20 Awesome LinkedIn Tips, Tricks and Tools

With 50 Million users, LinkedIn is the ultimate social platform for professionals. In addition to making connections, you can get introductions, obtain recommendations and collaborate with hundreds of industry professionals and peers in your network.

LinkedIn is such a powerful tool but not many unleash its true potential. We have put together a comprehensive list of useful LinkedIn tricks, tips, hacks and tools to help you make the most of your profile without breaking a sweat:

1. Email Linkedin Contacts From Your Desktop:

LinkedIn Contacts Management is a desktop app that lets you email your contacts, manage your contacts list and export them to a CSV or text file.

2. Post Your LinkedIn Profile On Facebook:

MyResume is a great Facebook application to post your resume or LinkedIn profile on Facebook. It also lets you request resumes from your friends and search resumes from different countries. What better way to integrate your social and professional network.

3. Export LinkedIn Contacts To Microsoft Outlook:

Export LinkedIn Connections is a great tool to export all your LinkedIn contacts to Outlook, Yahoo! address book or Mac OS address book.

4. Ask and Answer Questions:

Not many people know that LinkedIn is a great platform to ask and answer career related questions. Being active in the Q&A would definitely get you noticed in your particular niche.

5. Import Excel File Of Contacts Into LinkedIn:

Ever had an excel file of contacts that you wish to import into LinkedIn. Here is a great walk through of how to import contacts from an MS Excel file.

6. How To Delete a LinkedIn Contact:

You added somebody just because they requested but now you want to remove them from your connections. Simply go to the Contacts tab on the left hand side and click on Connections. On the next screen, the Remove Connections link is the right-most link on the navigation menu. Simply select the contacts you want to remove and click on Remove Connections.

7. Save and Organize Profiles Into Folders:

Eventhough it is a premium feature, Profile Organizer is a great tool that lets you save and organize profiles into folders. You can also add notes and sync contact information with any address book.

8. How To Change Your LinkedIn Login:

Your LinkedIn login is your primary email address at LinkedIn. To change that, you’ll first have to add the new email address by going to email addresses under Personal information. Once added, make this email address your primary one and delete the old address.

9. Display Your LinkedIn Profile On Any Website Or Blog:

Using this great widget, you can embed your profile or any blog or website. Select the attributes of your profile you want to display and even customize the look of the widget to suit your blog.

10. Share Your LinkedIn Contacts On Facebook:

Think your LinkedIn connections can help your Facebook friends? Share them on Facebook using a great application called LinkedIn Contacts.

11. Search People By Job Title Or Company Name:

Looking for a people with a particular job title? Simply select the Search People option next to the search bar and click on Advanced Search. This will allow you to search for people using Title, Company name or even school.

12. How To Withdraw a Recommendation:

Rushed into sending a recommendation? Don’t worry you can always pull it back. Just go to the navigation menu on the left and click on Recommendations under Profile. Then choose the Sent Recommendations tab and click withdraw next to the recommendation you wish to withdraw.

13. Embed LinkedIn Signature In Your Email:

Email is one of the most commonly used mediums for professional communication. Why miss out on displaying your LinkedIn info on your email? Just go the LinkedIn signature page and create your customized signature. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to obtain the HTML code for your signature. Detailed instructions are also included for embedding the signature in different email clients including Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla and Yahoo! Mail.
If you want to use the LinkedIn signature in your Gmail account, here are some cool tips for that.

14. Update LinkedIn Status Via Twitter:

Updating status on each social media separately can be a pain. Well, here’s how you can update your LinkedIn status via Twitter and/or Tweet your LinkedIn status to your Twitter followers.

15. Share Files and Documents With Your LinkedIn Contacts:

Have an important presentation to share with your LinkedIn contacts? Or may be you just want to post a document to your profile? All this can be done very easily with a great application from Box.net. Just add this application to your LinkedIn account and start uploading files.

16. Discover What Books Your Contacts Are Reading:

Reading List by Amazon is a great application that lets you see what books your peers are reading. You can also update information about the books you are reading or planning to read.

17. Sync Your WordPress and LinkedIns:

WordPress has become the platform of choice for bloggers and what better way to sync your WordPress and LinkedIn profiles than using the WordPress application for LinkedIn. Use this application to send automatic updates to your network when you publish a new post.

18. Create Polls For Your LinkedIn Contacts:

Add the Polls application for LinkedIn so you can gather feedback, opinion or just general wisdom from industry professionals and peers.

19. Back-up Your LinkedIn Connections:

You have worked hard to build your connections. These are important people to you and you don’t want to lose their information to accidental deletes or server crashes. Back-up your connections frequently by exporting your contacts. Here is a detailed walk through on how to do that.

20. List All Your Email Addresses:

You don’t want people trying to look you up through an old email address. Add all the email addresses you have to your LinkedIn profile so its easier for people to look you up.

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