What are the top 5 LinkedIn strategies for career growth? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Mario Peshev, CEO of DevriX and SME Digital Consultant, on Quora:
As a job seeker (or a consultant), leveraging LinkedIn could be a viable way to boost your digital presence and build a personal brand.
While 5 strategies won’t suffice for a complete revamp, here are the top 5 categories that you can focus on.
1. Build an Outstanding Profile
LinkedIn provides a vast set of internal tools for building one’s profile. Make sure you fill out all areas and provide enough value in order to demonstrate your skills and qualifications in the best possible manner.
Use a specific headline that corresponds with your core skill.
Craft a genuine summary that outlines your top accomplishments and your main focus.
Update your skills, the job experience (in details), communities you participate with and certificates that you hold.
Use a trustworthy photo which showcases your best self. Apply that same photo to your other online accounts so that people can connect the dots.
Upload any SlideShare presentations or additional assets applicable to LinkedIn.
Browse a few profiles of industry leaders and influencers in your field. Leverage some of the best practices and adjust them for your profile.
2. Produce Regular Valuable Content
LinkedIn lets you publish regular posts (similarly to other social networks) and write articles (formerly their LinkedIn Pulse platform).
HubSpot suggests [1] posting once a day on LinkedIn around 10–11am.
With articles, it’s a bit tricky. Different influencers report various results regarding their success rates.
I’ve seen success stories varying from once a week to every day (for highly successful personal blogs). Aiming for at least once a week would let you benefit from the aggregating volume that keeps receiving traction over time.
Moreover, LinkedIn launched video updates and they keep featuring that proactively. Recording daily educational videos (or every few days) will most likely receive more attention than standard textual posts.
Tag other people who will get notified once mentioned - especially if you discuss more active LinkedIn members.
If you want to build your portfolio for work purposes, make sure your topics are closely related with your specialty. You want to end up with a complete profile that screams “professional” and is focused on what you do and are eager to do.
3. Proactively Interact and Grow Your Network
“Build it and they will come” sounds great in theory, but isn’t as efficient in practice.
Connect your emails and other social accounts and grow your existing network through peers using other mediums. Reach out to former colleagues of yours, fellow students, teachers, and people you’ve met at conferences.
Join LinkedIn groups and interact with people. Comment on discussions, share topics on your own feed, mention other team members. Most people would be sending invitations every now and then - and don’t be afraid to ask for a connection request after a couple of interactions.
Pro tip: There are certain groups including LION in their titles - which stands for “LinkedIn Open Networkers”. Those folks are actively networking with as many people as possible. This may increasingly grow your network over the next months and bring a solid volume of 2nd level connections.
4. Utilize Recommendations
LinkedIn supports both endorsements and recommendations [2]. Here’s the formal overview for each features:
A skill endorsement is a one-click way for your connections to endorse the skills listed on your profile. There is not an automatic way to request an endorsement and only skills already listed can be endorsed. A written recommendation isn't included with this feature. Learn more about skill endorsements. A recommendation is a written statement of endorsement from a connection. You can request recommendations from your connections, as well as proactively recommend your connections. Learn more about recommendations.
Recommendations work better than job references as they are public and connected to a specific profile on LinkedIn. This is highly valuable and those may come from former colleagues, managers, teachers, or other peers that you have worked with.
Endorsements don’t carry as much weight, but could be helpful when you want to showcase expertise in a certain area.
For instance, as the owner of a WordPress tech agency who has built hundreds of plugins and contributed to the WordPress core numerous times, my network has testified of my skill set.
When over a hundred people confirm your expertise (including their own profiles), that confirms your knowledge which makes it more likely to land a relevant offer.
This works both ways, of course - help your other peers and upvote their skills and they may return the favor as well.
5. Monitor Updates and News
All of that works flawlessly and you may soon start receiving regular job offers. But if you want to push it further, follow the top companies in your field that you are interested in.
Add some of their employees in your network as well. And join some relevant groups, too.
This will give you the competitive advantage of following job posts on LinkedIn once they come and see similar statuses published on a company’s page or shared by their employees. This head start could be invaluable if you are among the first applicants submitting their resume to the hiring managers.
Other press releases or industry news may be helpful as well. If a startup has announced a recent funding, they may soon be looking for new team members. Reach out to the hiring manager or one of the founders and talk to them about possible opportunities.
Footnotes
[1] How Often To Post On Social Media According To 14 Studies
[2] Skill Endorsements and Recommendations
This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:
Why do you commute several hours every day, take that extra class in the evening, pick up a side hustle, and go out of the way to help an old colleague? Something drives you. Every one of us has our own motivations, our own inspiration and our own distinct notion of what constitutes success. In other words, we’re all in it for very different reasons. And we’re...
Viewers of the Golden Globes Sunday night may have noticed a commercial from a company that isn’t typically an advertiser: LinkedIn.
And if viewers paid close attention to the spot, they may have also noticed that the actual LinkedIn user who was featured in the ad didn’t fit the “white collar businesspeople” stereotype of the professional network’s typical user.
The spot marked the launch of “In It Together,” LinkedIn’s first true integrated marketing effort, which also encompasses digital display, paid social media, online video, outdoor/out-of-home (including on LinkedIn’s offices across the U.S.), radio, podcasts, search-engine marketing and other partnerships.
LinkedIn is no stranger to using major awards shows as launching pads for its campaigns. Its first TV ad debuted during the Academy Awards in February 2016.
The two campaigns are nothing alike, however.
LinkedIn vice president of brand marketing and corporate communications Melissa Selcher said the professional network’s TV ad debut during the 2016 Oscars was a single nationwide spot. “In It Together,” meanwhile, was crafted with an entirely different approach in mind.
The new campaign is a 12-week initiative targeted solely at four core markets— Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco—and Selcher said the company will compare LinkedIn activity in those markets with control markets that are not included in the campaign to help determine its success.
She added that LinkedIn saw the Golden Globes as a natural fit for the launch of In It Together, as both the awards show and the marketing initiative “celebrate all the different versions of success.”
LinkedIn said it opted to use “raw, black-and-white, documentary-style film” in the campaign in order to chronicle featured members’ success stories “in their own unique environments.”
LinkedIn executive creative director Kevin Frank said the network faces a stereotype of being a destination for businesspeople, and “people with more nontraditional backgrounds came forward” during the creation of the campaign.
Indeed, LinkedIn members featured during “In It Together” include those that fit the stereotype, such as an information-technology professional, but the campaign also includes users involved in sales, nonprofits, ranching, education, culinary, the arts (dancing and animation, for example) and even a mixed-martial-arts fighter.
“In It Together” was developed by LinkedIn Creative Studio and BMB, but employees of the professional network were heavily involved, as well.
Selcher said the initiative was introduced to all of LinkedIn’s 11,000 or so employees in November, and they were involved in key elements such as nominating members to be featured. In addition, the company has an internal microsite where employees can explain why they’re “in it,” and later this month, one entry will be selected with that employee being featured in an ad.
Selcher wrote in a blog post introducing the campaign: “A few months ago, we started asking ourselves and our members, ‘What are you in it for?’ ‘It’ is work and everything associated with work, and the answers are as unique as the more than 500 million members on LinkedIn. For some, the answer is a sense of purpose; for others, a deep passion. For some, it is a way to give back; for others, a much more pragmatic desire to provide. Regardless of the motivation or reason, no one wants to go it alone. Whatever you’re in it for, you want to know there is a community of people to help, support, inspire and push you.”
Not only are employees involved in the campaign, but LinkedIn’s physical offices across the country are participating, as well.
The company’s buildings will feature “massive renderings” of images of members involved in the campaign, such as the example pictured below, from the professional network’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.
One of the LinkedIn members involved in the campaign—all of whom volunteered to participate without compensation—thought he was just the recipient of a mass email at first, telling Adweek in an interview, “I’m not the typical financial advisor. I’m still young. I’m African-American, and my story is not one that’s commonly told.”
Eszylfie Taylor, founder and president of Taylor Insurance and Financial Services, said he saw his participation in the campaign as “an opportunity to share my why, share the reasons behind what I do and the role I play in people’s lives on a grand scale.”
Director Stacy Peralta (Dogtown and Z-Boys) said in email, “I knew from the first reading of the boards that this was one of those rare opportunities. They asked us to tell real stories about real people, they wanted it shot in black and white, and they wanted energy, enthusiasm and candor from the people involved. We found and documented many of the unique people who use the platform. We found avant-garde musicians, MMA fighters, physics teachers, animators, chefs and real-life cowboys, all of whom not only use LinkedIn but rave about its effect on their careers.”
LinkedIn had some big-media company when it came to launching campaigns during Sunday night’s event. The New York Times also unveiled its “He said. She said.” effort, backing the newspaper’s recent investigations of sexual harassment allegations in the entertainment, business and technology sectors.
CREDITS
Client: LinkedIn
Creative agency: BMB and LinkedIn Creative Studio
Director/production company: Stacy Peralta, Nonfiction Unlimited
Editorial: Union Editorial
Post-production: MPC
Sound design: Wave Studios
Photographer: Ben Ingham
Media Agency: Spark Foundry
Antoine Troupe credits dance for bringing him out of tough times. Now he dances anywhere his feet are and has made a career out of it. He’s in it to do what he loves. https://lnkd.in/gA4p6pe
