How My Daughter Got Started on LinkedIn and So Could You

"You need to teach me LinkedIn!" she said.

Several weeks ago, my daughter told me she wanted to start being active on LinkedIn, as she heard colleges look at prospective students' social media.

I thought it made sense since hiring managers do as well, right? They don't just look at one's resume.

So, here are the ten pieces of advice I gave her:

Getting Started

1. Open an Account: List your education, add a good profile picture, and a header. Also, write a friendly About section.
2. Connect with People You Know: High schoolers are not likely to open LinkedIn accounts (yet), so follow family and family friends. If you are not a high schooler, look for ex-college friends, family members, or ex-colleagues.
3. Follow Target Companies: (or universities in my daughter's case) to stay up to date with what they do and engage with their content.

Content Creation and Sharing

1. Identify Topics: List the topics you feel comfortable sharing and want others to know. List at least five. These can be experiences (life and work), knowledge, fun facts about you, books you’ve read, and more. Every content should inspire, educate, entertain, or inform, and you should mix it up (not just one type).
2. Prepare Stories/Posts: Write 2-3 stories/posts for each topic. Until you can get up in the morning and think of something to share, prepare content in advance. For each post, decide what photo or video to attach to it, although text posts work too.
3. Keep Notes of Ideas: Keep notes when ideas about what you can write about come up. These can be when you commute, after you meet friends, or have a specific experience. I use Grammarly on my phone, but Notepad works too.
4. Create a Posting Schedule: Decide on a daily/weekly/monthly posting schedule and pull from that reserve of posts or ideas list.

Engaging with Others

1. Expand Your Network: Look for new people to follow based on your interests. Follow them, comment on their content, or connect with a personal invite (to increase chances of a reply).
2. Engage Meaningfully: Comment on posts on your feed where you have something helpful and insightful to say. Do not post “interesting share,” “great post,” or emojis. Use this opportunity to connect, engage, and show your personality and interests.
3. Respond to Engagement: If someone connects or follows you, check out their profile and read their latest posts. If it's interesting, comment on it and connect. If the profile is empty and there are no posts, ignore it. That's probably spam and won't be a valuable connection anyway.
4. Reciprocate Interaction: If someone comments on your post, respond. Don’t respond with “thanks” alone. Imagine a conversation and respond accordingly.
5. Engage with Commenters: Those who comment on your posts are probably like-minded people. Go check out their content and comment on theirs too. It will be helpful, but it's also the proper behavior we should see on LinkedIn.

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?? I'm?Osnat (Os) Benari ?I?wrote the book "Starting From Scratch?-?Manage Change Like Your Career Depends On It"?and it's?packed with tips?to help you build?a resilient career.

?? Check the link in my bio for helpful resources for?#startingfromscratch