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
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