LinkedIn Adds “Mentions”
LinkedIn recently added a new way for you to connect with your network by mentioning companies and connections in your posts. This feature is similar to the tagging functions which are available on both Facebook and Twitter.

For organizations, the new LinkedIn functionality provides great opportunities for increasing brand awareness. According to industry studies, it will take five to seven mentions before people start to remember brand names.

How Do You Use “Mentions”?
It’s easy! Just start typing the name of a connection or a company in the status update box or a comment field and a drop down will appear from which you can select the intended party that you’d like to mention. “Mentions” are first rolling out for English-speaking LinkedIn users.

How Will “Mentions” Affect Your Use of LinkedIn?
1. Organizations can now mention consumers and other businesses in their posts on LinkedIn. Effectively using mentions will increase your organization’s visibility on LinkedIn. Any individual or company that you mention in a post will be notified of the mention, and connections of the individual that you mention will have the ability to see your post as well.
2. If partner organizations or individuals on LinkedIn post noteworthy news or information, you can now share that content and credit the original poster via a mention.
3. Twitter has integrated with the LinkedIn mention feature. So if you mention an individual on LinkedIn and choose to push the same post to your Twitter account, the individuals name will be automatically converted into the associated Twitter handle.
4. As an organization, you now have the ability to publicly recognize employees for outstanding work and achievement.

While the ability to connect with consumers and other organizations is important to brand recognition, it is also important to keep in mind that mentions should not be used to spam. Use of mentions should be meaningful and aimed to inspire conversations with multiple parties.