Avoid embarrassment: learn how to LinkedIn (in 3 steps)

looking for opportunities on LinkedIn?

or wish to receive them in your inbox?

tired of looking for a career move and wish they would look for you for a change?

Well, how about the most professional platform of them all?

after using it for a while, and with these 3 steps

finding a job on Linkedin becomes a bonus,

The atmosphere is completely different from the other social media platforms,

Its a community made of professionals and meaningful connections, that groups multiple networks,..your goal is to create your own.

If you create à good LinkedIn profile and optimize it with the tips I am about to tell you,

You can connect with people that have similar interests, and start exchanging knowledge and experience.

bear in mind, It is not task to do and wait for the gains,

But habits to adapt to deal with à business platform like LinkedIn,

just for reference here is one of my client's profile after we worked on it, using these steps for 5 days,

if in 1 week,140 people are checking your profile

I assure you a handful of them want to hire you.

Step 1 Complete your LinkedIn profile 

Great profiles are not simply complete,

It is a source of information about you,

If your page is not complete, people will rarely take à second look,

now if you have a LinkedIn profile section that is not finished,

I want you to open à LinkedIn tab right now and complete it,

just go I'll wait.

And If you don’t know what to do here is à checklist or you just jump ahead to step 2 :

LinkedIn profile intro

Has your name

Your title: if you are à student, put your major and/or passion

If you have à job, be precise and you can add for example how you feel about it

About

Featured

My personal favorite,

if this was à car, it will be the grill,(if not à car guy, it means the front)

Its the part of your LinkedIn profile that says look at me,

chose some information that you will handpick to feature,

featured posts should clearly say, you're engaged in the network and people are engaged with you, which means you're good at what you do,

Background

Remember to fill every section with valuable information,

Skills

you can choose-ups to 20 skills in your page,

but keep in mind that only 3 can appear upfront, so pick wisely something that has to do with your area,

To increase your skill points, there is no shortcut you have to endorse people so they can endorse back.

Accomplishment

Courses,test-scores,publications,organisations...

anything that could bring you closer to your dream job or to your prospects.

Additional information

you might think this is just bonus information,

but actually it is a very crucial element,

Imagine scrolling down a public figure and finding hundreds of recommendations from people,

Yes, that's right, its the recommendation section but you can't just write it yourself,

You can ask someone you know or fish for recommendations from old coworkers, think of this section as the reviews for you as a product.

Supported languages

well self-explanatory

Step 2 Building à LinkedIn network

Whenever someone decides to find a job on LinkedIn,

the first thing on their mind (if anything like me in 2015), is to connect with everyone and anyone they see.

Well, why not ? in social media the more likes or follows always mean better reach,

Well, true, but what if the people you are reaching out with your product (or yourself), don’t care about you ? or your offer?

They don’t hate you, but it is not like their going to do business with you.

Network management

It is the act of focusing your effort on creating and managing your network so that its beneficial to you,

It will then provide you with leads,

job opportunities or great content that helps you improve day per day,

At one point on my personal, I started “disconnecting” with some profile, its just that we had very different domains,

I know it sounds bad and I’m sorry,

I just think of it as letting people go,

Let us make this simple

If you are engaged, the network is engaged

Find 3 to 10 “ LinkedIn influencer”,

it is generally à profile in your area of expertise (digital marketing, data analysis …)

That is very active in posting and reacting, 

This type of profile is very engaged with his network,

posting and replying to comments with at least 50 likes or 10 comment

If the posts he shares are related to you, then you can like them and comment with your opinion or answer à question …

The important thing is to provide some kind of value,

if you find yourself out of ideas, thank him for the sharing and move on,

Now, Because other people are noticing and approach you, or vice versa,

You will be growing in reach and meet like-minded people

Lets you do this for about à week

Consistent actions

By making this à habit to comment on 20 posts à day,

I guarantee you at least 20 to 50 good quality connections by the end of the week.

Don’t worry those numbers will scale better with time

It should not be à numbers game, but the reality it is not,

It is about building à Linkedin brand, which is leaning towards quality,

Step 3 Market your Content

Types of content

Now that your reach has, grown à little bit and your network is full of people that appreciate what you have to offer.

Its time to contribute,

Don’t worry it doesn’t have to be something complicated and advanced,

Just give something back to the network

The optimal way is to post about 2 to 3 times à day with at least 2 hours in-between.

The secret technique

One habit I started seeing lately (and do myself) is to “like your own posts/comments”

Yes, yes it is somehow a frowned upon act,

But because the Linkedin algorithm will analyze the reactions after you post it by about 20 min,

and decide if it should reappear on top,

And if you like your own posts, its also considered engagement and will give it à little boost,

Anyways, you did not hear it from me. 

Image posts

an infographic that summarises some points about your job area,

Same thing, always aim to provide value.

Some statistic that can be helpful to your connections.

Text Only posts

Or If you have confidence in your writing or your à skilled copywriter,

you can share something that happened to you and what you learned.

The thing is to always think about what is your added value to the reader

As readers or customers, we are always thinking about what I’m I getting out of it,

Why should I spend my precious time reading this piece of content?

If you can keep this in mind and train, I think you’ll do fine

Now remember don’t expect engagement from the start, you have to keep working on it and building your reach,

Bonus: The viral post

Using this technique after connecting with 10,000 or 5000, will give you a huge boost in reach,

Because people are also interested in growing theyre networks, they will be glad to comment and tag theyre friends,

make sure to tag interested people in comments to get the ball rolling,

Conclusion

Yes, it takes time to build a perfect LinkedIn Profile,

to have a good community with whom you can share meaningful connections, you have to put in some work

if you do these steps for about a month you will see huge growth in your account,