Using More of LinkedIn's Free Features

Most LinkedIn users have only scratched the surface when it comes to making use of LinkedIn's free features. At least that's what I hear when I'm talking to the LinkedIn experts and trainers who've featured on our LinkedIn Experts Live Q&A series.

Making full use of LinkedIn's free features

So in this edition of "Winning business on LinkedIn", we’re going to hear tips from Mark White , David Petherick and Beth Granger regarding tools and functionality on LinkedIn that could really help with driving up the visibility and results you achieve here.

Never complain about your homepage feed again!

One of the most common complaints on LinkedIn is frustration with what's appearing in the homepage feed, right? How are you supposed to build relationships with the right people, if what you're seeing in your feed is irrelevant?!

Well, this brings us to the first of our short tips videos - in which Mark White highlights the ways you can fully use the "Search" box on LinkedIn to get much better results. Most notably, it's a fantastic resource for narrowing down to only see the posts that are most relevant to you and your business. But don't overlook that you can actually search LinkedIn in 9 ways, through searches for:

• Posts, People & Jobs
• Companies, Groups & Schools
• Events, Courses & Services

So are you, for example, finding all the events taking place that serve your market and using those to get better networked with your ideal clients? But for sure, figuring out how to bookmark content searches that are relevant to you has to be one of the quickest wins you can achieve on LinkedIn. So have a look as Mark and I talk through how to do this and more with the free search functionality that most people aren't fully using...

What should I do with the "Featured" section on my LinkedIn profile?

Another underused - and free - feature on LinkedIn is the "Featured" section on your LinkedIn profile. This allows you to draw people's attention, in a very visual way, to resources, events, newsletters, etc. that you would like people to know about and register for. Here's what my section looks like, for example:

In this short tips video with David Petherick, we talk about how to add the Featured section to your profile - and what are some of the smartest ways you can use this to good effect:

Publishing a company LinkedIn newsletter

Last but not least, did you know that LinkedIn newsletters (like this) are one of the most effective ways of getting your content in front of your network (and indeed reaching beyond your network)?

You can publish a newsletter as an individual (as I am doing here), or a more recent addition is the ability to publish a newsletter as a company. That allows you to leverage a company page that has amassed a sizeable following - and makes it possible for the workload of publishing a newsletter to be spread across multiple members of your team.

Tips on leveraging this free LinkedIn feature were what I discussed here with Beth Granger:

I hope this selection of ideas and expert input really helps you to leverage more of LinkedIn's free features. As always, I’d welcome your thoughts - and?please do add a comment if you think others in your network would find this helpful (or if there’s anything you’d like us to clarify).

P.S. be sure to subscribe for the next monthly edition if you aren't already a subscriber.