9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Company Website

By Brian Honigman at Mashable:
Adding LinkedIn’s social features to your company website is a great way to tap into both a large-scale recruitment platform and a targeted network of business contacts. Don’t believe it? Well, according to a study conducted by Bullhorn, a web-based software and services firm, LinkedIn is the leading social network for job recruiting.
Another study conducted by HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, showed that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. These stats highlight how increasing the integration of LinkedIn on your website can help improve the success of your business.
If you’re ready to get started, here are nine key plugins and examples.

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1. Share Button

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The Share button should be placed on your site next to white papers, technical product guides, articles, throughout your blog, and on any other page that features content of a professional or business nature. This allows your site visitors to click the button and share the related content via LinkedIn.
Also, because LinkedIn’s audience is business-centric, the LinkedIn Share button should be used much more sparingly than, say, the Facebook Like button. For instance, placing a Share button on a product page for jeans would not be relevant to the average LinkedIn user, but placing a Share button on an article about the impact of jean sales on your industry would make sense. A natural place to install a Share button is a company’s blog.

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2. Recommend Button

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Using the Recommend button on your website lets visitors recommend your company’s products or services on LinkedIn. The Recommend button can also be used in the product and services sections of your LinkedIn company page. Keep in mind that this plugin isn’t right for every type of product or service page. Ask yourself if what you plan to add the Recommend button to is something that has a business-to-business use and is relevant to the LinkedIn audience.
A good example of a company using the Recommend button well is Intel. In this case, Intel used its LinkedIn company page to feature products with high recommendations. By putting a Recommend button beside a product on LinkedIn, and linking it back to the product page on Intel’s website, Intel can use LinkedIn to generate even more recommendations.

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3. Follow Company Button

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The Follow Company button give companies a way to grow their LinkedIn company page directly from their website. Once a user is following your company on LinkedIn, they can see your status updates in their LinkedIn news feed, which can help you regularly engage them and develop leads for your business.
The Follow Company button comes in two variations and is most effective when used on the homepage, blog, and contact page of your website. Some companies have also used the button in the header and footer of their site as a constant reminder to visitors to join them on LinkedIn.

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4. Company Profile

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The Company Profile plugin is essentially a virtual business card, but for your whole company. As you can see from Mashable’s Company Profile above, the plugin features your company logo, a Follow button, a summary of the company, and the number of employees at the company who are on LinkedIn.
There are three ways to display a Company Profile. The above is the most extensive because it includes the Follow button, giving web visitors the opportunity to follow your company on LinkedIn. The other two options simply feature the LinkedIn logo until you either click or hover over it for more info.
You can place this plugin on your homepage, except for the largest version, which should be featured lower on the page. The smaller versions of the plugin can be added wherever you list other social networks on your homepage. Lastly, placing the Company Profile on the about, contact, or careers page of your website is a good idea.

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5. Company Insider

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The Company Insider plugin allows you to highlight your company’s employees, which helps to give a human face to your business. This plugin can be customized for visitors to your website in three different ways: It can highlight the current employees of a company that are in your LinkedIn network, new hires to the company, and promotions and changes within your employee structure. The most ideal place to use this plugin is on your company’s careers page, much like the MSLGROUP example above.
This feature helps job seekers get a sense of your company’s growth, see how quickly current employees move up the career ladder, and most importantly, see any employees who are in their LinkedIn network. You also have the option to hide any of the three features of this plugin, although it’s recommended that you show them all.

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6. Member Profile

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The Member Profile plugin serves as your business card on LinkedIn. The example above is how the regular Member Profile plugin would display on your website. There is also a Full Member Profile plugin, which is similar, except that it allows for a much more extensive view of your profile. This plugin is most commonly found on personal blogs and on the websites of smaller start-ups. That’s because most companies elect to add LinkedIn plugins that highlight the organization as a whole, as opposed to one individual.

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7. Apply Button

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The Apply button allows applicants to quickly and easily apply for a job directly on your website with their LinkedIn profile. You can choose to customize this feature with your company logo, color choice, and three custom “yes or no” questions. With more coding, this feature can also be integrated into an existing applicant tracking system like Jobvite.
This plugin is beneficial for job applicants because all that is necessary for them to apply to a position is an updated LinkedIn profile. It’s a beneficial addition to your company’s recruitment efforts because it quickly allows you to see an applicant’s referrals, recommendations, and network of related contacts. It’s best utilized when placed on your website’s career page.

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8. Sign In With LinkedIn

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The Sign In with LinkedIn function allows people to sign in or register with your site using their LinkedIn credentials. This is a particularly beneficial addition for your customers because it allows them to quickly identify themselves when they attempt to leave a comment on your blog or forum. Your company also benefits because it receives insightful information from the people who register. This knowledge can be used to make more informed decisions concerning the ebb and flow of web traffic, for example.
Really, any website that requires visitors to register or sign in can benefit from Sign In with LinkedIn. Career-oriented websites can really gain the most from this functionality, which is exactly what visualize.me, shown above, does with their resume visualizer.

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9. Jobs You May Be Interested In

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The Jobs You May Be Interested In plugin helps job seekers by showing them only the jobs your company has posted on LinkedIn that relate to their experience and expertise. The best placement for this plugin would be on the careers or jobs section of your website. However, this plugin is only relevant if you’ve paid to have jobs listed on LinkedIn. Above are the job listings most relevant to me at American Express when I’m logged into LinkedIn. If you were to view this plugin live, and be logged into LinkedIn, the results would be specific to your LinkedIn profile.
This plugin also allows a company to show all jobs from multiple companies that are relevant to a LinkedIn user’s experience. This particular function is mostly for job listing websites because it’s highly unlikely your company would want to highlight job openings at other companies.



Brian Honigman is a social media account manager at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics certified partner that also specializes in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC. Follow him at @Brian_Honigman and read his blog at BrianHonigman.com.