LinkedIn is a powerful tool for building new business relationships, recruiting employees, and pursuing their careers. It also acts as a platform where you or your company can profile yourself against customers and competitors. A well-thought-out profile and a clear, consistent strategy are important to success.
Unfortunately, however, even the most experienced users miss out on optimizing their presence. Here are 10 simple tips to get you started and get the most out of LinkedIn and the channel’s potential.
Contents
1. What do you want to get out of LinkedIn?
Start by asking yourself why you are on LinkedIn? Is it to find new employees, gather new contacts, find new work, or make business contacts? Your goal should permeate your entire presence.
2. Use a professional profile picture
You should have a representative profile picture on LinkedIn so that people can associate your name with a picture. If you are uncomfortable with recruiting or others seeing your image next to your professional skills, you can change your privacy settings so that only your contacts can see your photo.
3. Let LinkedIn help the memory of the pile
Are you easy to remember names but the harder to remember faces – or vice versa? You’re not alone! To avoid uncomfortable situations, you can easily use LinkedIn to put together familiar names with less familiar faces.
4. Get the most out of your headline
Your personal headline on LinkedIn should not only include your job title. Describe what you do with a little emotion. For example, “Talented web developers are looking for new opportunities”. You then stick out a bit from other web developers. It is a small difference that leads to a big difference for the person reading.
5. Status update
When you update your status, you become visible to all your contacts on LinkedIn. Do you see something interesting that your business contacts have written – share it! By being active you will slowly but surely build on your network with new contacts.
6. Write a good but brief description
Your description should be about you, not the company you work for. Your profile should be about what you do at your company, not what the company does as a whole. A good tip is to describe what you do on a daily basis, what goals you have achieved, and what it has meant to you.
7. Add more sections to your profile
LinkedIn also offers sections to showcase experiences as a volunteer or other smaller projects you’ve worked on. It is especially useful for young users who may not have that long work experience, but have experience from other areas. It can give a completely different weight than not having anything to show. All experience is good, no matter what it is!
8. Network with care
Your LinkedIn network is just as valuable as the strength of your contacts. For recruiters or sellers, it is advantageous to network generously but again the quality is better than quantity. If you want to make contact with someone you haven’t met, make sure to customize the message you send along with the request. Explain why you want to make contact. For what is LinkedIn if not a valuable exchange between people?
9. Be active and comment on other people’s updates
In addition to making your own status updates, you should be active and comment on others. By showing you interest, you quickly increase your own visibility in other people’s flows and the likelihood is that industry colleagues are beginning to recognize you.
10. Updated profile
Have you attended a course or attended an event recently? Or maybe change jobs? Don’t forget to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date! It’s easy to think that you will do it later but have it as a routine to update as soon as you have something new to share
