Cool Tools to Help You Manage Your LinkedIn Contacts

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve recently gotten back into the recruiting game.  Last week I interviewed Derek Reese, a former sales guy with LinkedIn.  He started talking to me about the many different tools available out there to help LinkedIn users keep up-to-date with what their contacts are doing – like who got what job and where. In particular, Derek believes that if someone gets a new job, sending a simple contratulatory note can go a long way in terms of networking and getting a job.

Without further adieu, Derek has been kind enough to guest blog for me today and tell you about key social media management tools he uses to get the most out of LinkedIn…

Derek recommends and explains below:

Nutshell Mail

One of the things I find most frustrating about social networks is you need to go through a number of irrelevant posts to get to the juicy details. Do you really care that someone is enjoying a cup of coffee or connecting with a facilities manager in Boise? If you value your time, but still want to follow the action, I find Nutshell Mail by Constant Contact very useful. Here’s why:

1) I can set the delivery time based on my needs.

2) I can receive a summary of what’s happening in my network, including a breakdown of important information like when connections change jobs as well as other relevant news (new connections/status updates).

However, what I do find frustrating is I can’t select the feeds I’m most interested in. I hope this will change sometime soon.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck has evolved into the industry standard for managing the various social networks in our lives (LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook). The advantage of Tweetdeck is their strong relationship with LinkedIn. In fact, Tweetdeck was one of the first companies to use the LinkedIn API on their platform.

What I like about Tweetdeck is I’m able to see what my network is up to in realtime, while having the ability to select the updates most important to me.

What’s also great about Tweetdeck is the application is designed for both iPhone/iPad and Android systems which is terrific for the on the go executive.

Hootsuite & Seesmic

The main difference between Hootsuite/Seesmic and Tweetdeck is the former are web-based applications (meaning they can be accessed via multiple computers). What I find challenging is both applications lack customization. You’re receiving feeds you may not be interested in (connections, status updates, etc). However, they’re very useful if your company prevents downloading external applications. Also, one can scroll through their updates faster than on the LinkedIn site (automatic loading of streams).

Thanks, Derek, for highlighting some fantastic tools!  Carpe diem…

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