Have you connected your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles yet?
If you’ve been on social media for a while, I’m sure you have. But this is a topic that’s worth repeating. I’ve been getting quite a few followers over on Twitter lately who are pretty new to that medium; if this applies to you, you may be wondering why it’s a good idea to connect Twitter and LinkedIn. After all, they are used differently and can have distinct purposes.
- It gives you an easy way to update your activity stream on LinkedIn.
- By sharing your thoughts about your industry, as well as articles and posts you found interesting, you are adding value to your connections. This, in turn, further establishes you as a person of knowledge in your field.
Let’s get you up to date on this effective way to build your personal brand on LinkedIn! I found this brief tutorial that walks you through the process of connecting LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s very current, so the screen shots on the video will match what you will encounter when you do this:
Regarding the setting options you have with the Twitter/LinkedIn connection, I really like what he had to say about the “showing rich link display” option. It does allow you to further engage your audience (aka your connections) because seeing the short description of an article or blog post will give them an immediate sense of the piece’s value. Make sure that box is checked.
One thing the video didn’t emphasize was the “sharing tweets” option.
You really want to have this option checked.
For one thing, if you are using Twitter for it’s intended purpose, you’re not just tweeting and retweeting information related to your industry. You’re also having conversations with people, and sometimes the tweets you are posting have nothing to do with your field. That fine and good for Twitter, but not for LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, you want to keep it professional. Folks don’t care about your kids or your cat on LinkedIn.
Another reason to check the “shared tweets” option is to limit the number of updates you are sending to your LinkedIn profile. If your connections are getting 20 Twitter updates every day from you, they won’t like how it clogs up their feed. Limiting yourself to sharing only those tweets that you mark with a #in or #li will ensure that what you are sharing is targeted, and that you won’t be annoying your connections with too many LinkedIn updates.
Questions or comments about connecting Twitter and LinkedIn? Leave a comment in the section below!
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