Archive for category: LinkedIn

Posting on LinkedIn is a good way to maintain “top-of-mind awareness” with your professional contacts. It also provides evidence that your profile is current when recruiters and others view it. The WHY of LinkedIn posting is fairly clear, but WHAT to post is a bit more complex. Here are the five types of posts I recommend including in your repertoire.

1) Share your perspective on an article related to your career field or industry.

This is easy; you don’t have to go to the effort of writing an entire article yourself.

Instead, if you find an article of interest in an online trade publication for your profession or industry, you can share the article on LinkedIn and write 3-5 paragraphs with your reaction to it. Did the author miss an angle? Is it spot on? Do you disagree with points the article makes?

You could close your post by asking others for their thoughts on the premise of the article or the aspect you discussed in your paragraphs.

What not to do: Don’t be that guy who shares an article without saying anything about it, or who just says “Good read” or “Interesting article.” If you have no insight of your own, don’t bother. People care about what YOU have to say, which is why they’re connected with you on LinkedIn.

2) Show your gratitude and appreciation for others.

This is the kind of post that shows you’re not someone who’s just trying to promote yourself on LinkedIn.

Instead of talking about yourself, create a post that mentions other people you want to recognize. When mentioning someone, tag them by typing the @ followed by their name.

Here are some ways you can showcase others in a post:

• Welcome a new team member to the team you lead. Say how excited you are to have this talented leader or professional joining your team. Mention what their new role is and briefly describe why they’re a rock star. The person will probably be flattered, but it’s probably best to run it by them first (“You don’t mind if I announce your hire on LinkedIn, do you?”).
• Thank all of your team members or specific team members for doing a great job on a project, a product launch, a successful event, an award received, the quarter that just ended, the year that just ended, or whatever else is relevant. Make sure you’re not revealing anything your employer might want to keep confidential.
• Congratulate someone on an award they’ve received if they’ve been too shy to post about it. Similarly, if you’ve recently received an honor or award along with others in your company or industry, you could mention them in your post. “I’m so honored and humbled to be recognized in the Acme Company All-Star Awards alongside Jon Smith and Jane Jones…”
• Thank someone for helping in you some way. Do you want to recognize your mentor, or someone who always goes above and beyond? If you’re active in a professional association, maybe you want to thank the hard-working volunteers and board members who make all the events a success.

3) Be a cheerleader for your company and share their news.

If your employer is posting company news on LinkedIn, it doesn’t get much easier. Just share their post and say something about it. The more it pertains to the work you do, the better. If you’re in the C-suite, this is a no-brainer.

Showcasing your company through some of your posts is a way to combat the perception of LinkedIn activity being about job-hunting.

Needless to say, make sure anything you’re saying won’t get you in trouble (no confidential information).

4) Turn your post into a mini-article.

Did you know that you can use up to 3,000 characters (about 500 or so words) in a LinkedIn post?

That’s plenty of space for a short article to showcase pretty much anything you’d like to write about, such as:

• Lessons about leadership you’ve learned in your career.
• The formula you’ve developed for achieving favorable business results.
• Your perspective on a trend in your industry.
• Your reaction to a business book or biography you’ve recently read.

If you see others posting entire articles using the “publish” feature on LinkedIn, don’t think you need to follow their example.

A thoughtful post will get more attention than an article with precisely the same content word-for-word—the post will get more eyeballs, more love from the algorithm, and more engagement from other users.

The reason is quite simple: people are in a hurry and they don’t want to click through to read an article; it seems like it will take too long. But if they can stay on the same page and simply click “see more” to read your full post, that’s quick and easy, and then they can go about the rest of their day.

5) Talk about your latest activity or piece of news.

Your LinkedIn connections are interested in what you’re up to, so don’t leave them in the dark. Let them know about the interesting things happening in your professional life!

• Attending a conference? Post a picture of yourself at the conference and mention some of the great insights you gained. You can even tag some of the speakers to praise them for the wisdom they shared.
• Received an award? Time for a humble brag. Perhaps tag and thank the judges or whoever nominated you, or congratulate the other honorees by tagging them.
• Mentioned in the media? Share a link to the article and thank (and tag) the journalist who wrote the article. You could share more of your perspective on the topic beyond your quotes in the article, which probably represent just a fraction of what you said in the interview.
• Earned a certification? Humble brag time. Post a picture of yourself holding the certificate and talk about what you learned from the certification process. Perhaps tag anyone else who did the certification with you, or thank and tag your instructor.

3 Ways to maximize your exposure

After putting the effort into a thoughtful post, you want to make sure people actually see it.

The LinkedIn algorithm will determine how many people see your post based largely on how it performs right after you post it.

If people engage with a post (by commenting or liking it) within the first hour, that will be a huge boost for the algorithm. But if nobody engages with it in the first day or so, the algorithm will assume it’s not interesting and won’t show it to as many people.

Here are 3 ways to improve your chances:

1. Timing: You can plan an appropriate time to post when there might be more eyeballs on LinkedIn. For example, a Tuesday morning will be better than a Friday afternoon.
2. A little help please: You can ask a few friends or colleagues—your best cheerleaders—if they would be willing to support your LinkedIn efforts. If they agree, let them know when you’re planning to post something, and send an email or text with a link to the post once it’s live. And, of course, you can return the favor and support their posts if they’re active on LinkedIn as well.
3. Tagging: Many of the post ideas above involving tagging other people, which will also help boost engagement. Everyone tagged will get notified of the post and will most likely engage with it. Furthermore, LinkedIn users who are connected with those people will potentially see the post; it shows up in the feed as “John Smith was mentioned in a post,” with the post shown below it.

Extra credit: this tip is for nerds only!

Here’s a pro tip only for those of you who really care about maximizing performance of your posts (don’t worry about this if you’re just getting started with LinkedIn).

LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t favor external links since they prefer to keep people on their platform for as long as possible—pretty much the M.O. of every social media platform!

Here’s an end-run around this for when you want to link to an article you’re talking about:

1. Instead of putting the link to the article in your post, simply do your post and mention in it that you’ll include the link to the full article in the comments below.
2. Make a comment on your own post (in the comments section) with the link.
3. Voila! Your post will get more eyeballs than it would otherwise.

This article first appeared on KellyDonovan.com

If you’re like most of my clients, you might be a member of a half dozen or dozen LinkedIn groups.

I’d argue that you should join more than that, even if you don’t plan to participate in discussions in the groups.

Now that LinkedIn allows users to join up to 100 groups, why not join 20, 30, or 40 groups? Or more?

Here are the top 3 reasons you should consider doing this:

1. The more groups you’re in the more visibility you’ll have on the platform. Not sure what I mean? Well, have you ever seen someone on LinkedIn where it just said “LinkedIn Member” and didn’t have the person’s name or photo? That happens when someone is out of your network (not a first, second, or third degree connection). And guess what? When they see you on LinkedIn, they’re seeing the same thing on their end. You’ve been reduced to a mere “LinkedIn Member” undeserving of a name. But, if you’re both members of a group, you’ll be able to see each other. This means you’ll show up properly in search results.
2. As a group member, you have access to information, resources, and discussions related to your industry. If co-workers or your boss are suspicious about your LinkedIn activity, thinking you’re job-hunting, you’ve got an excuse! You can mention some of the things you’ve learned about from your LinkedIn groups, or simply weave into conversation that you’re doing a number of things to research trends, including reading trade pubs, attending industry events, and following LinkedIn group discussions.
3. And finally, groups do have some intrinsic value…sometimes. While some are a waste of time, some of the discussions can be interesting and helpful. Just make sure your comments are professional; even if you think you’re in a closed, private group, that can change (and the past conversations can then come up in Google search results…such as when someone searches for your name on Google).

If any of that resonated, you might be wondering: which groups are the best to join?

LinkedIn groups I recommend joining include:

• Groups related to your industry or profession. Don’t nit-pick; if you’re in procurement and you spot a logistics and supply chain group, I’d say that’s close enough. After all, some of the executives that could be your future boss might be in that group!
• Alumni groups. Please bear in mind that this is different from simply following your alma mater on LinkedIn, which happens automatically when you list a degree from a university on your profile. That gives you the university’s updates, but not the benefit of being “connected” (in a sense) to all those other alumni.
• Large general interest groups. These are good simply for the sheer volume of people in them. A good example is Harvard Business Review, which I joined many years ago (but I think their group might be full now).
• Local groups for your local market or markets of interest. If you’re in Southern California, for example, there are LinkedIn groups for Orange County, Los Angeles, etc. Some of them also do off-line events where you can go and network with other group members in person.

Just keep in mind that you can adjust your email preferences for group emails so your inbox doesn’t get clogged with emails from LinkedIn groups as you start to join more of them.

Almost every client I work with is missing opportunities by not belonging to as many LinkedIn groups as they could. Remember: group membership is free, except in the rare cases where the group is created by a group that exists in the offline world and charges membership dues—in which case the membership might be restricted to their paying members. So take advantage of this (almost-always) free resource!

This article first appeared on www.KellyDonovan.com

From time to time, folks tell me they want to have two LinkedIn accounts.

Some of the reasons include:

• “I don’t want my boss to know I’m job hunting, so I’ll have a separate account for job hunting!”
• “I have a day job and a side hustle, so I need separate accounts for each.”
• “I’m targeting jobs in marketing as well as jobs in HR, and have two separate resumes–so I need two LinkedIn profiles, too!”

Regardless of the situation, I always advise clients to use only one LinkedIn account.

Here are the top five reasons why I see two accounts as being problematic:

1. If you’re going to get recommendations on both accounts, you’re potentially splitting that up, so rather than benefiting from four recommendations on your account, you might have two on Account #1 and the other two on Account #2. Or maybe four on Account #1 and zero on Account #2. Recommendations boost your credibility as well as the search optimization of your profile. You’ll get more bang for your buck with all of them on one profile.
2. Someone searching LinkedIn for your name will probably see both accounts in search results, and it’ll be confusing. It might even make you seem shady.
3. If you’re trying to hide something from someone, they’re still going to be able to see it. Sometimes people have the mistaken impression that if they don’t connect with their boss, their boss won’t be able to view their LinkedIn account–so they assume that they can have one account where they connect with their boss, and a separate account that their boss will never see (NOT true; if it’s on LinkedIn, assume that ANYONE can see it).
4. You’ll be limiting how many connections you’ll have in each account–instead of 600 connections in one account, you might have 400 in Account #1 and 200 in Account #2, which means that neither profile will be as search-optimized as a single account with 600 connections. More connections means more visibility–with 600 connections, you’ll come up in search results more often than someone with 200 connections.
5. It’s against LinkedIn’s user agreement to maintain more than one profile. It’s never a good idea to break the rules and risk being penalized! Similar to a driver’s license, a social media account is a privilege that can be revoked if they find you breaking the rules.

How to get by with one account

Hopefully you’re convinced to stick with one account; so now you might be wondering how to make one account work for you!

Keeping your job search secret

There are plenty of ways you can keep your job search private. Turn off the notifications that automatically go out when you update your profile. Don’t say anything on your profile that would imply that you’re job hunting.

You can also include some wording on your profile that promotes your current employer’s mission or goals, which can help imply that you’re actually on LinkedIn to help them out rather than look for a job!

Remember that there are plenty of reasons to be on LinkedIn other than job hunting, including keeping up on industry news and “buzz” through membership in industry groups on LinkedIn. Join these groups, follow news on the site, research potential clients, and be ready to share with your boss and co-workers the business value you’re getting from LinkedIn.

Highlighting your multiple interests or different “hats”

If you have two different job targets, it’ll be best if you identify one of them to focus your profile on, or find a way to highlight both of them in a cohesive manner. This is just one more reason it’s best to try being as focused as possible in your job search. The less job targets, the better.

It’s fine to keep your LinkedIn profile more broad if you have two similar versions of your resume for different job targets. Just make sure it’s not too “all over the place.”

If you have a day job and a side hustle, you can include both on your profile, and decide which will be your priority for LinkedIn. Ask yourself: is LinkedIn important for your day job? Is it a primary way you expect to gain customers for your side hustle? Remember that LinkedIn is geared toward businesspeople.

If your day job is enterprise software sales and your side hustle is selling kids’ T-shirts online, then platforms like Instagram or Pinterest might be more helpful for the T-shirt business, while LinkedIn would be more helpful for the enterprise software sales.

With a little effort, you can make a single LinkedIn profile work for you!

This article appeared first on KellyDonovan.com