I recently was invited to be part of a 25,000-person group to test LinkedIn’s new blogging platform. I just tested it out this morning. You can read about it there.
Or, if you’d rather not jump, here’s the extent of that post. I’d be interested in what other regular bloggers think about LinkedIn’s strategy.
Late last week, I received an invitation to start blogging on LinkedIn’s blogging platform. LinkedIn bills it as a tool to help members build their brand in the realm of this network.
I think it’s a good move for LinkedIn, and a great way for LinkedIn members to share their ideas. I welcome any tool that will facilitate more open communication and sharing of expertise.
But for those of us who have already built a network through our own blogs (I’ve beenblogging about higher ed marketing, branding and PR since 2005), I’m not sure how much value this platform will bring to us. For example, I already automatically push my posts to LinkedIn from my WordPress site, in order to gain more eyeballs, and it seems to work. Why would I need to replicate my blogging efforts over here?
It promises to open new pathways to additional readers, and perhaps, with LinkedIn’s strong reputation as the network for professionals, it will provide even more networking opportunities. That, at least, is the promise.
As for me, I won’t be giving up my existing blog anytime soon. But for people who want to start blogging and build a following in the LinkedIn sphere, this may be just the ticket.
The trick with blogging anywhere — within a community like LinkedIn or out on your own — is that you’ve got to stick with it.
By now, you’ve heard about LinkedIn’s announcement that it was inviting colleges and universities to create official university pages in that space.
The social network known for helping prospective employees find the right job now wants to get in the business of helping prospective students find the right college.
Will it work?
Is this move a smart expansion of the LinkedIn brand or will it lead to a possible dilution or lack of focus for one of the more distinctive social networks out there?
Christina Allen, LinkedIn’s director of product management, writes in the university pages announcement that these sites “will be especially valuable for students making their first, big decision about where to attend college” and added that in September, LinkedIn will open up to high school students “who can use LinkedIn to explore schools worldwide, greatly expand their understanding of the careers available, and get a head start on building a network of family and friends to help guide them at every milestone.”
I guess soon we’ll see adolescents posting their resumes on LinkedIn, right alongside job-seekers. Maybe even competing for positions.
But some on the business side — which is LinkedIn’s niche — think the move could lead to a loss in credibility for the service. They like LinkedIn’s focus on talent recruitment, not student recruitment.
“When thinking about LinkedIn, numerous adjectives come to mind: professional, business-oriented, networking,” writes Victoria Derrick in a recent Business2Community article. ‘A few of the top reasons businesses use LinkedIn are: to gain exposure to professionals and consumers, recruit new talent, and increase credibility.”
But maybe those same adjectives come to mind when describing certain students looking for a college degree. As we’ve read in countless reports over the past few years, the demographics of college-bound students are changing. From my own experience, working at a university where the vast majority of students are engineering and science majors, I know that many of them are focused, serious-minded students who are looking at the college experience as a pathway to great careers. Many of these students also had this mindset while in high school. We also must consider older students who are re-entering college after losing jobs to downsizing, or military veterans returning to campus, and many other non-traditional audiences for whom LinkedIn may hold more appeal than other social media venues.
That’s more or less how the Wall Street Journal sees the move. “Focusing more on higher education is a natural extension for LinkedIn, and one that opens up the company to a whole new territory of users–young people,” writes the WSJ’s Brian L. Fitzgerald. “LinkedIn says ‘smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures when they step foot into high school.'”
But Fitzgerald adds something that gives me pause:
For LinkedIn, it’s less about trying to grab a group of savvy social-media kids allegedly growing bored with Facebook, and more about plying that old General Motors concept: Start out the customers young and stay with them through different stages of their lives. A college prospect with a LinkedIn account is likely to become a professional employee with a LinkedIn account a few years later. (Crossing fingers for a good economy.)
It’s that “plying that old General Motors concept” that bugs me. GM became known for extending its brand too far, trying to build all kinds of cars for all kinds of customers. And we saw the outcome of that brand extension in the form of a bailout.
“Reinvention,” Business2Community’s Derrick notes, “is sometimes a necessary aspect of business that can result in success and increased brand awareness. For other companies, it spells disaster.”
Let’s hope LinkedIn is making the right move — for its core business and for higher education.
P.S. – If you want to jump on the LinkedIn bandwagon and apply for one of the university pages, Karine Joly’s recent blog post provides a good step-by-step approach. (I’ve already submitted a request on behalf of my university. Might as well join the herd, right?)
Also, just for fun, view LinkedIn’s video targeting thecollege crowd:
That’s the first of three social media “rules” addressed in this post by Bryan Howland, “Three Social Media Rules We’ve (Intentionally) Broken.” (Thanks to Malli Gero for posting the link on the PRWise LinkedIn group.)
The bottom line for a business [or university-ed.] engaging in social media is to give their audience/customers/fans, etc. what they want. It is far better to have happy customers than it is to worry about what the social media “purists” think about your efforts.
Here, here.
As for posting press releases in social media space, Howland points out that you can use press releases to create an interactive experience with Facebook fans or Twitter followers. “Sometimes,” he writes, “your fans want to read your press releases. … [D]on’t take advantage of your fans, or confuse promoting your business with engaging with them, but don’t be afraid to give ‘em what they want either.”
Our automated Twitter feed to Facebook pushes news releases and blog posts to our fan page. Sometimes, people even interact with those posts.
Then again, we try to mix things up a bit on both Twitter and Facebook. We manually post tweets and status updates from real live people typing on real keyboards, just like I’m doing right now. (Or so you assume.) As Rachel Reuben pointed out in a recent .eduguru post, “Something as simple as a [Facebook] status update that ties to an emotional time in new, current, and former students lives seems to resonate.”
If you sensed a trend that more and more campuses were jumping on the social networking bandwagon, some recent research by BlueFuego will confirm your suspicions.
BlueFuego (Brad J. Ward and Joe Gaylor) wanted to find out what colleges and universities were using social web “callouts” (those invitations to “Friend us on Facebook,” “follow us on Twitter” or “stalk us on MySpace” that you find on many school sites these days, or just the icons for various social media sites).
BF looked at the websites of 1,387 four-year colleges and universities, focusing on these campuses’ use of callouts on the institution’s homepage, main admissions site and main alumni site. Comparing the numbers of callouts from March 1 to August 1, BF recorded a doubling in the number across all three categories.
Brad and Joe pulled together a lot of great data (click through their slidedeck or see their own thumbnail analysis for more detail) but the key takeaway for me is that yes, there is a move afoot among colleges and universities to connect their institutional sites with the popular existing social media platforms. This sort of cross-pollenization is a good thing for campuses, because it indicates an effort to reach out beyond our own institutional sites and to connect with audiences on different turf.
It will be interesting to see how the social web callout trend goes in another six months, and what other research related to these observations BlueFuego will share with us next.
I recently was invited to be part of a 25,000-person group to test LinkedIn’s new blogging platform. I just tested it out this morning. You can read about it there.
