Just when I thought I was going to leave LinkedIn.com alone as a blog topic for awhile since I have a few recent posts on it, LinkedIn has to go and introduce a cool new feature.  Now you can plug mini applications (widgets) into your LinkedIn profile.  These applications range from auto-embedding your most recent blog posts, displaying Power Point presentations, embedding Twitter activity or sharing documents among other apps.

The power in this is that you further engage visitors to your profile and give them a bigger picture of who you are and what you are all about.  Since LinkedIn is a networking website, the more you can impress visitors on the frontend, the less selling you have to do to get them to join your network.

It looks like there is still some bugs with the release of this new feature (at the time of this blog writing, my LinkedIn WordPress application is not displaying anything).  However, these bugs are bound to get ironed out soon, and I have no doubt many more applications will get introduced over time.  If you don’t have a LinkedIn account setup yet, you are soooo yesterday! 

LinkedIn.com is a great way to connect online with other business professionals.  On the surface, after first joining, it might seem like LinkedIn doesn’t offer much in the way of communicating with other users – and to a degree, yes, it is not as instant communication gratifying as many of the other social networking sites.

Two ways that are working for me at meeting and connecting with new contacts on the site is to go to LinkedIn’s Q&A section.  Here members can post questions and answer other member’s questions.  Members can pose questions on a variety of different topics – and they do vary greatly.  I have been scanning the questions posted on a daily basis and throw in an answer post wherever I have some input to give, even if it not in an area I’m not an expert.  Since multiple members tend to post answers for each question, it leads to follow up conversations among the original questioner and various members who posted.

Another method of networking on LinkedIn is to find groups that members have formed that interest you or relate to your field of work and join them.  Once accepted into the group you will have access to all the communication that is going on within that group.  I get a daily summery of all my group’s activites emailed to me daily.  From this summery, I can click on discussions I want to get involved in on the website.