Five Ways to Network on LinkedIn
This is a guest post provided by Elizabeth Cutten. Elizabeth helps run FindBizCards, a small business credit card / business blog helping entrepreneurs around the world get tips, tricks, and more!
If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn or maybe you have set up an account in the past and never really did anything with it. You’re going to soon find out that you’re sitting on a goldmine of potential networks. Whether you’re looking for a new job, a long lost co-worker, or maybe a business connection, you’re going to be able to find it here!
I wanted to give you some simple tips that you can use and I’ll show you tricks on how employers find potential employees for their job openings. In this technological age, more and more companies are going to websites like this for employees that are going to work for them.
#1 Make sure that your profile is complete – When you fill out a profile on LinkedIn, they are going to tell you exactly what needs to be done. You’re going to want to make sure that you have your profile completed at 100%.
#2 Treat it like a resume – Employers will do searches for people with particular skills that they need. They will also sort it by geographical locations. You’re going to want to make sure that you have proper spellings, grammar, as well as a clean set up. You don’t want to clutter to much, nor do you want to make your page look like a big mess.
#3 Add others as friends – Find people that you already work with or who you know. The more connections that you have, the more spread out you’re going to be. What you’re going to want to do is search out old co-workers, friends, and more. The cool thing about this is that you’re going to show up in other people’s profiles as “people you may want to connect with.”
#4 Join the groups – Take full advantage of the groups online. There are a lot of groups for just about every niche available. For example, let’s say that you want to open up a bakery. I’m sure there are bakery owners that have united as a group. Join it, communicate, and you network with some great people here.
#5 Use keywords – If you’re looking for a job, make sure that you use rich keywords that are going to be able to allow others to spot you. If you’re good at programming, what languages are you good at? You don’t just want to put programming. Instead, put keywords such as PHP, Java, etc. Be specific is the point here.
On LinkedIn, you can answer questions, communicate in groups, as well as send messages to others. You can do all of this from the comfort of your own chair. If you haven’t joined, or your user name is just collecting dust, it’s time to get up and start networking!