Social Media B2B

This week LinkedIn took a big step in improving its relevance to B2B users and organizations by opening its API. I have talked before about the implications of APIs on B2B companies, but LinkedIn’s announcement is a big one. If you don’t want to take the time to read this post then you can just look at my tweet below that inspired it, to see how I view this announcement. I suggest you stick around to learn how this impacts B2B companies.

Soon you will be seeing LinkedIn data and interactions in web-based startups like Posterous and Tweetdeck. While the consumer applications of LinkedIn’s new open data is interesting, the true power comes from the business-to-business uses of this information. Before this open API, companies could not empower their employees to leverage their LinkedIn network effectively because the data was sitting in a personal account on the web that could not easily be tied into a CRM system, lead generation process, or HR recruiting funnel. That is now beginning to change.

LinkedIn Data Is An Added Layer In Business Processes
While this newly available LinkedIn data is by no means transformative for your business, it does act as another layer of data to inform and empower decision making. This data can be applied across all business functions to aid in collaboration and decision making. In the coming weeks and months we will begin to hear of the first B2B applications to use the LinkedIn API. Companies that use SalesForce.com will likely see options for including LinkedIn connection data into customer profiles.

Search Is Always Important
When thinking about data and its applications in business, it seems like we often end up talking about the implications of search. Over the years LinkedIn has created a fairly robust search feature and through it mounds of data, people and potential leads are available. Having the ability to feed LinkedIn search data into business applications offers major potential. While limits on the types of information you can pull in from LinkedIn search exists, organizations are likely more limited by their own understanding of how to leverage the data than the limitations of the platform itself.

How To Think About Data To Leverage The LinkedIn API
While all of this stuff is cool, it doesn’t really help your business, because you’re not a programmer and you don’t know what to build. Here are some questions that can change how you think about this newly available data and leverage it for your business.

1. How are you using LinkedIn for your business?
2. How would LinkedIn connect into business processes?
3. Would sharing LinkedIn data among workers improve collaboration?
4. How could LinkedIn data help you make more informed business decisions?

These questions only hope to help spark an internal conversation to help foster innovation around LinkedIn’s open data. I would recommended also talking with any software vendors to see how they are working to incorporate LinkedIn’s changes into software solutions that you already use.

APIs can be really geeky, however the data they provide is valuable. Work to determine if this news from LinkedIn impacts your business or sales processes.

Do you plan on using the new LinkedIn API?

Related posts:

1. Google Wave’s Application For B2B Companies Explained Communication on the web is about people and building relationships...
2. LinkedIn Custom Groups = COMPLETE Waste Of Money LinkedIn, the extremely popular B2B social network, announced that is...
3. How Twitter And LinkedIn Integration Impacts B2B Social Networking A recent partnership between two major players in the...
4. B2B Users Rejoice! LinkedIn Finally Gets A Real iPhone App…Almost LinkedIn is still the most popular social network that...
5. Google Will Force All B2B Companies To Tweet Yesterday will long be known as the day that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.