One of the simplest and most effective ways to make LinkedIn a valuable part of your business is to set it as the homepage on your web browser. Doing so will fundamentally change the way you interact with the system.
To be clear – what we are suggesting is that every time you open your computer’s internet browser, LinkedIn is the first thing you should see.
Why? There are SO many benefits. Most importantly, it becomes your real-time “news source for people”. If you are connected to people from your industry that you know and trust, your homepage will become a “river” of activity and relevant information that will help you do your job more efficiently. There is no other resource in the world that can deliver timely updates like this.
Taking it one step further, there are several powerful customization features that allow you to filter, hide and / or highlight certain information that may be more relevant to you.
If you are only logging in once per week – or worse, you never login and only accept connections via email – you are missing critical, real-time updates from your connections. These updates happen just minutes apart and represent the leads, business intelligence, news about Mergers & Acquisitions, etc that you are probably looking for else where.
On a related note, if you are connected to a lot of people you don’t know – your river of news won’t be nearly as valuable and you will see a lot of junk. We have several blogs on the topic of: open vs. closed networking.
LinkedIn’s InMaps – A useful user’s guide
Setting your homepage to LinkedIn is a technique our CEO developed while working as a sales manager for LinkedIn and is usually one of the first things we suggest our clients do. The feedback from our customers about this little trick is always tremendous.
What other tips and tricks do you have to make LinkedIn more valuable?
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Funny, a while back i made the HUGE mistake of making my Facebook profile my landing page when opening Chrome…. wow. If i could only have those hours (that i am sure add up to days if not weeks) back! sooo much time was wasted on mind numbing status updates that did nothing for me personally or professionally.
making LinkedIn your home page on the other hand is a BRILLIANT idea! making the change right now! and by purposefully limiting my LinkedIn contacts to people i have connected with on a strictly professional level i have already weeded out the numbing updates that lack industry relevance.
thanks Nathan!