Adding a "share this to LinkedIn" option to your blog

This article is about putting a "professional share" button onto your blog, to let viewers share a post on LinkedIn.  Although it's written for Google Blogger users, most of the information applies to any website that wants to encourage visitors to promote the site on LinkedIn.

Blogger and LinkedIn - a strange combination?

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site:  it's like Facebook for people's working lives, and it is a place where they can interact with current and former colleagues, peers, counterparts from other companies, and other professional (rather rather than personal) connections.

If your blog isn't related to your job, then LinkedIn may not seem relevant.

But chances are that your hobby is of professional interest for some of your readers.   Giving them the opportunity to share your content to LinkedIn may be valuable for you (promoting your blog) and them (growing their credibility by sharing good information with their associates).


"The art of the professional share" - LinkedIn's share buttons

LinkedIn now offers official sharing buttons.

Even if you don't have a LinkedIn account yourself, you can go to their Publishers page, and get the code for a sharing button.   Currently they have options for:

• Vertical button with count
• Horizontal button with count
• Button without a count (looks the same horizontal or vertical)

There is also an optional field where you can enter the URL to be shared:  this could be useful if you want to give readers to opportunity to promote a different page or website from your blog.

The code that LinkedIn provide is simple, and you can install it just the same way that you install any social-networking sharing button onto your blog.


What your viewers see:

When one of your viewers clicks on the "Share to linked in" button, they are shown a new window (even if they already have LinkedIn open in another tab).

If they're not currently logged in, they are asked to log in or to join if they don't already have an account.   (For a while, LinkedIn was exclusive:  you could only join if you were invited by a member.  those days are long-gone.)

Once they are logged in, the window looks like this:

The LinkedIn user can choose:

To edit the details of the shared item:
They can change the title (which defaults to the title from the window where the link was clicked), and also add some supporting text.

Which picture to show with the shared item:
Like Facebook, LinkedIn pulls the various options from your blog-screen, both the post and also the sidebars.   The << and >> buttons let the user move between the possible pictures.  The option for "no picture", is under Edit.  Some people may miss this, and think that the picture is compulsory, so you should make sure that there's always at least one good picture available on your posts.

Whether to post the shared item as:

• An update.  This is the LinkedIn version of sharing to the wall.  It can include a comment, and whether to send the update on to Twitter (if the person has a linked account) and who the update should be visible to (anyone or connections only).

• A message to a LinkedIn Group that they are a member of:  in this case, they need to enter a subject and a message, to go with the link.

• Individual messages to existing contacts, or even to people (email addresses) that they aren't connected to.   This option includes a check-box for whether or not recipients can see each other's email addresses.

Your reader can choose one or more of these options.   When they have entered the details, pressing Share sends updates and message as specified.   Then the user must choose between to continuing to Share the item (ie setting different options), going to view it themselves, or closing the window.

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Related Articles: 


Installing any social-networking sharing button onto your blog.

Linking your blog to the social networks

Using Feedflare to add social tools to your RSS feed

Adding a Tweet button to your blog

Tools for applying copyright protection to your blog