Linkedin: Make the World’s Biggest Business Network Work for You

What could be better than having your entire business network in one place, opening up opportunities, exploring ideas, talking business and keeping up to date with industry news? You’ve got it all with LinkedIn. In fact, with the mobile app, you’ll have all of this in the palm of your hand.

LinkedIn isn’t just the top business network, with more than 225 million users it’s one of the most popular social networks in the world. So, if you’re keen to do business, you can’t afford not to be using LinkedIn.

Try anyone of these tips to take your LinkedIn page to the top:

1. Get into the habit of checking in frequently – it’s easy and essential. Liking, sharing and commenting on updates in your network are easy ways to keep your profile active.

2. Post updates. Whether you’re sharing business news or industry insight, or, if you have time, develop a good blogging habit. It’s one way to position yourself as an expert and gain the trust of people within your industry.

3. Stay in the loop. Browse LinkedIn Today to stay on top of the most popular business and industry news stories, or get the email summary, direct to your desktop.

4. Get vain – create a Company page and claim your vanity URL for it - http://www.linkedin.com/in/YOURBUSINESSHERE will look great on your offline marketing.

5. Get into great company – position yours as a thought leader by posting company updates that encourage people to follow.

6. Videos get views! Add video to your company page to make it more interesting and interactive. You can add video to any product or service pages you’ve already set up, or direct from your company page by clicking on the ‘Edit’ tab in admin mode, and selecting ‘Add Product or Service’. Make sure to upload your video to YouTube first as LinkedIn will connect to it from there.

7. Link In to your website. Adding a LinkedIn widget to your website is a permanent invitation to grow your network.

8. Optimise your profile. Think about what people in your business are searching for and try to include as many of these keywords as will fit in the text (naturally!) as well as in headlines and summaries.

9. Personalise your profile. In edit mode, you can drag and drop sections of your profile just by hovering over headlines – easy!

10. Save time with Saved Searches. You can create up to 3 searches to save and run at a later date, plus you can get email reminders if or when new members match your search criteria.

11. CVs made easy. Turn your profile into your CV in seconds with the Resume Builder tool, which allows you to choose a template, edit your info and export as a PDF.

12. Find a new job! LinkedIn’s job board allows you to search by industry and location – it will even suggest jobs based on your profile information.

13. May we recommend... recommending? You may have some recommendations already on your personal profile, now you can also collect recommendations and reviews for your products, services and any offers you might want to promote.

14. Endorse and be endorsed. LinkedIn have made it easy to endorse any of your connections skills and expertise, or to suggest new ones - just click on the + sign beside a user’s profile. Endorse connections frequently and authentically and you’ll find that they often return the favour.

15. Stay open to opportunity. Premium LinkedIn members can choose to join the OpenLink network, and so receive messages from people outside their network. If you want to grow your connections, get a premium membership or look for those that already do – those that have a small ring of dots next to their name are OpenLink networked.

16. Be seen. Find out who’s checking your profile under ‘Who’s Viewed My Profile’. You can also see the number of views and appearances in search.

17. Email connections at a glance. Use the LinkedIn Companion for Firefox, Chrome or Safari to easily find LinkedIn profiles of new email contacts.

18. Manage your contacts away from LinkedIn. You can easily export your connections by clicking through from ‘Contacts’ to ‘My Connections’ and scrolling to ‘Export Connections’.

19. Use Groups to grow your network. Group members can also message each other directly and view each other’s profiles without being connected.

20. Get your own group! Creating a LinkedIn group is a great way to start and maintain conversations around industry issues or innovation.

21. Link LinkedIn to Twitter. While you can’t publish to LinkedIn from Twitter automatically, you can do it the other way round. And it’s easy. If you want an update shared on Twitter, just check the Twitter checkbox before hitting ‘share’.

22. Grow your team. Use the Careers tab on your company page to promote vacancies. Upgrade to a silver or gold careers package to really build your employer brand. You can not only list opportunities, but post employee information, company updates and interesting details about benefits and career development to find the right people.

23. Start a conversation with your connections. Use the LinkedIn Mentions feature to tag a connection or company page in your status update and they will receive a notification. Simply type the “@” symbol into the status or comment field box on the home page to bring up a list of possible profiles to tag and select the relevant option.

Phew! And we haven’t even listed all the tips we know! If you’re short on time, choose an easy tip to streamline your profile and keep this list handy when you really want to up your game. To find out more about effectively using social media for your company and personal brand, contact us today by emailing incoming@thewebbureau.com or call 02890 731190. You can also follow the Web Bureau on LinkedIn.