“We all know that with more than 310 million members in more than 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. It has executives from all of the Fortune 500 and most businesses are at least represented, but most have their entire executive teams connected.” – Ryan Bradley
LinkedIn has quickly become the professional face of the next generation. If you do not have a LinkedIn identity, you should probably think about creating one! Instead of scouring the newspaper looking for job ads, job postings, group posts and status updates are all free for the taking on LinkedIn.
Like MySpace of the 1990s has been replaced by Instagram and Facebook, newspaper ads of the 1990s and craigslist postings of the early 2000s are now being replaced by LinkedIn advertisements – whether that be free or paid job ads within the professional networking capabilities of this digital media giant.
So knowing these statistics, and seeing how big LinkedIn can be for your business, are you doing the right things to get positive feedback and responses on LinkedIn for your company? If your answer was yes or no to that question, we have a few tips to offer to improve your LinkedIn presence or to create one if you haven’t yet jumped on the LI train!
Don’t Make These 3 Mistakes!
1. Not having a complete profile – take the steps that LinkedIn guides you through to complete your profile. Just like you wouldn’t leave a photo off your Match.com profile, don’t leave a photo or work experience or education off your LinkedIn profile. (And yes, I just took it there to the online dating realm…because let’s get real, people. That’s the way these things happen sometimes!)
2. Failing to make connections and only focusing on selling your services or product – LinkedIn, like other social media avenues such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, are all about building relationships, making connections, and really plugging in to your audience BEFORE you start bombarding them with ads or services or anything that you want them to pay attention to. Make those relationships your first priority.
3. Don’t just join a bunch of groups; participate in them! Responding to questions, commenting on blog posts, and reaching out to those looking for help that you can actually assist with is a great way to build that LinkedIn network!