So you’ve signed up to LinkedIn and created yourself a basic profile. Now what do you do?
That’s a good question and one that I get asked a lot. It depends on what your objectives are for being on LinkedIn, for example are you looking for a new role ?
The key thing to remember is that now you’ve created a profile on LinkedIn then you are creating a digital footprint. So you should focus on promoting the personal brand that is “you” in the best possible light.
So, if we take the objective of looking for a new job then you should look at how you achieve this in a couple of ways. You can ensure that your personal LinkedIn profile contains all of your skills and work history, then wait for people and organisations to find you. Or you can utilise the LinkedIn jobs functionality to find your next dream job. Or my preferred method, you can promote and increase your personal brand awareness.
LinkedIn provides a number of ways for you to promote yourself as a brand. You can utilise their applications, creating a portfolio or slide presentation, which is visible from your profile but also searchable through the applications sites.
Another great way is to join industry specific groups or groups that are connected to your ideal future employer. Then once you’ve joined, become active by creating discussions or commenting on discussions.
You should also look at partaking in asking industry specific questions or providing answers to questions, since this increases your brand awareness, showing your expertise and experience.
I would also suggest that you follow the companies for which you are interested in working. If it is a small or startup company then they may look who is following them and determine that you have skills that could help their company.
Whilst you are partaking in all of this activity to proactively realise your career goals, unless you have switched off your activity feeds within your profile settings then it will be visible to all those within your network. So you may wish to consider altering your feeds setting.
There are other tips and tricks that you can utilise which are covered within our LinkedIn book.
Hopefully the tips I have outlined will help you to achieve your career objective.