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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, 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…

  1. Build a gang of connections you want to be connected to

  2. Join groups for your sector or project topic

  3. Follow people and companies of interest

  4. Be present, check in once a week if that’s all you have time for.

  5. 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.

  6. 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

Original source – comms2point0 free online resource for creative comms people – comms2point0

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