8 Tips to Help You Make the Most of LinkedIn
Network like a pro and demonstrate your credibility
Think of your LinkedIn profile as a form of personal branding. LinkedIn isn’t just a platform for jobseekers, it’s a platform that allows you to showcase your skills and motivations. You can connect with like-minded business folk, recruit for jobs, and follow the latest news from companies and influential people across the globe. With 810 million members, LinkedIn is the place to have a profile if you want to advance your career. As professional marketers, we have a few tips up our sleeves that can help you make the most of LinkedIn. Check them out!
#1: Update Your Bio
Your bio is the first thing that people see, since it’s always listed right under your name. Making sure your bio is always updated to reflect your current career and skills is essential. If you look at the example we’ve given below of our Fearless Founder, Madeline, you’ll see she didn’t just say that she’s the Founder and CEO of Fearless Foundry. Madeline wears many hats, and her LinkedIn profile should reflect that! Think about all the skills you have and your most important roles, then list two or three of them in your bio.
#2: Make Your Summary Sparkle
Your LinkedIn summary is your chance to tell your own story—don’t just use it to list your skills or the job titles you’ve had! Bring those skills to life by talking about why they matter and how they can help the people you work with (or want to work with!). Your “About” section is your most personal piece of content marketing and is worth the effort. Here’s Madeline’s as an example:
#3: Post Engaging Content
LinkedIn is a networking platform; creating a profile and then never logging in or posting isn’t going to connect you with like-minded business folk or showcase your skills in an impactful way. Posting engaging content is a great way to interact with your network and highlight your industry expertise.
Try catering to your audience’s craving for visual content by:
Creating custom image collages (3-4 images in one post)
Playing around with video content—keep them at about 1-2 minutes and add subtitles for those watching sans sound
Sharing PDFs or slide decks that provide value to your network
Highlighting your colleagues or employees
#4: Write LinkedIn Articles
A LinkedIn article isn’t the same thing as a LinkedIn post. LinkedIn posts can have a very short lifespan and get lost in your connections’ feed, whereas LinkedIn articles keep getting viewed from search results on Google and other search engines. Hold your horses—this isn’t an invitation to turn every post into an article instead. LinkedIn articles should be reserved for in-depth thought pieces, how-to articles, analytical pieces, and other long-form content. If you already have a blog, re-posting blog articles as LinkedIn articles can be a great way to showcase your thought leadership.
In a nutshell, writing LinkedIn articles indicates that you:
Are serious about your field of work
Do regular research and stay up-to-date with industry trends
Care about sharing in-depth views
Are an industry authority
#5: Consider Publishing LinkedIn Newsletters
The next step above a LinkedIn article is a LinkedIn newsletter. They are similar to LinkedIn articles but have greater visibility because they allow people to subscribe.
Your newsletter subscribers will receive a notification and an email each time you publish an episode unless they change their default settings. This means your long-form content will get more attention, increasing the likelihood that it will be read. Plus, LinkedIn newsletters are indexed on Google, so there’s potential for people outside of your network to discover you.
If you run a business, you can promote your LinkedIn newsletter in your company’s page in posts, emails, newsletters, and blog posts, but remember that the point of LinkedIn isn’t to be salesy, it’s to build and maintain connections with professionals in the industries you care about most.
*Note that you’ll need to turn creator mode on in order to publish LinkedIn newsletters!
#6: Sync Your Profile With Your Email Address Book
We’ve established that one of the main points of being on LinkedIn is to network with like-minded business folk. How many people do you email back and forth with daily, weekly, or monthly who you aren’t connected with on LinkedIn? You’re missing an opportunity to build your network! Instead of going through your email contacts one by one, you can import your list directly into LinkedIn. Here’s how:
Don’t worry, syncing your contacts won’t automatically send an invite to everyone you’ve ever sent an email to. You’ll be able to choose who you want to connect with from the imported list!
#7: Give Recommendations
Endorsing your connections' professional skills is not only kind, but can help you maintain strong connections with the people in your network. Taking the time to write a sincere recommendation for a colleague or connection shows that you care about building relationships and lifting people up. Oftentimes, people will write you an endorsement in return, which can boost your profile, but don’t go into it with that in mind. It’s not about what you get out of it, it’s about lifting up professionals in your industry to help their careers.
#8: Repost and Engage
When it comes to maintaining strong connections with your network, one of the best ways to do so is by engaging with their content. If you like a colleague's post, actually hit that like button and consider resharing. If you learned something new, comment what you learned and why you found it helpful. Behind every post, article, or newsletter is a real human being who’s trying their best to connect with others and progress their career.
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At Fearless Foundry, we use LinkedIn weekly to post company updates and publish our newsletter, the Thursday Thought. If you want to use LinkedIn to help build your career or company, we can help! We specialize in creating LinkedIn newsletters for our clients that help position them as thought leaders in their field.