Get LinkedIn Contacts in Front of People, Via Twitter

Ian Hardy @sparticus666 asked: How do I get my new LinkedIn contacts in front of more eyes, through my Twitter or LinkedIn or some combination of the two?

My reply:

Your main Twitter account is one I follow (okay, okay, I follow your other Twitter accounts, too, I’m pretty sure), and you tweet a lot. You don’t want all tweets updating your LinkedIn profile, and what’s more, a fabulous thing to do is to give new LinkedIn connections a bit of a “promo” without even logging in to LinkedIn. Here’s how to reduce the number of tweets going to your LinkedIn contacts who follow your Twitter account on their LinkedIn account while also deciding what should stay, and for how long (depending on when you send the next tweet to your profile update):

1. Edit your profile in LinkedIn, and from the “edit” next to your Twitter account (if more than one, the one that you have selected as the main account, the one to update your profile, thus) to only use as updates to LinkedIn tweets with the #in tag. Also, leave checked the box to expand links in tweets to show a mini-page;

2. Tweet using #in to update your LinkedIn account.

When I want to give someone a bit of promotion, for example, whenever someone with a Twitter handle on their LinkedIn profile joins one of the groups I launched, such as KdL Web2.0 Social Media (in LinkedIn – as well as Twitter and Facebook), I’ll tweet something like the following actual example tweet:

Welcome #KdL @Esthersuchi http://ht.ly/3gm7f pls follow KdL list (check: ur LISTED) intro yourself http://bit.ly/9PFJ1N #in

What’s in this tweet, why’s it so “Guerrilla?” There’s a whole lot in that little tweet:

1. Okay, firstly, I make sure she see it by mentioning her. (If her Twitter handle was far off from her name, such as @SPARTICUSIAN (this is why I often address you by name, in tweets – so my friends stop calling you “Sparti-”CYUS”-sian”), I would address her by name, before her Twitter handle – now this has become @SPARTICUS666);
2. Then, I use the #KdL tag, which a couple hundred people, always growing, take a passing notice of, in Twitter (plus, for a month at a time, it shows up in a search of #kdl – for our KdL Web2.0 Social Media Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2759383&trk=anet_ug_grppro);
3. I include a mini-URL of the new KdL member’s LinkedIn profile and also the #in tag. This way, it updates my profile page – and shows a mini-page of her page and photo as well – so that anyone looking at my profile sees a “plug” for her from me.
4. I also include a relevant link, the mini-URL for our group, KdL in LinkedIn. This is not spammy at all, because of the tweet’s subject matter, and also, we want to show more and more people what we are doing with the KdL group for networking.
5. I did all that in 124 characters for a reason: that much under 140 characters gives me a far higher chance of being retweeted – and, like the guerrilla marketer, takes my tweet – and a nice plug for Esther – to the followings of people I do not have access to.

Now, whomever searches the @osakasaul Twitter timeline and RT that one, I’ll see in my mentions and be looking at you, as a cross-promoter, as someone who “plays ball!”

Try doing more with your tweets, too – but keep them short, for the RTs!

The link shows how this got blogged, by the way.

SauL / OsakaBentures
http://osakabentures.com/

Links:
http://osakabentures.com/2010/11/twitterxlinkedin-promos-of-linkedin-contacts-all-that-goes-in-a-saul-goodtweet-its-guerrilla-marketing/

About Saul Fleischman

Working with social web apps developers on getting things made: my role tends to be functionality ideation, user experience, and also, marketing communications and community development.