A couple of weeks ago LinkedIn joined Twitter, Facebook, Digg and others by offering their own social sharing button.   In some respects this is pretty cool for bloggers, but how does it relate to a college website?  As a college web person, what uses would I have for this button?  Well I have been thinking about this, and I have a few suggestions.

How To Install The Button

Before we get into how to use it, we should quickly talk about how to install the button on your website.  It is extremely simple.  Simply head over to the LinkedIn Publishers page and choose your button and grab the javascript code to embed on your website.  It’s so easy I was able to do it on this blog!  Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the bottom of this post and you will see it along with the rest of the sharing options.  Why not give it a try and share this article on LinkedIn while you are at it?

Job Posting Pages

Personally when I think about LinkedIn I think of my social resume.  I also think that if I were in need of a job, it is the first place I would invest serious time.  Maybe someone I know works at a place that would be a perfect fit for me.  A lot of times it’s not about what you know but who you know, right?  If your school has a section where they post jobs, adding the LinkedIn Share button is a super easy way to help get the word out about the job.  From looking at internal site search data some of the most common results were terms like jobs, employment and hiring.  There are a lot of great reasons why people would want to work at your college.  Hint to any job boards out there–you might want to look at adding this button too.

Career Services Pages

When you think of a job network at an institution, Career Services is usually the first to come to mind.  Odds are most current students are at least slightly social media savvy. If I had to guess I would say that 95% of college students are on Facebook.  The students close to graduating are probably thinking about their resume.  That is one of the big things Career Services helps with.  As I said earlier LinkedIn is your 21st century online social resume.  Making it easy to share career information and job postings on LinkedIn just feels like a perfect match.

Alumni Blogs

If you have any alumni blogs then LinkedIn could be an interesting way to promote them.  Many of these individuals probably have a lot of connections with former classmates.  If you are thinking about ways to generate donations then making it really easy for them to share content directed towards them is extremely valuable.  After all, LinkedIn is the network with individuals who have real financial assets.  This really goes beyond just alumni blogs into all alumni content. A giving campaign and homecoming seem like great idea targets for LinkedIn sharing.

Closing

There are always new widgets and apps popping up.  We also see just as many widgets and apps disappearing.  With over 85 million users they also have the critical mass.  It is a risk jumping on a new one, but LinkedIn has made the barrier of entry extremely low.  It’s also nice to FINALLY see LinkedIn waking up and beginning to open up parts of their API.  LinkedIn still has a long way to go, but this is a good step.

What other interesting ways can you think of that a college or university website could use the LinkedIn Share Button?

This post was written by Kyle James