What LinkedIn Was Thinking and How It Really Turned Out

Okay, I get it. LinkedIn wanted to link Twitter into LinkedIn so that we’d see a glimpse into a human’s day to day life. The mindset would be, “We know that Chris runs New Marketing Labs, and we read his blog, so seeing a tweet or two go by in his status will show us that he’s human and how he’s doing.” The thing is, Twitter is our scratch pad, our watercooler, our telephone. Look at this:

None of it is particularly “wrong.” But nearly none of it is business useful. If you’re doing it (linking your Twitter to your LinkedIn, please consider going here to change that.

I just figured out what LinkedIn could/should consider doing with this kind of info, the Twitter stream, that is.

Move it into my Profile.

Here’s why: if someone decides to come and spend time with my profile, it might be useful to see what’s on my mind at any given time. I tweet upwards of 50-70 times a day, though, so that’s quite a sprawl. Just the same, they’ll get a taste for how I communicate.

But by linking it into my LinkedIn status stream, it’s a big mess. It’s just a blurt of stuff that rarely relates to business.

See the difference?

On Monday, I’m going to post two more posts about LinkedIn and how you can get more out of it. If you’re not already subscribed to my blog, consider getting it sent to you by email (we respect your privacy):