LinkedIn Badge – A Great Compliment to Your Profile Page

Let’s face it, most profile or “About” pages tend to be a bit lacklustre. It isn’t easy captivating an audience by simply providing a mission statement, listing your qualifications, skills and past work experience. Nowadays, visitors usually want to know more about you – even more so if they’ve never met you – than what your everyday curriculum vitae tends to offer. Incorporating your LinkedIn Profile can help foster a deeper connection with your target audience. 

Linkedin is a popular business-oriented social network, primarily used for business networking. Older cousin to social network giants Facebook and Twitter, it shares many of the same facilities in that there is an editable, interactive profile, the ability to communicate with other members, and build a network of contacts throughout the globe. LinkedIn, however, focuses on the professional aspect of your life.  In fact, it allows an interested party to interact with your résumé instead of merely reviewing it. They can look deeper into your network or professional background, helping someone looking at your profile to know that you’re the professional for them.

The LinkedIn Profile widget has 3 display modes: Inline, Icon/Name, and Icon. Personally I prefer the Inline display mode, as it has a more prominent display, including a spot for your photo. This display mode works best in its own space. The Icon/Name and Icon are considerably more discreet options, which would work best within a series of social network icons. There is an option for “On Hover,” and “On Click,” which provides a pop-up identical to the Inline display mode. There is one final option, “Show Connections,” that you can turn off or on.

To get started, you’ll need to visit LinkedIn’s Developer page to set your preferences and grab the necessary code. I have provided a guide to set up the Inline display mode because I find the Icon/Name and Icon options difficult to fit with most styles of websites due almost exclusively to their small size, which makes pairing it alongside anything else problematic. 

Once you have the code, it is time to follow the instructions to implement.

Of course there are several other ways to integrate your LinkedIn profile into your website, but I feel this is the most effective and least obtrusive option.  If you want to explore the other options, see http://developer.linkedin.com/community/plugins.

Authored By: Bryan Coughlin, Client Relations