If you are new to the site try http://learn.linkedin.com/ this is the best starting point. If you already have a profile. Take a look at the following. You might find something useful.
Profile quality and content.
The most important part is your profile. A good profile has at least the following:
- A good picture. Don’t put an old picture with bad resolution or an image with lots of people in it. In my opinion, it is disrespectful to the rest of us. Get a good picture.
- Write a good intro about yourself. If you cannot come up with something intelligent. Look through the site and steal someone else’s description and adapt it to yours.
- Your resumé should be complete, short and concise. Be careful of exaggerating. Everyone in here recognizes BS when they read it.
- Add “applications” to your profile page. A “normal” profile page basically shows your resume and contact details. You can put more value in this page by using something called applications. These are plugins that provide for example, reading lists, tweet feeds, blog content, your travel details etc. etc. Here you can find a list of all applications available. http://linkd.in/qOaKaG
Never mind these:
- Number of connections doesn’t really say anything about you. If you are connected to 25 CEOs that might be more of value for you rather than 200 drinking buddies when you were 20-something.
- Recommendations are good, if they come spontaneous from people you work with. If you keep asking for it, people tend not to give a genuine opinion. Remember, people at LinkedIn will recognize BS when they see it. With that said, make it a habit to connect and summarize your work. At this time, you can ask for their opinion and evaluation. Which is same as
- Frequency of updates, well this is a tricky thing. No one likes a crazy-updater. People writing lots of inputs with no value just fill up the space in peoples feed. This is specially annoying as it gets harder to filter out valuable stuff. Write often and provide value. People will appreciate your posts.
Handling your connections
When requesting people to join your network. Make sure to change the default invitation text. Send the default text just says you are not really interested, you just want to increase your connection number. Write something personal and meaningful.
When adding people, make sure you use the right tag. It makes it much easier when you decide to send information, renew connections or quickly want to let people know you have left your employment ….
In my opinion, don’t just ask random people or people you don’t really know to connect. Most people prefers to know who they connect to. LinkedIn is not FaceBook. People always check connections. You don’t want to be linked with strange or odd groups of people. That will most definitely effect your professional status.
I will follow this post up with some more details on applications etc. Have a quick look at the site and you will find lots of interesting features.
Have I forgot anything? Leave a comment!
“Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.” ~ Voltaire
Good advice Shahram, I need to study up on tags looks like i overlooked that feature.
Thanks for posting.
Best
joe @SMSJOE
Thanks Joe for your comment.
Much appreciated.