When you open your LinkedIn page to update your status, you will notice a new feature. From today LinkedIn enabled easy sharing of news and links. A nice new feature which enables you to share what’s hot in your domain. It’s easy to share the news with your network. LinkedIn is step by step becoming more social.

Facebook users will directly recognize the feature. But for a long time LinkedIn was just lacking it. Potentially it can dramatically change the LinkedIn usage. I will show the new feature based on my own first experiment.

LinkedIn Share feature step by step

1. Within your “Network activity” part of your LinkedIn home page you will find the Share box. For a longer time you were already able to update your network with your current status. A feature still many people don’t seem to know about. Today this feature has been extended with link and news sharing by clicking “Link or News” (yellow in the image below).

2. Copy the url of the Internet page you would like to share and past it in the box below “Add URL”. Choose Attach and you will be shown what information LinkedIn retrieved from the url. If you wish you can choose to limit the amount of people your update will be shared with.

3. Don’t forget (because I did the first time) to fill in the top box with your update message. This one will be shown on top and within your Twitter update.You are able to edit the text LinkedIn retrieved from the url. Feel free to add the quote you prefer to show. Click “Save” to keep all your changes.

4. If you are satisfied about the result you can Share it with your network. Don’t worry, you will be able to delete your update after sharing if you wish.

5. You will be able to share your LinkedIn update with your Twitter followers once you have linked your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

5. News websites and blogs are often providing “Share” options, including sharing with your LinkedIn network. See for example our share options under this post. These “Share” options will open a new window with the LinkedIn Share box. If you wish you can also add different share options to your browsers, for example by using Shareaholic.

LinkedIn is becoming more social

Soon you will notice more and more updates, including links and news, in your “Network Activity” overview. Using the new links and news feature will result in more visible updates, thanks to the included pictures. Of course you can also Share with your network the relevant links and news that you received from someone. The original sender will treat it as a compliment you decided to “reshare”.

Commenting a status update is still possible..

It feels like step by step LinkedIn is becoming more social. Personally I really appreciate this. These “social” changes will increase the interactivity on LinkedIn. People who are currently not using one of the social networks like Facebook and Twitter will be able to start experiencing the power of sharing knowledge and news. For them there is little need to join the other networks if LinkedIn keeps developing like they are doing at the moment. Besides I think that many professional users of Twitter could consider switching completely to LinkedIn once they realize their audience is not (yet) on Twitter.

The source: LinkedIn blog

Today LinkedIn announce the extension of the Share feature with a blog post: Sharing news on LinkedIn just got easier. The video below shows the new possibilities.

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