start to network like a champion. Do a search for industry. Maybe you are into digital marketing or social media? Search the groups for those keywords and see which are the largest that get returned and join them.

As a final note though, size doesn’t always mean better with Linkedin groups. Some markets are naturally small or you may find a smaller group that has a high engagement of its users. This is a good thing. Take a look at the discussions and see how well they are moderated. If it’s all spam then maybe use it to quickly network then get out and join another. If its high quality content being discussed, join in and make your mark.

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Post image for Linkedin Apps That Will Rocket Your Network

Linkedin Apps That Will Rocket Your Network

by Jake on April 16, 2012

When I’m out with friends and the subject of apps comes up it is normally about the latest must have one for the iPhone, but for those of us who happen to make a living from services such as Linkedin then there are certainly a bunch of other programs that come to mind. There are some truly outstanding apps for Linkedin which if used correctly can have a really major impact on your network building and engagement efforts. Now you won’t go finding millions of apps on Linkedin but the quality is very high and some of them are really ingenious uses of the API.

So where should you start if you are new to Linkedin or just haven’t got around to actually giving any of the apps a spin? Well let’s start with a quick top 5 list of some of the best ones to get your networking effort kicked up a gear or two.

Reading List by Amazon (Linkedin)

This happens to be one the older applications that you can plug-in to your profile but also happens to be one of the best. I guess we all have our favourite genres when it comes to sitting down with a book, but it is always nice to get a recommendation or two from our peers and this is where this app comes into its own. All you need to do is activate the app on your Linkedin profile and then start to populate it with what your are reading now, have read in the past or plan on reading in the future. You can then start to look at other peoples reading lists and for those people with similar interests start following them to see what they recommend. In business it is a huge advantage to be able to find those little conversation openers that do not appear like obvious sales lines, and a common interest in books is a very subtle door opener. Look at your network connections or people you are targeting and see what they are reading now or have recommended. Drop it into chit chat and see if it brings down a few barriers for you too.

WordPress (Linkedin)

If you run a personal or business blog then odds are that you use WordPress as the actual blogging platform, and why now? It is a damn fine blogging solution and the one I use for all of my sites. The WordPress app for Linkedin is a great way to help increase your presence on the site by giving you valuable exposure across your network. It could not be simpler to set-up too, so if you’re a bit of a technophobe you will still find this one as simple to use as buttering toast. All you have to do is enter your blog site URL and you are ready to go. You can even set it up to only post those updates that have been tagged with Linkedin so that maybe some of your more personal entries don’t get published automatically to your network. Social media is increasingly driving more traffic to our businesses so I consider this app a must have.

Card Munch (iPhone)

Now this is a fascinating little app that I’ll be doing a more in-depth post about very shortly. I think many of us still have a lot of love for the good old business card I think that scene from American Psycho is one we can all relate to as we compare cards. So what does this cool little app do? Well it’s a business card scanner on your phone that synchronises the uploaded information from the card with your contacts on Linkedin. All you have to do is line the card up, take a photo of it with your phone and Cardmunch does the rest. It will cross reference all of the data on the card such as contact details and match them up with the contact on Linkedin. Then you can view the persons profile on Cardmunch and it will give you a list of mutual contacts too. It’s a free iPhone app so go and download it right now.

Tripit (Linkedin)

Tripit has been around for a long time now and is a very handy little piece of kit because it allows you to keep all your travel information such as flights, hotel and car rental confirmation emails in one central spot. How many of us have got to an airport and realised we have forgotten a confirmation? I know I have. The Tripit app for Linkedin is fairly similar as it allows you to plan out your travel and share that information with your contacts. Once this has been done you can see if any of your contacts will be in the city or location you are visiting. Very handy for instigating conversations or arranging business meetings. It will also keep track of the miles you have travelled and rank these stats against your contacts, giving you a little fun seeing who is globetrotting the most.

LunchMeet (iPhone)

So are you a fairly sociable type of person who isn’t afraid of meeting people and chatting away? If so then this little app is probably for you. What LunchMeet allows you to do is broadcast your lunch availability to people in the same city and see who is willing to agree to meet you for lunch. An interesting way to make a few new connections and maybe get introduced to a new business opportunity. Of course not everyone out there is that keen on socialising, but for a lot of people within sales this may just be the thing for getting to know new business contacts. So don’t be shy, go get out there and ‘never eat alone’ as the app says.

So there it is, a quick list of 5 app associated with Linkedin that can be used for boosting your network. Check back soon as we will review some of these in more details and discuss all of the others available too.

Photo courtesy of TAKA@P.P.R.S at flickr. Some rights reserverd

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