LinkedIn’s New Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic

Social media sharing has become one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site and contribute to your overall Internet marketing strategy. Site owners have effectively utilized Facebook and Twitter for online marketing by posting backlinks within the content of their social networking posts. The use of LinkedIn, on the other hand, was not in a very high demand by online marketers, because this professionals-oriented social networking site with roughly 65 million members did not have effective tools to bring large numbers of visitors to your landing pages. Things will drastically change from now on, after LinkedIn introduced a new set of sharing features.

On April 21, 2010, LinkedIn announced a number of changes to its news sharing options. These changes can benefit in your content spread strategy and bring relevant LinkedIn members to your website or blog. Considering the fact that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site, it is, indeed, a very essential resource for online business owners who are investing in Internet marketing.

So what's new in LinkedIn, and how it can benefit your internet marketing?

• Private vs Public - Members now have full control over who sees what they are sharing (everyone, your connections, a group, or a specific individual)
• Images and article excerpt - While posting an article or news on LinkedIn and including a url, LinkedIn will automatically scan the url and pull thumbnail images or article experts and insert it into your post (just like Facebook does now). This way you have more chances that someone will click through your shared content.
• Ability to see and deleted your LinkedIn post - very practical feature to correct grammar mistakes and make your post look perfect before going live.
• Easy re-share option - Like what you are reading? You have a chance to easily re-share the content. LinkedIn also introduces off-site sharing feature (just like you sometimes see Twitter sharing button on many blogs).
• The URL shortener (Lnkd.in) - a new companion to LinkedIn's Twitter integration.
• Attribution - The re-shared article will give credit where credit is due by attributing something you re-share to the person who shared it with you.
• Shared items on your profile - Members can choose to make selected shared items public on their profile which will expose professional interests and expertise. Sharing often will keep members' profiles fresh and relevant.