Are you on LinkedIn? As opposed to other social networking sites, LinkedIn is a professional network where you work on increasing your business contacts and your visibility online.
LinkedIn is all about networking, helping you connect with your professional contacts. These can include past and present business contacts from your previous job or career. LinkedIn can be a handy tool for rekindling connections as well as building new ones. Because it’s so focused around networks, it can essentially serve as word of mouth for the online space. Here are a few of our top tips to get the most out of LinkedIn.
Optimise Your LinkedIn Personal Profile
- Complete your profile including a photo, job title, contact information, company you work for, career history and experience. Be sure to fill in everything you can, as this page is basically your public CV.
- Remember to keep it professional, LinkedIn is not the place for photos of your children or you and your partner. Complete your profile as you as a person first. There is a place to create your company page down the track.
Grow Your Network
- Once you have completed your profile, make sure it is public. The point of LinkedIn is to grow your business network, and this is not going to happen if people cannot see your profile. You don’t have to make everything public if you don’t want to, but leave enough for people to identify you. The bare minimum should be your name, title and a clear, professional photo.
- After meeting a new business contact, check if they are on LinkedIn. If you are given someone’s business card, it is good practice to connect with them on the same day. This cements your relationship with this newfound contact, and saves you losing their card or ‘filing’ it away never to be seen again.
Increase Your Engagement
- Join groups and associations relative to your business and line of work, and engage with them. This means communicating in forums (when you have something valuable to say) and asking industry specific questions for feedback from your peers.
- Provide recommendations and endorsements for connections in your network. Be sure to do this for those you have genuinely done business with and would be happy recommending their services. When they receive your review, they are automatically prompted to write a review for you. This adds credibility to your profile without you even having to ask.
Create a LinkedIn Company Page
- If you’ve completed your personal profile, it’s time to create a LinkedIn Company Page. This page tells the world about your business’ products and services, promotions and recent activity. This will also help the online exposure for your business and improve your sites visibility in search engines such as Google.
- If you create posts on your Company Page, share it through your personal profile as well. While LinkedIn is strictly professional, it is mainly about networks between individual people.
Wondering why you should bother with LinkedIn? The fact is that well over 600 million professionals around the world use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. LinkedIn is where business happens
Do you want to be missing out?
