Looking Out and Linking In
A colleague from an executive search firm recently asked me this question:
Are you finding LinkedIn to be better than Outlook? I am struggling a bit with how best to utilize LinkedIn. Plus, we are debating how best to use it at work.
Good question as many of us fight to keep current as we push the envelope of possible professional (or unprofessional) contacts.
I find resonance in the anonymous phrase: “In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they’re not.”
So it should be much easier to use LinkedIn as users no longer must take (and bill) time to update customer/client information as folks are doing that themselves, with an accuracy as close to 100% as possible, theoretically. However, I find that in practice I still rely on my Outlook auto-fills when sending emails and only go to LinkedIn when something bounces back.
I have pinged them to find more information and will add when I learn more.
posted by Dr. Michael Kull at
11:04 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Michael,
There are two ways to integrate LinkedIn and Outlook. The easiest way is to install the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar. (You can go to the bottom of any LinkedIn page and click on “Outlook Toolbar”, or else use this link: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_download)
The Outlook toolbar not only makes it easy to upload contacts *to* Outlook, but it also makes it easy to use LinkedIn to keep your Outlook contact info updated. A special section of the Outlook toolbar will let you know when any of your LinkedIn connections have changed their email address, job title, or organization. You can then quickly update Outlook’s information on the contact.
The Outlook toolbar also has a very cool feature to help you manage your Outlook email Inbox. When you receive and open an incoming Outlook email you’ll see a little “in” icon in the upper right corner of the message. When you mouse-over that icon you’ll see the sender’s LinkedIn ‘mini-profile’ containing their title, organization and industry plus a link to their full LinkedIn profile and info on how closely connected you are. If they’re not already a connection of yours on LinkedIn, you can click to invite them to connect.
For anyone who uses both LinkedIn and Outlook I recommend using the Outlook toolbar (LinkedIn also has toolbars that work for major Webmail services, like Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) However there is also a less sophisticated way to sync Outlook and LinkedIn, which is to export your LinkedIn connections back to Outlook (or to other email clients or services): http://www.linkedin.com/addressBookExport
In general, LinkedIn doesn't replace Outlook, but it's a great way to manage contact info and keep it up-to-date. LinkedIn has also added features now that let you add tags to your LinkedIn connections so you can group them into flexible categories.
9:57 AM
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home