One of the most important factors to being successful on Twitter – probably THE most important consideration – is finding a great cohort of tweeps to follow. Having a community of colleagues and interesting people to track on Twitter creates an experience that would be difficult to replicate elsewhere. Where else can you find a stream of insights, articles, commentary, data and – yes – discussions about food! There is no better place!
So, thanks to @MegGuiseppi for pointing out LinkedIn’s new feature that allows you to easily find your LinkedIn colleagues on Twitter!
First things first, though…You will need to sign up to integrate your Twitter account with your LinkedIn account. (This new application will only alert you to your LinkedIn contacts who have done the same. I do NOT suggest a straight feed of all of your Tweets into LinkedIn…Select the option that requires you to tag your tweets that feed to LinkedIn.)
Visit the Tweets install page. Adam Nash (@adamnash) writes on the LinkedIn blog, “Add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile… Add it to your homepage to keep track of your twitter lists right from LinkedIn, or add it to your profile if you want to include your most recent tweets.”
Meg shares Adam’s description of the new features listed in his post on the LinkedIn blog:
- Once you’ve installed the Tweets application, you can easily access it from anywhere on LinkedIn using the “More…” menu at the top of the website.
- The Overview tab has been updated with an improved design to help you easily find everyone you currently follow on Twitter, view their Twitter feed, and tweet from your own account.
- A new module, “Connections to Follow”, has been added to recommend new people for you to follow, based on your LinkedIn connections.
- A new tab has been added to Tweets called “Connections”. On that page, you can see all of your LinkedIn connections who have added Twitter accounts to their LinkedIn profiles. Simple navigation is provided to make it easy to see who you are and aren’t following on Twitter.
- One of the most useful features of the new Tweets application is the ability to save your LinkedIn connections as a dynamic Twitter list.
He suggests you consider installing Company Buzz as well, an application for saving and tracking companies, keywords, brands and products on Twitter.
It is always interesting to see synergies between networks, but it is also important to know when to integrate and share between them and when not to. Recently, I’ve read a lot of tweets from friends bemoaning the integration between Twitter and LinkedIn. These professionals have been imploring Twitter users to use some discretion when Tweeting directly to LinkedIn. Being able to find your contacts is pretty neat, but be sure you think through what you want to do with them!
photo by luc