how linkedin’s facelift can help you look prettier

: Image by webponce via Flickr

it’s time to rethink the way you cross-post links if you maintain a social presence on both linkedin and twitter. if you are a linkedin regular, you probably have noticed a change in the service’s status updates. historically, updates on linked in were in keeping with its reputation as a buttoned-down, businesslike version of social networks like facebook and myspace. I wrote about linkedin’s increasing social mojo back in january. the new changes take it a big step further.

leveraging linkedin’s status update function

the “post on twitter, too” button has been around a while.

there is a tip of the hat to facebook’s “share to infinity…and beyond!” mentality in the “visible to” option:

users can elect to make the update visible (in theory) to the world, or at least to people searching. or just to their linkedin connections. not sure why anyone would go with just connections. linkedin is not the place where one would share links to the new girls in accounting gone wild video or “check this photo album of me last weekend – so wasted.” but nice to have the option.

here’s the fun part. observe how I create a status update with a link to an interesting article. click on “attach a link,” paste the url, and click attach – voila!

click on share and this is what shows up on your connections’ home page in linkedin!

twitter users are familiar with using the #in or #li hashtag in their tweets to cross-post to linkedin. but it occurs to me that it makes more sense to start in linkedin and cross-post to twitter! why?

cross-post from linkedin to twitter!

here’s an update that public relations supreme ruler todd van hoosear cross posted from twitter:

now, had @vanhoosear added the link in linkedin and cross posted to twitter, it would have looked like this:

which would you be more likely to click on? (here’s how it looked in my twitter stream)

as linkedin becomes less of a job fair and more of a true social network, it makes sense to put your best foot forward on the site. what do you think about the changes at linkedin? does it help you (or encourage you to) use the service more?