LinkedIn connects marketers to millions of affluent, ambitious, and influential professionals.
The undisputed leader in business and career-oriented social networking, LinkedIn’s valuable demographic is sought after by marketers. It can help you grow professionally and improve your organization’s networking effectiveness. From contact management to tracking marketing campaigns, the LinkedIn tools below will help you leverage the platform to its full potential.
8 great LinkedIn tools for business
1. SlideShare
Owned by LinkedIn, SlideShare is an easy way to share your expertise. You can create webinars, embed YouTube videos, and upload your sales and marketing presentations, PDFs, portfolios, and conference presentations. Just connect to your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to broadcast your thought leadership.
2. OFunnel
OFunnel is like Google Alerts for relationships. This cool app alerts you when someone in your LinkedIn network makes new connections. If you’ve ever used the “Saved Searches” feature, you’ll find that OFunnel is more robust. It’s also a great replacement for the LinkedIn RSS service, which was retired late last year. This app is particularly helpful for salespeople who are looking to manage relationships and gain entry to new accounts.
3. SyncME
Yearning for a unified contact list? SyncME synchronizes your smartphone with your connections’ latest photos, email addresses, and phone numbers. Whenever one of them changes something on their profile, such as their job title, the app automatically syncs with LinkedIn and Facebook — no action required on your part. You can see their photos full-screen when they call you, and you can select how you appear on their phones when you call them via the use of a mobile business card.
4. LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn Pulse is a visual feed that sends you news, social network updates, and RSS, magazine, and blog feeds to your smartphone. It enables you to customize your news reading experience, explore content, and share stories to your favorite social platforms. Sign in with your LinkedIn account to sync what you’re already following, save articles, and join the conversation.
5. Oktopost
Oktopost is designed for B2B social-media marketers. It distributes content and helps you manage and track the metrics of social campaigns and review/reply to all comments across social networks via one interface. It also captures leads and integrates them with Salesforce.com, Marketo, and HubSpot.
6. Five Hundred Plus
Five Hundred Plus is an app that uses LinkedIn to help you make the most of your connections. Inspired by CRM (customer relationship management) tools, it help you track when you were last in touch with someone someone in your network and when you should get back in touch so they don’t forget you.
7. Outlook Social Connector
Outlook Social Connector synchronizes your LinkedIn contact data with Outlook, helping you obtain information about your friends and colleagues and see their status updates from other networks. It can also display a quick view of related Outlook content — conversations, meetings, and shared attachments — when you click on one of their email messages.
8. Connection Timeline
Connection Timeline visualizes your LinkedIn connections in a three-dimensional timeline that implicitly groups your connections into a social graph. It helps you you reconnect with old contacts and grow your network based on degrees of separation.