Did you know that 75% of the working population has a LinkedIn account? Here are some useful top tips for getting the most out of it…
by Jodie Schofield
How do you do LinkedIn?
This was a question posed on Twitter this week. It gave me pause for thought and I offered to share my top tips, which leads me to this article...
Not everyone likes LinkedIn, and I will agree it sat in the social platform wilderness for too many years, filled with spam accounts (I'm getting much less of that kind of connect request but I do wonder what they're doing at #linkedin HQ to reduce the numbers).
There was the time people started using it for a Facebook-style feed of selfies and funnies - I unfollowed. It was the butt of many jokes and memes, my favourite one in 30Rock when Jack recoils at the idea of even being on the platform.
I guess it's a lot like a digital business card, if you need one, you're still not important enough - or some high climber analogy...
Having never had ambitions to be the most important person in a room (I'm a natural born collaborator, baby) I have been on LinkedIn since it started to take off in the early noughties. I heard that big names like Google and Apple were going there first to hire people. That a personal connection to a new hire was the new go-to. If only I'd known 'it's who you know' was a stone cold opportunity knocks truth in my 20s! I've since worked hard to keep a good, up to date profile that accurately presents what I can do for people in the world of work.
Whether you like it or not, this is now where people look to see what skills and experience you've got- and if that's a blank page that can be as damaging as no page at all!
A few years back, a recruitment friend criticised my lack of connections - I guess this tool has worked best for that sector, for obvious reasons. I previously had taken the LinkedIn advice to only add people I know in real life, to heart. This stunted my networking abilities on the networking platform! Now I still review connection requests, but I am open to wider links and send requests to peers and trailblazers who I read/hear about. A few selling-message-straight-to-your-inbox stragglers still get thru, but depending on the tone I ignore/ DIS-connect. No, I do not want to invest in bloody b*tcoin!
My 6 top tips then...
Build a gang of connections you want to be connected to
Join groups for your sector or project topic
Follow people and companies of interest
Be present, check in once a week if that's all you have time for.
If you're looking for work, write a post asking for help - this has worked for me and I'm always humbled by the support I receive from my peers.
Write regular articles and share interesting content, this helps the platform algorithm share your content to more newsfeeds. Unfollow/ disconnect from anything that makes you frown, nobody needs the extra wrinkles.
Happy adventures on LinkedIn!
Jodie Schofield is a communications specialist, creative copywriter & BBC-trained content producer. You can say hello on Twitter at @jodie_tweets
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Image via Jurgen Appelo
