Over the past six weeks I’ve learned a lot about LinkedIn; reading articles, attending webinars and in general just playing and experimenting with it. With my recently launched LinkedIn group, I thought it would benefit everyone to share what I’ve learned…
Why Use It
In my opinion, LinkedIn is the social media tool for business professionals. Nothing against Facebook, Twitter or any of the others but LinkedIn is the preferred tool for professional online networking.
Your Profile
Setting up a profile is free and easy to do in a few minutes. To populate your profile fully will likely take you a couple hours. Not that it’s complicated; it just takes time to get used to their terminology and how the fields all work together.
The Power of Search
The most important thing about your profile is the search function. There is a search function in the top navigation bar on LinkedIn and users not only use this to search a specific person’s name, but also search company names, skills, expertise, geography, etc. The more detailed your profile is, the LinkedIn search function will match your profile against millions of daily searches. In addition, LinkedIn provides these search results to Google (and other search engines) so anyone searching Google can also find your profile. This is very powerful marketing for you as an individual and/or organization.
Virtual Rolodex
On Facebook it’s called “friends”, on LinkedIn its called “connections”. The benefit of building your connections on LinkedIn is it becomes your virtual rolodex. As professionals in your network change jobs or get promoted, they update their profile and thus update your rolodex automatically. The biggest benefit to using LinkedIn as your rolodex is you can export your LinkedIn contacts…something the other social media sites currently do not offer.
Content is King
This is not specific to LinkedIn; using any social media network to simply promote your product or service will not be received well nor will it replace traditional marketing efforts. Contributing or starting discussions that are genuine comments, expert advice or insights will gain you more respect faster than straight up solicitation. If I like your advice or comment, I will look at your profile and contact you directly.
Instant Intelligence
In addition to building your network of people, you can also follow companies. The benefit here is you can see new hires, promotions/changes, departures and new job opportunities. This kind of intelligence provides insights like employee turnover and new initiatives via promotions, changes and new hires. As an individual seeking new opportunity or as an organization looking to keep tabs on your competitors, this instant intelligence is valuable.
Bonus Stuff
iPad app - I personally find the LinkedIn iPad app not very good at all and would not recommend using it. I log into the site with my Safari web browser and have much better access around the site.
FastCompany.com – check out this recent article “How LinkedIn Today Will Change Your Social Media Life” http://www.fastcompany.com/1737349/how-linkedin-today-will-change-your-social-media-life
If you have any questions about LinkedIn please feel free to contact me or post them as a comment. Naturally, if you have some tips/advice of you own now would be an ideal time to share (see Content is King above).
Looking forward to seeing you online!
Steve
I concur, my good man. Proper use of Linked In = good business.
ReplyDeleteJeremy