By David Luke
A New Signal from LinkedIn
I am a big fan of LinkedIn. I like it because it is user friendly, keeps to the business side of life, gives you good referrals, and it’s free. It also allows you to stay up to date on industry happenings.
Several months ago, LinkedIn allowed a group of users the chance to demo its new feature – SIGNAL. They made suggestions on the prototype, and SIGNAL was released to all of us about three months ago.
Greig Wells teaches this feature in his career training webinars, and he can be found at befoundjobs.com. I am a client of his, and he encouraged me to share this information with others.
SIGNAL is a search tool that allows people to pick up real time information that was gathered on Twitter and LinkedIn updates. (Face book has yet to be included) It’s a one-way tool that doesn’t require any responding, but rather, the chance to listen in on what people are saying, and what they are doing.
If you type http://www.linkedin.com/signal/, you are brought to a screen where you can set parameters for any search that you want. You can search by your network, location, or keywords. You can mix those together as well. For example, if you type in two key words such as “looking for” and check out greater NYC area, you get 148,982 responses. To narrow your search, you can pick different key words.
Other search options include Industry, School, Topics, Time, Seniority, or hash tags (key words on Twitter). You can also save your searches to save time the next time you come back for updates.
Signal lets you see and filter updates and tweets from LinkedIn professionals who choose to make their updates visible to anyone. From the Updates section of your home page, click the Search Updates link to see and use some of the following Signal features:
Greig stresses the fact that if you grow your LinkedIn connections, and gain more Twitter connections, then the number of real time updates grows geometrically.
Some people find that Signal is too much like Twitter, but I like it more because it also includes the updates that are done on LinkedIn.
As an example, I’m doing consulting in mobile marketing. When I pick those two key words, and select greater NYC area, I get 561 updates that have been picked up from Twitter and related updates. When I add ten contacts, that number grows to 635 updates. And their contact updates adds another 84 making the total updates 719. Other good key words to play with are “looking for” and “hiring”. Keep playing with companies, key words, and locations, and the options always change.
6 Insider tips for Using SIGNAL
1. Filter: Browse only relevant status updates from your stream
Hidden in the stream of status updates is information that’s valuable and helps you be better at your job. Signal allows you to hone in on information you’re most interested in for e.g. updates from your colleagues (even from folks on your same team) or audiences you’re most interested in researching and understanding.
LinkedIn Signal offers 8 dynamic filters to navigate the stream. You can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or just most popular hash tags.
2. Search for keywords, topics or people across the stream
LinkedIn Signal allows you to also search for specific keywords or topics you’d like to keep up to date on. You could also search for your favorite public personalities or a colleague whose updates you’d like to find quickly.
Given that LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity, you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll find relevant updates associated with specific names, some of which come from the LinkedIn member you’re searching for.
3. Get an auto updated real-time stream with rich content
What’s better yet is that Signal shows all the rich content shared by LinkedIn users in real time. You will see an alert at the top of the stream once new data is available. You don’t need to refresh the page anymore for the latest updates.
4. Find the hottest trending links across any relevant topic
Signal also mines all the shared links on status updates and shows you the most popular links, many of which are the hottest news stories on that topic, updated to the minute.
You will notice that the links will change over time as we continue to assess the relevance of a link based on topic, popularity and recency. Since the trending links are also sensitive to your specific search, the links shown for the search “TechCrunch” will be different than the ones for the search “Meg Whitman”.
5. Who’s shared This Link?
Even better, you can now see who’s shared any of those Trending Links. You can also refine by industry, company and region. Imagine if you wrote a blog post on your company’s blog or were quoted in a news article, you can now see who’s shared that article and made it popular.
6. You can save real time searches
You can save any search, and go back to it to see if there are changes and additions. Not a big deal, but it might save you 30 seconds in your busy day.
Here is my suggestion – Try SIGNAL as soon as you can. It doesn’t cost any more than regular LinkedIn, and is a very good tool for finding out information. The more people who use it, the better it will become. And as Twitter and your LinkedIn contacts continue to grow, the information available to all of us should multiply geometrically. What do you have to lose? And you might find out about an opportunity before your competition does!
If you would like to learn more about Signal on LinkedIn, I recommend Esteban Kozak’s blog here.
Greig Wells is the president and founder of befoundjobs.com
David Luke is a 20-year publishing veteran who is currently consulting in the world of print and outdoor media. He is completing his M.A. in Counseling, and has recently started an intense study on Mobile Marketing certification from the MMA. A trained public speaker, David is coordinating the P3 Career Advancement Division to help further develop the careers of those in the graphic communications industries. He is also the co-host of Ask Deb and Dave, a blog talk radio show geared towards career help and advice. See also: Davidaluke.com
Photo Credit: Signal D456 by Adrian Tritchsler on flickr
Tags: Signal, LinkedIn, BeFoundJobs, Jobs, Hiring, Job Search Tools, Updates, Twitter
