A Massive 2013 LinkedIn Marketing Guide | Expert LinedkIn Information

[caption id="attachment_3081" align="aligncenter" width="402"] 2013 Linkedin Strategy Guide[/caption]

In the last year, LinkedIn has made a lot of exciting changes to their platform for both professional profiles and company pages. LinkedIn is a great network for businesses looking to increase traffic and leads, as well as individuals looking to market their expertise for new career opportunities. In this post, let's look at everything you need to have a successful LinkedIn experience. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn if you have any questions on this article.

Setting Up Your Professional Profile

The first step in establishing your LinkedIn presence is creating your professional profile. There are many sections that you can take advantage of to fully define your professional skills. Let’s look at the ones that will help you make the best first impression.

Your Name

LinkedIn frowns upon using anything in your name field other than your name. Hence, this is not the place to try to rank for keywords.

Your Headline

Your headline is the next most important section of your LinkedIn profile because it shows up in several places throughout LinkedIn, starting with search results and employee listings on company pages…



Invitations to connect…



In messages…



In popups when someone hovers over your image…



And other areas throughout LinkedIn. This makes it the ideal place to keyword optimize your LinkedIn profile for search. Think of it as the way people will distinguish you from others when they are searching for job candidates, business partners, customers, or other professionals to connect with.

Contact Info

One of the unfortunate parts of the new LinkedIn profile design is the fact that your websites are now hidden in the Contact Info.



People looking for your contact info will still see it along with your Twitter handle, so be sure to update this section anyway with the information you want others to see.



Summary

The summary section of your LinkedIn profile allows you to enter a summary of your professional experience and expertise. You have a few paragraphs to describe yourself to a prospective employer, partner, customer, or connection.Think about what would you say to them in real life.

LinkedIn has also recently introduced options to add media to your Summary section. You can add YouTube videos, Slideshare presentations, and other media (images, videos, audio, presentations, and documents) from these service providers. Mari Smith uses her media to establish expertise and branding.



There are about 101 different ways professionals can use visual profile elements to market themselves.

• Speakers can link to presentations from Slideshare to show topics they cover and videos from YouTube to show clips from their latest speaking engagements.


• Graphic & web designers can link to Behance to show off their portfolio.


• Consultants who help businesses build traffic for websites can link to Quantcast profiles for the sites they have helped.


• Entrepreneurs can link to their Kickstarter project to encourage more funding for their ideas.


• Podcasters can link to their best podcasts.


• Photographers can link to their best portfolio photos on Pinterest.


• Authors can link to documents with writing samples.

The list is endless…

Current and Past Job Experience

Your current and past job experience is another area that LinkedIn uses to determine what keywords your profile should rank for. It also comes up in some other areas of LinkedIn like search results and employee listings on company pages. Therefore, it’s a good idea to utilize keywords that you want to rank for in the job position titles and descriptions. For example, Jason Alba wants to rank for LinkedIn. Here is one of his job experiences.



Usage of LinkedIn in this section definitely helps him rank for LinkedIn. You don’t want to go too overboard with keywords in your job experience section, however. LinkedIn highlights any keywords you search when you go to someone’s profile. You won’t want someone to find a profile that looks like this.



This profile in particular using the phrase “internet marketing” 305 times with 82 of the above shown job descriptions. Surprisingly, there are no recommendations. Yes, it worked at ranking him for internet marketing. It also tells everyone who runs into his profile that he is good at keyword stuffing and who he’s done it for.

You can also utilize the visual profile features to add media to each of your job experiences. It might be a cleaner way to add more keywords to your profile.

Others will have the chance to add recommendations to your profile based on your job experience listings. We will cover ways to boost your recommendations shortly!

Skills & Expertise

This is where you can really add some keyword boost to your profile. Add your main skills to the section to be endorsed by others. Endorsements are much easier to attain than recommendations. When people visit your profile, they will be prompted to endorse you for skills that are listed on your profile.



This is why it is crucial to add skills to your LinkedIn profile. Visitors to your profile can endorse you for multiple skills with one click! Your profile may even come up after someone endorses connections with similar skills.



Visitors then can see all of the skills that others have endorsed you for.



You will receive notifications when others endorse you, giving you the opportunity to return the favor if you so choose.



You can essentially drive up your own endorsements by giving them to others when prompted.

If you’re not sure what skills to add to your profile, you can visit the Skills & Expertise page and start typing in keywords.



Each page will have a list of related skills to the left along with professionals who have that particular skill.



You can click on the See Suggested Skills button on any of these pages to see skills that LinkedIn thinks you should add to your profile.



You can also go directly to Your Skills & Expertise page for these suggestions. Note that you can only list 50 skills, so be sure to choose them carefully. If you notice some that are not applicable or have a low endorsement rate, remove them to make room for more relevant ones.

Publications

If you have written reports, whitepapers, or books, you can add them to your publications section. This section is unique because you can include a direct link to your publications on your website, Amazon, or any other site you choose. This can help you draw attention anything you’ve written, including free ebooks you use as lead magnets for your mailing list.

Additional Sections

While the above are the most important sections, they are not the only ones. You’ll also be able to add the following to your professional profile. Any sections you haven’t taken advantage of yet will show up in the right side of your screen when you go to edit your profile.

• Education


• Projects


• Languages


• Organizations


• Honors & Awards


• Test Scores


• Courses


• Patents


• Certifications


• Volunteering & Causes

Organizing Your Sections

Want one section you have listed to go above another? When you go to edit your profile, you will see arrows at the top right of each section that you use to rearrange your sections. For example, if you have a lot of endorsements for your skills, but not an impressive job history, you can place the Skills & Expertise section first, the Summary second, and other sections before your Experience section. Authors can place Publications first, college graduates can place Education first, and so on to emphasize your best background elements up front.

Updating Your Professional Profile

You can make status updates on your professional profile similar to the way you would on Facebook and Google+. You can share links as well as tag people and companies relevant to your update.



Using the Share link beneath your status update, you can gain more exposure by also sharing the same update with the groups you belong to. We will discuss that more in the groups section.

Growing Your Network

Once you have set up your professional profile, you will want to start building your network by connecting with others. First, you will want to see who you already know on LinkedIn using your email address book.



Next, you can connect with colleagues at your current or previous companies as well as alumni from your college.



You can also use the people you may know browser to find more connections based on the people in your network.



Once you have exhausted the list of people LinkedIn thinks you know, you can branch out to others. LinkedIn encourages you to only connect with people you really know, and they will suspend your ability to connect with people if you send invitations to people who flag you as someone they do not know. So you have to be really careful about who you send invitations to.

As you go through LinkedIn, you will see different annotations by people that show your connection to them. First degree connections are those people in your network. Second degree connections are those people who are connected to people you are connected to. Third level connections are connections of those second degree connections. People who are in one of your groups are annotated as group.

The next way to connect with others is through groups. When you belong to the same group as someone you want to connect with, you just use the Groups option as how you know that member.



It’s best if you have engaged with them a little first within the group and then send a custom message letting them know that you like their posts and want to connect. You can find new people to connect with in the groups themselves by looking through active discussions or look at a list of groups your desired connection belongs to, join a group, and then connect with them.



You can also attract new connections by linking to your LinkedIn profile on your website and anywhere that allows you to connect to other social networks such as your Google+ profile. You can also occasionally do things like tweet your LinkedIn profile URL or share it on Facebook as a way to gain LinkedIn connections from those networks.

To learn more about LinkedIn’s policies and strategies to connect with others, visit their pages on Building Your Professional Network and Connecting With LinkedIn Members.

Increasing Recommendations

Your next goal once your profile is complete and you are making connections is to get recommendations for your work. These are essentially LinkedIn testimonials that are attached to a specific job experience on your professional profile.



You can visit the Recommendations section to manage the recommendations you have received and given as well as ask your connections for recommendations. While you can ask up to 200 connections at a time to recommend you for a particular job experience or school performance, you will get the best results by personalizing a recommendation request to just one contact.



Just customize the above template, changing the subject line and the body of the message. To maximize your success rate, ask for recommendations from people you have recently worked with or connected with.

I personally like to send a request outside of LinkedIn, especially to people I’m not connected with but have worked with. For example, after I highlighted several businesses I had worked with in a post I wrote, I emailed the business owners to let them know about the mention. Then I asked them for a favor – to connect with me on LinkedIn and give a recommendation. The success rate was 100%!

You can also get recommendations through the reciprocation route. Simply write a recommendation for someone you have worked with in the past. When they receive the recommendation, they will be asked if they want to write one for you in return. Most of the time, if they know you well enough, they will oblige. When others write you recommendations, you should return the favor as well if you know them and can honestly recommend their work.

Another thing to know about recommendations is that you can move them from one job experience to another, but it is a bit tricky and can be time consuming if you have a lot of recommendations. You have to delete the position that the recommendations are listed under. Once they become unassigned recommendations, you can assign them to a different job position.

Using LinkedIn Groups

Earlier, we talked about how you can use LinkedIn groups to connect with others in order to grow your professional network. You can also share status updates with your groups in order to drive traffic back to your website and your blog, although you need to be selective of which groups you share with as some are not as open to members sharing links as others. Sharing your status updates with relevant groups can turn exposure for your update from just your connections to upwards of thousands of LinkedIn members, which makes it well worth it.

The other way you can use LinkedIn groups is by creating one yourself. The value of doing this is you are essentially starting a new mailing list on LinkedIn. Group owners can send group members an announcement once a week. Assuming members have not turned off email notifications, they will receive your announcement straight to their inbox. While it’s not as valuable as having your own email list, it can still help you connect with people you may not have reached otherwise.

The key is to creating a group that your target customers would be interested in. So instead of creating a group called Your SEO Company (which not many will care about unless you are a SEOmoz in the industry), you would create a group like Small Business SEO. This way, small business owners and employees (aka, your target customer base) would join to learn more about SEO. Then you can use your group announcements to regularly email them about things like free ebook downloads, webinars, etc. that can convert your group members into your actual mailing list.

In order to successfully maintain your LinkedIn group, you will need to stay on top of moderating discussions and approving new members. This way, the group will thrive, the members will stay active, and therefore will be more receptive to your group announcement emails.

Exploring Pro Account Features

LinkedIn offers premium accounts for those looking to do more with LinknedIn. Premium accounts are geared towards recruiters, job seekers, sales professionals, and individuals who simply need more information for their business.



Pro account types and features are as follows.

• LinkedIn Premium Business Plus – Plans start at $10.95 per month and allow you to see who has viewed your profile, see full profiles of people you are not connected to, send direct messages to anyone on LinkedIn regardless of connection, get more introductions, let anyone message you, gain access to premium search filters, see more profiles in search results, create saved search alerts, and get a full list of people who can provide a reference for someone you are interested in.


• LinkedIn Premium Talent Finder – Plans start at $39.95 per month and allow you to see who has viewed your profile, give you full network visibility regardless of connection, send direct messages to anyone, and use premium search filters.


• LinkedIn Job Seeker Premium – Plans start at $19.95 and allow you to send direct messages regardless of connection, be a featured applicant when applying to jobs on LinkedIn, get a premium badge so you stand out in search results when recruiters are looking to hire, see who has viewed your profile, and get access to a job seeker group and webinar.


• LinkedIn Sales Navigator – Plans start at $15.95 per month and allow you to stay on top of leads with sales alerts, gain access to a lead builder to manage your pipeline, pinpoint leads with premium search filters, see full profiles, see who has viewed your profile, get introductions, and send direct messages to anyone regardless of connection.

For the most part, people are happy with using LinkedIn with the basic, free features. But you can always try the pro features for one month to see if you get any benefits. Be sure to switch the pricing options to monthly instead of annually if you just want to give it a test run.

Setting Up Your Company Page

Whenever you created your professional profile, you may have noticed that some of the companies you worked for popped up.



This is because these companies have created company pages. If your company did not show up as you were typing, then you may need to create a company page. To do so, you can go to Add a Company. You will need an email address at your company’s domain such as you@yourcompany.com. LinkedIn will not accept generic email addresses like yourcompany@gmail.com.

Once your company page is created, you can use it to market your business by filling out the following sections.

Overview

Basic information about your company in the company page overview section such as the name, description, company size, website, and industry are important as these are the details that will show up when someone hovers over your company name throughout LinkedIn on professional profiles, tagged mentions of your company, and the company news feed when people are following your company’s updates.



You can add additional details about your company in the overview section such as company specialties, featured groups related to the company, and page admins that you want to manage your company page.

You can also add status updates to your company page to drive engagement from your company’s followers (similar to Facebook fans).



Products and Services

The products and services section of your company page allows you to create individual listings for the things your business has to offer.



You can drive a lot of traffic back to your website from this section by adding a banner image with a call to action that links back to your website (as shown above). Within the product details themselves, you can add a link to the page on your website about your product or service, a YouTube video, contacts for people in your company that work directly with that product or service, and encourage people to leave recommendations about that product or service.



This is the most powerful section of your LinkedIn Company Page as far as generating leads and sales. You can also customize your products and services page by creating variations that target specific demographics.



These variations can help you further increase your conversions as people visiting this section of your page will feel like you are talking specifically to them.



Careers

If your company is looking to hire, LinkedIn allows you to create a robust careers section for your company page that can include a banner image that clicks through to your website, YouTube videos, and job listings.



Visitors to your company page’s career section will also be shown to people in their network that work in your company, turning those people into recruiters for your business. Potential employees can also apply directly on LinkedIn or be linked back to your website to apply. Job listing fees vary based on the location of your company.

Insights

Your company page will have public insights for visitors to your page as well as admin-only insights. Public insights will include information about your employees, companies other visitors have viewed, where employees came from, top skills and expertise, and the most recommended employees from your company.



Admin insights can be viewed when you go to your page and click the Edit button. You will then see tabs for follower insights, page insights, and employee insights.



Within these insights, you can find out your follower demographics, page visitor demographics, page views, product and service page clicks, and other relevant data.



Employee insights is similar to the public insights page with information about your employees.

Advertising with LinkedIn

Want to get more exposure for your business on LinkedIn? Then try LinkedIn Advertising. Compared to Facebook and Twitter Advertising, LinkedIn is usually more expensive. But it also allows you the most advertising options. For example, you can point advertising to your website or your company as well as have up to 15 ad variations.



The best part about LinkedIn advertising is the targeting. You can target your ad based on a LinkedIn user’s location, company, job title, school, skills, group, gender, and age.



For B2B companies, these target options mean you don’t have to spend a lot of advertising budget on the wrong audience. You can target a very specific group of people which will make your clicks more likely to convert. You can learn more about the basics of using LinkedIn Advertising in the KISSmetrics Guide to LinkedIn Ads.

Enhancing Your Website with LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers a variety of plugins to connect LinkedIn to your website. For example, you can add a LinkedIn share button to your blog content in order to get it shared on LinkedIn.
inShare392

You can also add a company follow button to encourage more people to follow your company page.


You can even add a recommendation button on your website asking people to recommend your products and services on your company page.
inRecommend1

There are also plugins that you can add to your website to highlight your professional profile, career opportunities, and more details from your company page (similar to a Facebook like box).

Analyzing Your Results

Like any online marketing strategy, you will want to make sure you are looking at your analytics to make sure LinkedIn is both driving you traffic and leading to conversions. Google Analytics Social Reports will help you track direct conversions – traffic that comes to your website from LinkedIn and, within the same visit, converts. KISSmetrics can help you track a visitor from LinkedIn who converts on your website, regardless of whether they convert on their first visit or later.

If you are using LinkedIn Advertising, be sure to use UTML parameters to specifically track the URL’s from your ads. You can view the clicks for these links under Traffic Sources > Campaigns.

Exploring the Top Tools

Want to manage your LinkedIn presence or get additional insights about your LinkedIn activity beyond what LinkedIn offers? Here are some great tools to use!

• Oktopost – Use this tool to schedule status updates to your LinkedIn profile as well as your groups. You can also get statistics about how many clicks you receive on your status updates from your profile and LinkedIn groups. This can give you great insight into which groups are sending you the most traffic.


• Jumplead – Identify visitors coming to your website from LinkedIn, manage your LinkedIn leads, and get real insights.


• Buffer – Schedule status updates for your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profile.


• HootSuite – Publish and schedule status updates to your LinkedIn profile along with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ pages, and other networks.


• SproutSocial – Measure engagement, publish status updates, and analyze activity for your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles.

In Conclusion

Congratulations if you made it through this guide! If you apply everything you’ve learned, you should have a great LinkedIn profile and be well on your way to building a targeted LinkedIn network, engaging with your audience, managing your account with terrific tools, and seeing the results of your LinkedIn activity. What else would you like to know about LinkedIn marketing? Please ask your questions in the comments and share your own great LinkedIn tips, tools, and resources.

KissMetrics is awesome, click here to try it for FREE!

Top 5 Social Media Sites for Small Business SEO

[caption id="attachment_587" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Social Media Sites[/caption]

With recent advancements in Google's search algorithms, it's no longer a question that social media sites have a profound influence on search engine rankings. Now, the real question is how does social media influence rankings?

The first social variable that impacts SEO stems from "social signals." These are Likes, Tweets, +1's, Pins, Shares, etc., that individuals attribute to a webpage. When a specific page, whether a blog post or YouTube video, has a wealth of social signals, its SEO-value increases.

Think of this as Google's way of knowing that real people find the content of a webpage credible and interesting, and thus deserving of higher search engine rankings.

The second social variable centers on the brand or business's profile page. In addition to providing a quality link back to its website, some social media websites enable companies to build citations.

Citations, which are simply mentions of a company's name, address, and phone number, help to make its website appear more credible and legitimate from the perspective of search engines. For local SEO and earning a higher placement in Google's local search listings, simply put, citations are the bee's knees. These are important variables that any small business marketer should keep top of mind.So now that you understand how social media sites influence SEO, let's get to the good stuff: the top social media sites for SEO.

#1: Facebook: Similar to Pinterest, Facebook profile pages can also rank in top of the search results (depending on how competitive a keyword is). Beyond SEO, Facebook offers a massive and widespread audience to connect with.

SEO Tip: Again just like Pinterest, try to include your keyword targets in the profile page's URL and in the description. Also, include a link (or better yet, a clearly visible icon) on your website that links to your Facebook page. This will help promote more likes and help grow your audience (making your page more authoritative for SEO.)

#2: Twitter: Twitter carries a great deal of SEO potential for small businesses. Tweets and re-tweets are among the most powerful social signals for SEO. So when you share your website's content on Twitter, and it's well-liked amongst your followers, its overall ranking potential increases.

SEO Tip: Take the time to reach-out, follow, and re-tweet posts of like-minded influencers and businesses. The greater the following you can cultivate, the greater exposure (and social signal potential) your tweets will have.

#3: Google+: Although an emerging social media platform (and one many small businesses overlook), Google+ offers incredible SEO potential in many respects. Google+ Local pages (which have replaced Google Places pages) are what appear in the Google Local search listings (the dedicated local results accompanied by the map with little pins.) A well-populated Google+ Local page will empower your small business' ranking potential in these listings. Additionally, Google+ page also provides a backlink as well as citation for you website.

What's nice is that you do not need to spend a lot managing a Google+ page for your business. Simply building a presence and ensuring your page contains accurate information will provide significant SEO benefits.

SEO Tip: After you've built a Google+ page for you business, include the suggested "site verification" link on your website (directing back to the Google+ page). This linking tells Google that your company's website and Google+ page are one of the same entity. This can be found on your profile page (while in edit mode), and essentially it ties everything together.

#4: LinkedIn: From a search engine perspective, LinkedIn is one of the most trusted and authoritative social domains. This why you see LinkedIn pages of both professionals and companies ranking well in the search results (similar to Facebook and Pinterest pages). LinkedIn "shares" are also incredibly potent for SEO. And at the very least, by creating a LinkedIn profile for your business, you get a quality backlink to your website, as well as trusted citation.

SEO Tip: Just like Twitter (and virtually all social media platforms), connect with as many colleagues and friends as you can. A strong LinkedIn following will increase your page's search engine authority, in addition to increasing the likelihood that your LinkedIn posts get shared. You can also include keywords in your page's content, but be careful not to degrade the quality of your page with over-optimization.

#5: Pinterest: Not only do Pinterest profile pages rank well in the search engines, but you get a nice DoFollow backlink to your website. Setting-up a Pinterest page is super easy. The time-consuming part is creating pin boards and pinning images (which can be effectively done by investing about 20 minutes a week.)

SEO Tip: When building your Pinterest page, use keywords to describe your pinboards, as well as define the URL and description of your profile page (e.g. "Atlanta Tax Attorney")

Using LinkedIn Effectively and Growing Your Professional Network

[caption id="attachment_573" align="aligncenter" width="512"] Unlocking LinkedIn[/caption]

You've likely heard of LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking website that many people use for keeping in touch with business associates, clients, and former colleagues.

But is this LinkedIn's only use? Or can you use it in other ways to grow yourself professionally and help your organization to network more effectively?

In this article, let's explore how to use LinkedIn for personal, professional, and organizational development, including how you can use it for networking and recruitment, and for keeping up with trends and news in your industry.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a business-focused social networking site that launched in 2003. Its main purpose is to help people network professionally. The basic service is free.

The site lets you find other business associates, clients, and colleagues whom you already know. You "connect" with them through the site, and they then become part of your network.

Once you've connected with a person, you will then have access to their list of connections – this is called your "extended network." You can request an introduction to people in your extended network through your mutual contact.

LinkedIn also provides other features including the ability to set up and join groups, and a jobs section where members can advertise open positions or apply for jobs.

LinkedIn Definitions

Here are a few useful terms you should know when using LinkedIn:

• Connections – Connections are other registered users who you know personally on LinkedIn. Although you can invite anyone to be a connection, they will need to set up an account to use the site.


• Second-degree connections – These are the connections that your connections have. For example, you're friends with Bill, who is directly connected with his boss. Bill's boss is a second-degree connection for you.


• Third-degree connection – Any connections from your second-degree connects are third-degree connections. So, Bill's boss's connections would be your third-degree connections.


• Profile page – This is your personal page on LinkedIn. All registered users with LinkedIn can view it (unless you set it to be a private page). Your profile page can list your education, past work history, current and past projects, groups and associations, and more. Users can also forward your profile page to contacts on their lists. You can also make your profile page "public" so that anyone (even people not on LinkedIn) can view it.


• Recommendations – Your connections can write recommendations, or testimonials, for your profile. These can be a powerful testament to your business and professional skills.


• Introductions – Introductions are when a third party introduces two people who weren't currently connected. For instance, your colleague Sue and your client Dan don't know each other. You think Sue could help solve a problem that Dan is having with one of his projects, so you introduce Sue and Dan through LinkedIn. Introductions are simply a way to bring people together on the site.

Professional Use

There are several ways to use LinkedIn to help you grow professionally:

• Networking – LinkedIn allows you to network with people and professional organizations in your industry. This helps you stay up-to-date with industry trends and share information with others who do similar work to you.


• In addition to networking with people in your LinkedIn extended network, you can also set up and join specific groups to discuss ideas and share industry news. This is a great way to build your professional network further.


• Asking and answering questions – Many people use a service on the site called LinkedIn Answers as a kind of think tank or open brainstorming session. By offering your expertise to those in your network, you establish trust and improve your reputation as an expert.


• You can also use your profile's status update to ask questions to people in your network, or share news or insight. (Your status feed on LinkedIn works in a similar way to a Twitter timeline.)


• Research – You can use LinkedIn to find out more about the people and organizations that you do business with.


• For example, imagine that you're about to meet with an important potential client. You do a quick search on LinkedIn and discover that the person went to the same university as you. In fact, you know several of the same people. You now have a valuable conversation starter that will help you build rapport with the client.

Tip 1:
Remember that your boss, and others at your organization, will be able to see your LinkedIn profile. If you update it extensively, you might want to let them know in advance. People new to the site may confuse your profile with an online resume, so you don't want them to think that you're looking for a new job!

Tip 2:
It's an obvious point, but it's one that people forget: don't get carried away while sharing information. Make sure that you respect confidentiality, and don't give away information that could harm your organization.

Organizational Use

You can also use LinkedIn in the following ways to help your organization grow:

• Increase visibility – LinkedIn gives your organization increased visibility for its brand, products, and corporate goals. Potential customers, clients, and suppliers can research your company on LinkedIn to see if they're interested in doing business with you. This is especially useful if your organization sells services or products to other businesses.


• Conduct research on other organizations – LinkedIn also works the other way. You can use the site to research your competition, potential partners, or new suppliers.


• Tell your company story – This company story, if told in the right way, can inspire customers and potential employees, and create an emotional connection with people. Special applications, like video, allow you to create a multimedia experience with other users. (Setting up a profile for your organization will be useful here.)

Tip:
Make sure that organizational use of LinkedIn is aligned with your organization's overall strategy, and its other communications.

Recruitment

You can also use LinkedIn for recruitment and job-hunting.

For example, if you're looking for a new team member with a particular set of skills, or prior experience in a certain industry or company, you can post jobs on LinkedIn, or search for specific people who have the skills and experience that you're looking for. (Check people's profiles first to make sure that they're happy to be approached with new job opportunities.)

You may find this more effective than more traditional recruitment methods, depending on the position you're looking to fill, and your industry.

Many potential recruits also use LinkedIn as a research tool. For instance, suppose a person had two good job offers. Which organization will be a better match for them? What will their new boss or colleagues be like? What is the corporate culture like? LinkedIn can help them to find out.

So, as well as keeping your organization's profile up-to-date, also make sure that you own personal profile reflects yourself and your organization positively.

LinkedIn Etiquette

Remember these guidelines when using LinkedIn:

• Use introductions carefully – Success on LinkedIn relies heavily on reputation. Be careful when you ask for, or make, an introduction, and do so only if you truly think everyone can benefit.


• Always tell the truth – When discussing where you've worked and what you've accomplished, be honest, and don't oversell yourself.


• Don't gossip – Don't spread any company or personal gossip through LinkedIn. You never know who's going to read it, or where it will end up.


• Be professional – LinkedIn is used mainly for professional networking. So, stay professional at all times. Use other sites like Facebook for personal posts.

Tip:
If your organization approves, add your LinkedIn profile page address to your email signature. When you email colleagues, clients, and suppliers, they'll see your link – and if they're on LinkedIn, they may connect with you. This will further expand your network and exposure.

Key Points

LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking website. Although some people use the site for job searches and recruitment, it mainly helps you to get in touch with past colleagues and potential clients, and expand your professional network.

With tools like LinkedIn Answers and groups, you can establish trust with those in your network and improve your reputation, while keeping up-to-date with industry news and trends.

LinkedIn can also help your organization increase visibility for its products and brand, and can provide information on other organizations such as potential partners, customers, and competitors.

The 10 HUGE mistakes people make on LinkedIn

[caption id="attachment_523" align="aligncenter" width="576"] LinkedIn Mistakes NOT to make...[/caption]

LinkedIn is a great way to make business connections, but the truth is that most freelancers are using it completely wrong. Some of the mistakes are made and by simply switching up your approach to Linkedin, you’ll be able to get much more out of it. Today I am going to outline 10 mistakes people make on Linkedin. I hope that by reading these mistakes, you’ll be able to fix any mistakes you’re currently making and build a better Linkedin profile.

Auto updating with your Twitter statuses

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is having their Twitter statuses auto insert into their Linkedin accounts “update” section. This is a big no-no because it shows a couple things right away. First, you’re showing that you don’t care enough about Linkedin to go and update it yourself (even using TweetDeck or another app allows you to update it properly). Second, it is streaming your constant flow of ReTweets and info you might not want to share with potential business connections on Linkedin.

Not linking to your business websites

This seems like a no-brainer, right? When you set up your profile, you’d think that most people would add their business URL in, blog URL, etc. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of people miss out on this opportunity to share other links with their Linkedin profile viewers. When you leave a blog comment, you generally add your URL in, right? Well, it’s the same way here – make sure you’re utilizing Linkedin and getting all of the links in you possibly can.

Leaving your profile information blank

So, you started your profile but never found the time to get around to it? Well, what do you think that’s going to show potential connections when they view your profile. If you can’t take 5-10 minutes to properly set up your profile, how do you expect the viewer of your profile to take you serious enough to hire you?

Not uploading your resume

Here’s one that I am personally not following but I know I need to be. Adding a resume to your Linkedin profile should be one of the first things you do because it gives people the opportunity to download it and have it on file at ease. They don’t need to contact you to request it – it’s right there.

Your recommendations section is blank

Here’s one that you can look at as a way to showcase testimonials for your business. Do you know clients who are on Linkedin? Why not ask them to give you a recommendation? This way, potential clients viewing your page will see it and it will give you a much better light to shine in, in their eyes.

Set it and forget it

Putting your Linkedin profile together and not utilizing it on a regular basis is counter productive. If your page looks like you are never there, people will assume that you’re not around on a regular basis in your business as well. Be there, be present and be active. You don’t have to spend 10 hours a day on the site, but add a couple status updates throughout the day and it’ll keep you “active” in peoples eyes.

Only connecting with people in your industry

I’ve said this a lot of times before but I think it needs to be said again. Connecting with people who do the same job as you is great for building relationships in your industry with people who might be able to help promote you or give you advice on specific things, but if you’re trying to build a business, you need to connect with people who will HIRE you. If you design blogs, connect with bloggers more than other blog designers, etc.

Connecting with EVERYONE at once

With everything, Linkedin needs to be cultivated properly. Going in and massively adding 100-200 people isn’t the way to go about it. Organically build and grow, adding those who you truly talk to. It’s not Twitter, you don’t need to follow everyone just because they’re in the same niche as you. Connect with people you know and build those relationships further.

Not branding your sub headline

Not sure what your sub headline is? It’s the spot under your name, which usually displays your position and company information (ie: Decisive Marketing Executive Who Drives Company Growth Through Creative & Innovative Marketing Strategies.@tommylandz). However, this is the first thing people see after your name so you need to make sure it pops and brands you properly. You can edit it by going to “EDIT PROFILE” and clicking “EDIT” next to your name, which will allow you to change the line under your name.

Not connecting with me on Linkedin

Just like the other articles in this series, we need to connect  I love everyone who reads and enjoys this blog and want to connect with you in any way possible, including our Linkedin profiles. You can view my LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/tommylandz. Go ahead and connect with me or you can leave a comment here with your linkedin profile URL and we can all connect with each other