You are doing LinkedIn wrong

Sit down.

You and I need to have a serious conversation.

I have seen your LinkedIn profile, scanned your comments, and read your messages. One thing is very clear: you are not very good at LinkedIn.

But fear not, we are having this conversation because I think you can be better, and I am here to help.

You using LinkedIn wrong is not an ability issue, it’s a habit problem. 

For our first lesson, I am going to give you three things to do immediately to get you on the right track. Follow along and you will get ten times more value out of LinkedIn than you currently are, and that is better for everyone.

Quit treating LinkedIn like Facebook

This is a fairly common recommendation, but I am going to dive deeper than the normal recommendations of keeping it professional, ect.

Most social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) is consumable. I have caught you on more than one occasion endlessly scrolling recipe videos on Facebook, which is fine, but that is not the purpose of LinkedIn.

Instead, LinkedIn is interactive, or it is supposed to be. You and your colleagues are making that a bit challenging at times. For genuine value to be gained through the platform, you need to interact with someone more than just pressing the Accept button.

This means that we need to look at your network. Bigger is not better, especially if you do not engage with anyone.

Homework #1: go through your network and think about who can add value to you professionally (or who you can add value to if you are feeling a bit altruistic). Anybody that sticks out as not being a productive connection, remove them.

Purge 10% of your connections and this will already have an impact on what content is shared with you and who LinkedIn recommends to connect with.

Reengage with your Why

Why are you even on LinkedIn?

Because you are supposed to is no longer good enough. You will get nothing out of it.

Check your profile and ask yourself if it says what you are looking for? Is your why clearly identifiable?

You are given a headline area, make the most use of it. State out what it is that you are doing in your job and if there is anything that you are looking for.

A want seat on a board? Looking to volunteer? Searching for a mentor? Say it.

Help people find you and give people reasons to reach out.

Homework #2: update your headline area with your why. Tell people what you do and what you are looking for.

Be contactable

So you have whittled down your network to be more efficient and you have put out there what you are looking for, it is time for the most important part: help people get in contact with you!

Of course LinkedIn would prefer the best way to be contacted is through a message (or their Premium InMail), the reality the response rate is incredibly low and messages often get lost or unread. Even InMail only have a response rate of 10%-25% (per LinkedIn)!

Therefore, multiple points of contact should be a must. You can easily check and see if you have your contact information updated by going to your profile.

Homework #3: make sure your contact info is up to date and add multiple way of getting in touch with you.

Get on with it

These are just 3 easy fixes to some of the ways you are not using LinkedIn to its full potential. But that is ok, we will get you there.

Make these changes and I will check on your profile next week to see how it is looking! Go ahead, what are you waiting for?