LinkedIn is a platform that often gets underutilized or put on the back burner. But the truth is, LinkedIn can be extremely powerful — especially when you’re aware of all the hidden features that don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve. So to help you learn how to use LinkedIn effectively, this post is chock full of LinkedIn tips you may be overlooking
Add the Company Follow and LinkedIn share buttons to your website/content.
Promote your company’s LinkedIn presence and help grow the reach of your Company Page by adding the company follow button to your Website/Content and adding the LinkedIn Share Button to your various content assets like blog posts, emails, etc.
Create targeted LinkedIn Showcase Pages
These are niche pages that branch off your main Company Page.
- To create a Showcase Page, go to your Company Page and click “Manage page.”
- At the top, at the top of the page, click ‘Admin Tools,’ and select “Create a showcase page”
Experiment with publishing content on LinkedIn’s publishing platform.
To publish an article, click “Write an article” on the update box on your LinkedIn homepage. From there, you’ll be taken to the publishing platform, where you can compose your draft.
- Recruit new talent via LinkedIn Jobs. Look to fill a position or two on your marketing team.
LinkedIn Groups
If you’re a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first-degree connection in order to message them.
- You can send up to 15 free 1:1 messages to fellow group members per month (across all groups you belong to).
- Group members are also able to view the profiles of other members within that same group.
Find new connections or connect with old ones
Connections tab in the top navigation offers a variety of other tools to grow and connect with contacts in your professional network
Use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search feature to search for jobs by keyword, title, industry, location, company, function, experience level, and more.
Based on your application history and saved searches, LinkedIn can send suggestions of jobs you might be interested in, relating to location and company size and industry.
Analyze your LinkedIn marketing performance with the Analytics tab on your Company Page.
This feature offers data about the effectiveness of your page’s status updates, engagement, and reach, as well as information about your page’s followers, including demographics, where they came from, how your following has grown over time, and how your data compares to other companies.
Email your LinkedIn Group
You can email all the members of your group up to once per week.
Add a LinkedIn background photo to your personal profile.
A background photo size of 1584 x 396 pixels, and it must be a JPG, PNG, or GIF file under 8MB
- Give your LinkedIn profile a bit more personality by adding a background photo of your own.
Add, remove, and rearrange entire sections of your profile.
In edit mode, hover your mouse over the double-sided arrow in each section. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrowed icon, at which point you can click, then drag and drop to another position on your profile
Customize your public profile URL
Make your personal profile look more professional by making it easier to share
- This will make it easier for you to find other people who have shared your content on social media, making your profile more visible and easier to find for other people to find you
Experiment with LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Updates
If you’re looking to complement your organic LinkedIn marketing efforts with some paid advertising, LinkedIn Ads are a smart choice.
About LinkedIn
LinkedIn launched in 2003 and is currently the fourth most popular social network among U.S. adults
- The social network is centered around careers and enables users to connect and share content with other professionals
- It can also be a fantastic marketing tool for a business
Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter
If you add your Twitter account to LinkedIn, you can easily syndicate an update to Twitter by selecting the Public + Twitter option in the dropdown menu within the LinkedIn update composer.
Optimize your LinkedIn Company Page
The design of LinkedIn Company Pages has changed a lot over the years. Make sure yours is set up correctly and optimized for the latest layout, featuring a compelling and high-quality banner image.
Get endorsed for your skills
Endorsements enable users to endorse their connections for skills they’ve listed in the Skills section of their profile.
- You can remove endorsements if you find people are endorsing you for skills that don’t accurately describe your strengths, or you can edit your resume to reflect your strengths
Search Engine Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
You can optimize your profile to get discovered by people searching LinkedIn for key terms you want to get found for.
- Add these keywords to various sections of your profile such as your headline, your summary, or your work experience.
Use Open Profile to send messages to people you’re not connected to.
The ability to be part of the Open Profile network is only available to premium account holders, but it allows those users to be available for messaging by any other LinkedIn member (regardless of their LinkedIn membership level) if they choose to be.
Create your own industry LinkedIn Group
Create a group based on a relevant industry-related topic, and become a LinkedIn Group administrator
- Use this group to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, grow a community of advocates, generate new marketing content ideas, and even generate new leads
Post Company Status Updates
Segment your posts based on company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography, language, or by including/excluding company employees.
- Check out LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score & Trending Content resources to see how impactful your organic and paid LinkedIn content is.
Check your Network Updates (or share your own)
Check this feed periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections are up to and sharing
- Be identifiable
- Allow others to see who you are if you view their profile
- Use the Who’s Viewed Your Profile feature to identify which other LinkedIn users have visited your profile page
Saved Searches
After conducting a search, click the Save search option at the top right to save a search and easily run it again later.
Export connections.
Go to your account settings, and under “Basics,” click “Getting an archive of your data.”
Leverage @mentions in your status updates.
Include the @ symbol immediately followed by the user’s/company’s name. As a result, that user/company will get alerted that you mentioned them, and their name will also link to their profile/page in the status update itself.
Add a ProFinder Badge to your profile.
This badge can be used to identify freelancers within LinkedIn’s proFinder service, which matches contractors with project managers seeking help
Take advantage of the blog/website links on your LinkedIn profile.
Instead of using the default anchor text links in the Websites list, you can now add links to your portfolio and social networks, as well as a link to your work under each job description.
- You can also upload multimedia for a given job or assignment, and link to it via SoundCloud.
