LinkedIn is the unsung hero of the big social media platforms. Not as famous as Facebook or as flashy as Instagram, the business-oriented platform is nevertheless the way to go if looking to boost your company’s profile, recruit (or be recruited), or simply look for new job opportunities on your own behalf.
However, LinkedIn can, due to its comparatively low profile, be a little more difficult to use than its more celebrated peers – and it’s certainly harder to master. Tucked away under the hood are plenty of little-known tricks, and you can also make best use of some LinkedIn profile writing advice to really get the most mileage out of your account.
Managing Connections
New connection requests come thick and fast on LinkedIn, and it’s easy and tempting to simply hit ‘accept’ and move on. The more connections you have, the better your profile looks, right?
In fact, it’s actually worth taking a moment here and considering your options. Firstly: is this connection one that you really want or need? It’s tempting to think that more connections = a higher-profile account. But it actually reflects better on you if you exercise a little discretion in who you add, and why.
That’s why it’s a good idea to take a minute to review connection requests. At the bottom of the connection request box, you can see a personalised message from the sender (if one has been sent). You can reply with your own personalised response and accept at the same time, which will help in cultivating a relationship with your new connection. If no personalised message has been sent, then you can still accept, or decline if you prefer.
Utilise Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index
This tool is so obscure, many people haven’t even heard of it. It’s found under your LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and offers several metrics by which you can measure your social selling skills:
· Establish your professional brand: whether you’re a professional CV writing service or a social media mogul, it’s important that your brand is visible. Fill out everything in your profile, from experience to skills to education. It’s important to regularly post to increase your brand’s engagement with potential clients.
· Find the right people: use LinkedIn’s Lead Builder to find clients, and save promising leads so that LinkedIn can send you more accurate insights.
· Engage with insights: follow LinkedIn’s suggestions and engage with the recommendations they send, even if it’s a simple ‘not interested’.
· Build relationships: related to the previously discussed connections management, LinkedIn wants to see that you are thoughtfully building your network, rather than just spamming a million connection requests. Take your time when sending requests, and be sure to include personalised messages.
The higher your Social Selling Index (a score out of 100, with 25 for each section), the more people will see your profile. It’s that simple.
You Can Send Free Messages to Some Premium Members
It’s commonly assumed that you cannot message Premium Members unless you’ve already established a connection with them – but this is not necessarily true. Some Premium Members will opt for an ‘open’ profile, meaning that anybody can message them. In order to see if you can message a Premium Member (users who have a gold ‘in’ logo next to their profile name), simply look at the ‘message’ button in the top right-hand corner of their profile. If it’s locked, then their profile is closed. If it’s a simple ‘message’ button, then you can message them – it’s that easy!
Use Career Explorer to Investigate Potential New Job Opportunities
Another little-used or -understood function of LinkedIn, Career Explorer is a fantastic tool for those considering a change in occupation. By searching via your location, career desires and existing skillset, Career Explorer is able to give you an idea of jobs that match your requirements. In addition, it will also display positions that feature skill overlap with your existing skillset, potentially taking you in entirely new directions.
Naturally, if you’re considering a change in careers, it’s well worth dusting off your CV – and that’s where some professional CV writing advice comes in handy.
LinkedIn Profile Writing Services: Ensuring Your Profile is Well Written
You can have the best-established network of connections possible on LinkedIn, but that doesn’t dull the impact of a terrible first impression – and your profile is that first impression for anyone on LinkedIn. Typos, grammatical/punctuation errors and poorly structured sentences convey an impression of laziness, lack of professionalism, and general incompetence. Needless to say, this is not the aura you want to project.
The truth is, however, not everybody is a wordsmith. Thankfully, there are services you can engage with, such as our very own, in order to make sure your LinkedIn profile is tip-top:
· Comprehensive LinkedIn Profile Advice: engage the services of professionals to look over every aspect of your LinkedIn profile and see if it meets the standards of your industry’s best and brightest. These comprehensive reports will look at every section of your profile and return an in-depth report that details how that section can be improved and fine-tuned in order to attract recruiters.
· Full LinkedIn Profile Writing Service: ideal for people just starting out with LinkedIn – or those who want a complete restructuring of their profile – a full LinkedIn profile writing service can take your CV as a baseline and construct your LinkedIn profile from scratch, writing it in a professional and informative manner that’s sure to pique the interest of recruiters in your field. This can even be paired with CV writing services to make sure that both your CV and your profile complement each other perfectly.
You can find out more about our LinkedIn services by clicking here.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has illustrated the importance of both having a good LinkedIn profile and knowing how to make use of some of the platform’s more niche uses. Whether you’re a LinkedIn neophyte or an old hand, it’s always possible to be getting more out of your profile, so make the most of the tools available to you in order to attract the best possible candidates and recruiters!
