What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the world’s
largest professional network with over 175 million members and growing rapidly.
LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge,
ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.
LinkedIn gives you the keys to
controlling your online identity. In today’s professional world, people change
jobs and locations constantly. By connecting on LinkedIn, your address book
will never go out of date. Your contacts update their profiles, keeping you
current with their latest jobs, projects and contact info. You’ll stay in
closer contact with great tools to communicate and collaborate.
Create a Powerful and Complete Profile
Ø Upload a professional image
This is professional’s best
opportunity to make a great first impression, and it is essential to attracting
connections.
Ø Create a compelling headline
You only have 120 characters
at the top of your profile to describe what you do to the world and grab their
attention. Use brief, descriptive, compelling keywords so the right
professionals on LinkedIn can discover you.
Ø List your current position and at least two
past positions
Use descriptive keywords that
you quoted in your headline if possible, and be sure to describe your role for
each position.
Ø Complete the “Summary” section of your
profile
This is your chance to really
describe who you are and how you help people. Most of the LinkedIn professional’s
recommend that write your summary in the third person. Otherwise, you’ll be
using the letter “I” quite a bit, which can be off-putting.
Ø Complete the “Specialties” section of your
profile
Utilize customer-focused
keywords, as these are the terms that will help you show up in search results
within LinkedIn. When thinking about these keywords, brainstorm words and
phrases that people in your target markets might search for to find someone
with your background, experience, and service offering.
Ø Give recommendations first
Request recommendations that
can be displayed on your profile. The best way to receive recommendations is to
first give them! Hint: You will need at least three recommendations in order
for LinkedIn to label your profile “completed.”
Ø Complete the “Interests” and “Groups and
Associations” sections
Each of these terms will be
hyper-linked and will take you to other users in the network who share these
interests.
Optimize Your Profile to Get Found by Contacts
Ø Edit your public LinkedIn URL
An example is my personal
LinkedIn URL, http://au.linkedin.com/in/seospecialistau.
Such customization will optimize your LinkedIn profile to show up in search
results on major search engines when someone searches for your name. It is
important to claim those results for your name as they provide a gateway into
your personal brand.
Ø Customize your “website” listings
Under the “websites” section
of your LinkedIn profile, you can list up to three URLs. Choose the “other”
option when setting up each of these links and describe them with relevant
terms. For example, rather than using the terms “my website,” I use “Smart
Social Pro Blog.” Not only is this more descriptive, but it also gives me a
better opportunity to rank for these keywords in search engines.
Ø Include a link to your Twitter profile
You can have more than one
Twitter account listed. Give folks an additional method to use to connect with
you!
Ø Make your entire LinkedIn profile publicly
visible to everyone
You want other professionals
on LinkedIn to be able to find you and contact you anytime. Being invisible
won’t help you build your network.
Get Plugged In With LinkedIn Applications
Ø SlideShare
Most of the professional’s use
this application to bring in presentations that they've uploaded to Slide- Share.
It gives a chance to show their expertise visually. Also, you can embed video
or audio into your SlideShare presentation that will automatically play when
someone visits your LinkedIn Profile. This can certainly be an effective way to
make your profile stickier. Most likely, if the visitor hears your voice they
will scroll down to this part of your profile.
Ø
Reading
List by Amazon
We are what we read. Don’t
miss this opportunity to create a window into your passions and interests by
showcasing and reviewing your latest reads. Alternatively, when you are
searching through profiles on LinkedIn for potential connections and
introductions, you can glean the same insight about others if they have this
application installed.
Ø My Travel and Events
Professional’s love these two
applications because they give them the opportunity to showcase the part of
their schedule that mostly involves connecting! These two applications show
your connections to see where you’re traveling and also the events you’re
attending. Don’t miss any opportunities to meet a LinkedIn connection
face-to-face.
Ø WordPress or Blog Link
With these applications, you
can automatically pull blog posts into your profile. If you are taking the time
to create great content on your blog, you must get it out into the world.
Ø Polls
The LinkedIn Polls application
allows you to essentially conduct your own research, either simply within your
own network or to a more targeted audience of professionals, which is a paid
resource. I have found Polls to be an effective tool for understanding my
audience. You must make sure that your poll is simple to understand and that
your questions are compelling. Otherwise, you may not get much response.
Getting your Network started
While true business
opportunity is within your second degree network, you still need a first degree
network to be able to reach those second degree connections. Here are the steps
to build your first degree network effectively and in a timely manner.
Ø Connect with your direct, first degree
network
Upload your contacts from
Outlook, webmail like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or other address books. You
can do this via the “Add Connections” tab. Then you can log in to your email
and find who has a profile on LinkedIn.
Look at the contacts, which
are now available in “Imported Contacts” (under “Contacts” in the menu on the
left). The people who are already on LinkedIn have a small blue icon with the
letters “In.” Since they are already using LinkedIn, they will be open for a
connection with you. Select them.
Write a semi-personal message
to them. First check “Add a personal note to your invitation.” Then replace the
standard “Hi, I’d like to add you to my network” message with something related
to how you know them. You can’t make it too personal when you use this method
because you have selected several people.
Ø Add previous colleagues and classmates to
your network
While you are waiting for
people to accept the invitations you sent, you can add more people to your
network via a different method. Again, you are first focusing on the people who
are already on LinkedIn because they will be more open to accept your
invitation.
Use the tools LinkedIn
provides for retrieving colleagues and classmates. Since LinkedIn works with
the information in your profile, it is important that you already have
completed the information about the companies you have worked for and the
schools and universities you’ve attended.
Look up your current and past
colleagues’ profiles on LinkedIn. You can also do this via the same menu and
then clicking on the “Colleagues” tab. Here, you will see all the companies
that you have listed on your profile, as well as how many people from each
company are already LinkedIn members.
Click on one of the companies
listed. You will get a list of people. Select the people you know. Write a
personal message to them if you are going to invite them one-by-one or write a
semi-personal message if you want to invite them in batches. Repeat this for
all your previous companies.
Now do the same for the people
with whom you went to school or college via the tab “Classmates.”
Fill Your Network with Valuable NEW Connections for Your Business
Ø Browse the networks of your immediate
network
You can do this by visiting
someone’s profile and looking at their connections on the right-hand side. If
you see someone interesting, invite that person to connect.
Ø Use the “advanced search” option to search
for people
If you find someone with whom
you’d like to connect, see if you share any mutual connections. Ask that
connection if he or she can make an introduction to the new person. Please
remember that what you are now doing is building a relationship. Don’t sell at
this stage.
Ø Join groups that your target market joins
This will give you a genuine
opportunity to interact with individuals of those groups and will help you
increase your visibility. People will start to contact you.
Ø Save your people searches and create an
alert
If you set up an alert,
LinkedIn will send you an email every week with new prospects.
Ø Follow your network’s updates and your
contacts’ interactions
As you watch who your network
interacts with, you might notice opportunities for building valuable
relationships. If someone mentions someone interesting, ask for an
introduction.
LinkedIn is a very powerful
tool to help you meet new contacts, grow your business network, and advance
your career. Let’s now dig into some of the specific business objectives you
can reach.
Setting Up Your Company Page on LinkedIn
Inbound marketing on LinkedIn
begins with ensuring that your company can be found in the LinkedIn Companies
directory and your company can be “followed” by users who want to stay up-to-date
with your organization. Especially with the release of the status update
feature, LinkedIn Company Pages are quickly becoming an alternative free source
of company information where you should absolutely be present.
Should someone be searching
for a company with your expertise, you want to ensure that they can find you.
Follow these steps to be sure the best information is on display for potential
customers:
Ø Edit
the description of your Company Page Overview
Make sure it is in sync with
your company website. Add details about the value your company offers.
Ø Add
keywords within the Specialty Section
There is also an opportunity
to enter 256 characters under the “Specialties” section. Make sure that any
keywords for which you want your company to be found are here.
Ø Pick
your industry
You can choose a main company
industry. Make sure you choose the most appropriate, as this is a field that
may be used in a search to find your company.
Ø List
your location
There is also a search field
for location. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to enter up to five locations.
Use this if your company is represented in multiple regions
Ø Link
to your Blog RSS
Enter your corporate blog’s
RSS feed to showcase your latest blog entries.
Ø Post
status updates
Make an effort to post regular
status updates on your page, including links back to your website and blog.
This is your chance to make your page dynamic and interactive, as well as send
traffic back to your website.
How to Create an Effective LinkedIn Group
The power of LinkedIn Groups
shouldn’t be underestimated. The purpose of LinkedIn Groups is to allow those
with similar interests to come together to discuss and share news on the topics
that mutually interest them.
LinkedIn Groups presents a
discussions board, where it is possible to post a link to a web article of
interest or simply engage in a conversation. Through groups, you can also do a
member search and directly send a message to someone, provided they are using
the default setting LinkedIn provides. In other words, by attracting your target
demographic to your group, you can now directly engage with them regardless of
your connectivity status.
Before you think about
creating a LinkedIn Group, you first need to create a mission statement that
states who you’d like to attract and what your group will offer them.
Creating a LinkedIn Group is
surprisingly simple, as is indicated by the sheer number of groups that exist.
That being said, there is one very important thing to consider that will make
or break your group: its name.
While using a social
networking site, no LinkedIn user wants to be directly sold to. Therefore, in the
spirit of inbound marketing, the name of your group should NOT be your company
name. On Facebook or Twitter, it is wise to have a page or username that
represents your company. On LinkedIn, however, you want to win the mindshare of
your target audience and attract them to become members of your group. You can
do so by naming your group appropriately.
Once the name of your group is
chosen, it is important to brand it in a way that will be attractive to the
target audience and different from your exact logo, while maintaining
consistency with your established look and feel.
How to Promote Your Group to Earn Membership
Once you start a LinkedIn
Group, what do you do next? It’s all about promotion, and that starts with
introducing your community to relevant professionals in your own LinkedIn
network. This is where you are already at an advantage if many of your
employees are already established users with LinkedIn connections.
Of course, your employees
should only be introducing your group to those that are in your target
demographic and would feel it is a valuable resource; otherwise, the innocent
introduction of your group could be perceived as spam. Here are some tips to
help you promote your group:
Ø Use other social media assets to promote
your group
Promotion doesn’t and shouldn’t stop with just LinkedIn
members. Once you begin to strategically engage in social media, you need to
optimize your own website for social media.
For the LinkedIn Group, it can
be as simple as posting a logo and a link to your group in a prominent area of
your website. In this way, your website visitors not only find out about your
community, but they can also easily join it. If you have an email newsletter,
don’t forget to feature your group’s logo there as well. An occasional tweet or
Facebook post introducing your LinkedIn Group is another way to efficiently
utilize social media to “advertise” you’re LinkedIn Group.
Ø
Keep
LinkedIn group policies in mind
If you have ever been a member
of a LinkedIn Group, you will know that many are filled with spammy
link-building “discussions” that tarnish the atmosphere of the group and
potentially the brand of the company sponsoring it. Social media marketing is
really about relevance, so it is important to keep your group relevant by
actively managing and keeping the irrelevant information out. Your first step
in doing this is by creating a LinkedIn Group Policy.
LinkedIn has provided group
managers with the ability to create a group policy under the title “Group
Rules.” It is here where you can set your expectations and rules for the group
so that there are no misunderstandings with members should you need to remove
them for posting spam. It is also a way to show your company’s professional
approach to managing the group, so I would recommend taking an extra step and
customizing the template that LinkedIn provides you in welcoming new members to
either list the group rules or remind them to read them.
Ø Create a LinkedIn grouping agreement
strategy
Similar to how those who
engage with your Facebook Page will help get your news noticed in each fan’s
personal news feed, engagement in your LinkedIn Group will be posted in
members’ network updates. So how does one foster group engagement?
When starting a group, you
need to assume leadership by proactively starting conversations, posting
relevant and timely news, and quickly reacting to the discussions and questions
of others. This can be done in a time-effective manner by pre-scheduling some
activities and utilizing LinkedIn’s feature that allows group managers to
receive updates about new discussions and comments the moment they happen. As
membership grows, the discussions tend to become mostly self-generated, but
it’s still important to check the engagement volume on a regular basis and
generate new discussions as needed.
More Helpline:
LinkedIn is a professional networking contact management
tool. With LinkedIn, users can manage connections and keep up to date on your
network of contacts.
Features:
Homepage: The homepage is the
dashboard to see what connections have been doing in their professional career.
There are recommendations for new contacts. With applications such as the
Amazon reading list, Trip It, and Slideshare Presentations, you can see the
fruits of your connections' labor. More information
Profile: Your profile allows you to control your professional
identity to the world. Here you can list your duties and responsibilities as
well as your accomplishments. You also place your contact information here. More
information
Applications: With applications, you can show case your work and
interests. Here is a list of current applications. More information
Jobs: If you are looking for a
job or are in need of help, then LinkedIn has place where you can search for or
post a job. Importantly, it will allow you to hone into the right position with
the help of your connections. More information
Groups: Groups allow you to get involved in discussions on topics
of a common interest. Groups also allow you to make contact with more people
than what is listed in your contacts. More information
Answers: Do you have a problem
to solve? Your connections and groups can be the source to your solution. You
can ask questions to these groups and get answers, or you can search answers
already given for inspiration. More information
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