product tests

I was checking out my LinkedIn updates for the first time since getting back from Tenerife to find that they’d added a private “personal notes” dashboard. Beneath all of your connections, you can add all sorts of useful info about them that only you (and LinkedIn, of course) can see.

Here’s a step-by-step guide, plus a couple of suggestions on how this new LinkedIn feature can be improved. Well, IMHO and from a better UX perspective, anyway.

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 1 – about your contact

Sorry, Mark Vang. I was checking out your “broken” connections when I saw the Tour for the new Personal Notes feature on LinkedIn for the first time.

It’s a handy new feature, a little more developed than the similar facility on Google+. So here we go with a walk-through…

…1 – make a few personal notes about your contact.

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 2 – Conversation History

Ever received an e-mail that opens with:

“Hey, Jay. Do you remember when we said “x” about “y” in case “z” happens? Well it has!”…

…and you just haven’t got a clue what you’re supposed to be remembering!?

Well now, beneath your contact, the last conversation you had with them displays as a prompt. This is great if the last conversation is the one your contact/client is referring to. Not so great if you’ve spoken many times since.

I’ll add to this description if this feature lists more than one historical chat.

I wonder whether the ‘contacts’ draw on iPhone Mail as LinkedIn has now officially partnered with the Apple service? Saw an article in today’s F+ ezine all about this intriguing update: http://goo.gl/5PIbVN

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 2a – Reminders

Add reminders. This could simply be when you promised to get in touch/meet with your LinkedIn connection or a critical update/deadline you said you’d deliver by.

The options for the reminders are minimal and inflexible, so you may want to add a note along with the reminder. You can choose reminders in:

► 1 day
► 1 week
► 1 month
► recurring

This will be very handy if this syncs with your iCalendar both ways. I’ll track this and come back with an addendum to this description.

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 2b – how you met

Save info about where you met and who introduced you, if applicable. This is an awesome feature if you’re someone who does a lot of real-world networking or hops between social media platforms/communities.

nb – you can now see the list of “personal notes” start to expand under the “Relationships” tab as you add more data about a contact. Be interesting to see how this plays out in Calendar!

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 2c – Contact Tags

You can add LinkedIn’s suggested tags beneath your contact, e.g. classmate, colleague, favourites, etc. Perhaps more appropriate, as LinkedIn is all about networking and meeting new people, you can create and manage your own.

Wouldn’t it be great if LinkedIn could provide “suggested tags”, like those you see on CircleCount.com?

Y’know, perhaps we associate a contact with one niche having had experience with them there. However, they may be more prolific (and relevant) in others. True, each contact has a list of endorsements.

However, the way they’re displayed on LinkedIn – with the skill and then a list of faces of contacts who’ve given them the endorsement – is not a great way of providing an “at-a-glance” view of what your contact excels in. #justsayin

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 3 – import contacts

Keep a one-stop calendar and contacts list on LinkedIn by syncing your iCalendar and e-mail address book. Now, LinkedIn has asked permission to “manage” my Google contacts. Yeah, good luck with that if it lists all 16,600 followers from Google+…

…as long as it doesn’t blast out a random e-mail to all my GMail contacts, then I’m okay with it to an extent.

However, I do hate granting access to third party apps that want to “manage” my stuff. Access, for sure. But why the need to manage?

Yeah, think I might revoke this one, despite the War and Peace effort (purple box) trying to convince us that allowing LinkedIn to manage your contacts and calendar is a wise move. That sort of puts me off, too.

LinkedIn Personal Notes | 4 – Commonality

A simple graph showing which skills and expertise (top bubble) and groups (bottom bubble) you and your contact have in common.

If you share skills but no groups, perhaps you could check out the groups your contact frequents and get involved. You know, actually PARTICIPATE? ☺

And there you have it. A quick walk through how to manage your connections on LinkedIn. I’m not sure about all of the features yet, but will no doubt warm to those that don’t convince me as long as they behave. So, over to you:

Are there any ways you would improve this service?
Will you use it for all of your LinkedIn connections or just add personal notes for those who you know you ought to be making more of an effort to connect with?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

10 Tips: How to Use LinkedIn to Drive Traffic to Your Blog (business2community.com)
How To Use LinkedIn To Find New Clients (business2community.com)

I’d just like to try an experiment with today’s post. I think I’ve found an answer to the age-old problem of being able to type your research/blogging notes into your browser with your research window still open, yet retain the flexibility of the Internet on both sides of the productivity equation.

Are you with me?

For donkeys’, I’ve been looking for writing software that allows you to split the screen in your browser, type directly into the Internet and yet work independently on both halves of the window simultaneously. Too much too ask?

What Note-writing software is readily available?

Evernote, NoteTab Light and MS OneNote all have their plusses, but none offer the all-in-one package.

Evernote’s confirmed its main purpose is not a text editor and currently has no plans to introduce dual-window viewing/editing.

NoteTab Light’s pretty good, but that all depends on how you are working with nothing but plain text and 100% off-line.

MS OneNote is so versatile and you can keep it on top while you shrink the open window in your browser, but you can sometimes only shrink the window so much.

Also, the fact that you can’t align the content in the window right or left and you can’t stop OneNote scrolling discounts the combinations as 100% productive tools.