I have written several posts over the past couple of months regarding Linkedin and how to use this professional social network to help promote your blog. If you want to catch up on those posts, here are the links : Promote your Blog with LinkedIn – Part 1 and Using Linkedin to Promote Your Blog -Part 2.
The folks at Linkedin have been adding new features fast and furious during the first part of this year. Their latest improvements may be the most beneficial to bloggers. I am referring to the major changes that Linkedin has added to the Linkedin Groups feature. Linkedin allows users to join 50 groups per account and there are tens of thousands of groups on virtually any topic you can think. Bottom line – If you blog about it, there will be multiple groups about it on Linkedin.
Changes to Linkedin Groups
At first glance you will probably do a double take and see if you logged into your Facebook account by accident. There are a LOT of features that were “borrowed” from Facebook. It was the intention of Linkedin to make the Groups feature more interactive and who better to emulate then FB.
Here are some of the coolest new features that will help you build relationships, help your build your brand and grow traffic back to your blog
- Like it – Yes, you can now “like” discussions and add comments to the thread. This has definitely helped breath life in Groups by making it easy to engage with other members.
- Add your blog link to the discussion – Again, very similar to FB. When you start a new discussion thread you add the title, the body of the discussion and then add a link to your blog post.
- Group Members now decide what content makes the front page. All new content is displayed on a slider and then user “like” and comment on the posts they like and those posts are prominently displayed on the front page.
- Top Influencers- This is similar to the Top Commenter on your blog. This feature really benefits those that are most active in the group and features their profile prominently. This is a great way to build credibility in your niche and to gain followers. Yes, you can now follow people on Linkedin as well.
This is not an exhaustive list of changes by any stretch but these are the changes that stood out to me as the most beneficial to bloggers.
If you are heading over to Linkedin to check out the features yourself, you may want to consider joining my group – Niche Bloggers – 
