Behind The LinkedIn Curtain (From A Communications Perspective)

Mario Sundar, who heads social media for LinkedIn, and Jose Mallabo, an ex-Hoffmanite and now director of international PR for LinkedIn, shared a look at the platform with communicators in mind.

Many tend to think of LinkedIn as “Facebook for recruiting,” but the platform belongs in the communicator’s mix when it comes to building a company brand and public profile. I know from our own experiences, the simple act of pulling our SlideShare presentations into employee LinkedIn profiles generates ongoing views of these slide decks.

Jose and Mario covered a lot of ground, pointing out that communicators should treat their executive profiles on LinkedIn with the same attention as the ones on their corporate website. Unless you happen to be in the Larry Ellison category (my words, not from Mario or Jose), a search on an executive’s name will typically turn up his or her LinkedIn profile before the company website page on the management team.

Thank goodness this isn’t an issue for Mr. Ellison’s name since his profile on LinkedIn is, how can I put this delicately … “lacking.” No description of the company or his role with the company in the profile and a whopping 31 connections. Larry needs to start networking at some of those Mashable mixers.

Here’s another tidbit that I found particularly interesting.

Have you noticed that articles on companies increasingly include comments from ex-employees?

The Pro version allows anyone to see the names of all employees who have recently departed a given company. If you happen to be a journalist, finding this type of resource through LinkedIn is considerably easier than rooting your way through a rolodex the old-fashion way.

For a large company or a company that tends to attract the public spotlight, it probably behooves you to consider this element in the transition process for departing employees.

Thanks to attending paparazzi, (no doubt hoping for that one shot of Steve Farnsworth or Dan Holden but to no avail), we can share photos of the event.

Mario reminds the crowd that this last piece of information was not tweetable.

Tough to see in this shot, but that’s Jose commanding the room from behind the laptop.