What Full Twitter Integration Could Mean For LinkedIn

By
Craig M. Jamieson
– May 27, 2010Posted in: Business-Social Media, Face Book, LinkedIn, Twitter

This past Tuesday I attended Meridian Business Day and came away with three personal action items: focus more on my target market; work LinkedIn harder; and figure out a way, or ways, to either make FaceBook more effective for business or choose not to discuss, or conduct, business on this platform ….  period. Of course, quitting FaceBook altogether remains a viable option :)

I had to start with my focus. The simple fact of that matter is that only people in my immediate geographical area are going to be interested in joining our groups or will be likely to attend seminars and workshops when I introduce those services. I have no interest in traveling out of the area to do either. It only makes sense, therefore, that my focus needs to be on these local folks. Furthermore, if even my neighbors are not willing to engage with me directly, what benefit do they provide me? In most cases, and in the larger scheme of things, the answer is .. “Not much.”

I’ve been fairly vocal, even more lately, about my disenchantment with FaceBook so I got started with my evaluation of this application. I would like to have a separate personal and business profile (not a page) but, despite the fact that a lot of folks are apparently doing that, this would technically be in violation of FaceBook’s terms of service and I don’t really care to go there. What I really care about is directing my focus to, once again, those people who are willing to engage with me directly on some level. I did come up with a few choices: drop those who don’t engage, hide those who don’t engage but do not drop them, or create a list of those willing to engage and focus on those. I’m honestly not sure at this time which route I am going to choose but I am going to make that decision and I am going to do so quickly.

Yesterday morning LinkedIn made, what I believe, was a huge announcement. Over the past 6 months, LinkedIn has been making moves steadily toward becoming more social. While I have concerns about this, the potential benefits far outweigh the potential shortcomings providing that the LinkedIn community maintains respect for the fact that LinkedIn has been, and will hopefully continue to be, a business and not a social site.

A few months ago, LinkedIn added the capability to originate tweets from the site. For much longer than that we have had the capability to send updates to LinkedIn via various Twitter clients (HootSuite, TweetDeck, Seesmic), something like Ping.fm, or with a #LI being a part of your tweet. As of this morning, LinkedIn has introduced a complete Twitter module with all those I follow on Twitter being brought directly into LinkedIn so that I can monitor, tweet, and reply. Oddly, I do not see the ability to generate a direct message? Even better, it quickly identified which of my LinkedIn connections were on LinkedIn and whether or not I follow them. I was then given a very simple interface to follow any of  those that I choose. At this same time, a new Twitter list was created and added to my Twitter account.

Why is this huge? Let me count the ways …….

  1. LinkedIn has now become a full blown Twitter Client focused on business.
  2. People conduct business on FaceBook because the social aspects of FaceBook demonstrate that they are “real people”. LinkedIn has always been “social weak”. Not that you can’t be “real” on LinkedIn, it has just never lent itself well to that task. Now it does.
  3. If I want to build relationships on LinkedIn, Twitter now becomes a more focused tool to do that. Would I rather “retweet” for, and “reply” to, people I really don’t know on Twitter or people who have taken the time to connect with me on LinkedIn? Who would appreciate that more? This is a “no brainer”.
  4. LinkedIn has, in one action, given me a fantastic reason to spend more time on their site and less time on either FaceBook or Twitter.
  5. I can now easily monitor and respond to tweets sent out by my closest business connections.

So, how about folks that don’t care to engage with me directly on Twitter or LinkedIn? Twitter is a different animal and, certainly, I am not going to rush to judgment here anymore than I am doing with FaceBook. Everybody will be carefully evaluated on a multiple of levels prior to any drastic steps being taken. However, with my renewed focus and criteria, I’m maybe going to need a really big axe. LOL.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Craig M. Jamieson  (292 Posts)

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. NetWorks! Boise Valley is a business to business networking organization for the most serious sales and marketing professionals only.


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