A Few Simple Ways to Leverage LinkedIn

Are you using LinkedIn to build your personal brand and expand your professional network? If not, you should be! Assuming you already have your basic profile complete, don’t you want to have a profile that commands attention and makes people want to connect? Of course you do! So here are five quick tips to round out your LinkedIn activity and make your profile more robust.

Send email regularly via LinkedIn to your connections. I especially make sure to do this when I notice a connection isn’t posting updates or appearing active in any other way on LinkedIn. It gives them a reason to check back into LinkedIn. It also gives me a conversation starter and a chance to catch up with them.

Maximize those applications on LinkedIn. Why? People actually look at your apps, as they round out your profile and give a better picture of your professional interests. Portfolios, blogs and books, oh my! Browse the applications and select a few that you can use to enhance your profile. You can always remove or add an application, so see which ones will work best for your products and services. The applications are listed in the “More” drop down menu:

Get social and extend the conversation from LinkedIn to another social media platform. Use your Twitter address and/or Facebook profile or page in your comment signature. I’ve taken relationships from LinkedIn to Twitter and Facebook and beyond.

Personalize as much information as you are allowed on your profile. For example, LinkedIn allows you to list up to 3 websites. Did you know that you can modify the standard website names of “company website” “blog”, etc as provided by LinkedIn? No worries if you didn’t know, here’s how you do it, it’ll take you 2 minutes: under “edit profile” go to your website listings and click “edit”. In the drop down menu for Websites, choose “other”. This will allow you to give a title to each individual website. I’m sure you want the title of your company/blog listed here. This is an easy fix!

Join appropriate Groups, including local groups. Groups are a goldmine of information and opportunity! Don’t limit yourself to industry specific/niche groups; there are plenty of general groups that may spark your interest. And by all means, announce your presence, join in the discussions, and/or start your own! You don’t gain visibility by lurking. While you’re there, sign up to receive daily or weekly digests from those groups. And read the emails! No need cluttering your inbox if you don’t use the information. You can use these digests to catch up on discussion topics as well as target the more active members of the groups.

Don’t forget, when you’re sending an invitation to connect, nothing says spam more than the default canned message. And please don’t leave the message area blank, yes that still says spam. Take the time to write a couple of sentences about why you want to connect. For more info on that one, read my previous post on using a personal message to connect.

Ciao,
Miss Kemya

Are we LinkedIn? Connect with me here – http://www.linkedin.com/in/kemyascott – and let me know you found me via this post. See you there!