Top 10 things you should do today on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for projecting your professional profile for colleagues, customers and recruiters to view online. LinkedIn has become synonymous with online professional networking and job hunting. If you are serious about building your professional network and advancing your career, then you need a social media strategy to back this up.

Many professionals who have a LinkedIn profile established are not using it to its full potential. If this is the case, then people can view your half-finished profile and that is a representation of you professionally. As a senior career consultant i want to tell you to spend an hour or so on LinkedIn tidying up your profile if this applies to you. LinkedIn is arguably the most important career management social media platform. For graduates, you should start using LinkedIn as early as you can in your career to build your professional networks.

1. Firstly though…if you are reading this as a graduate and you are not currently using LinkedIn or any social media platforms for networking, job hunting etc then you should be to log on here to set up your profile today – LinkedIn

2. Complete your profile – if you’ve gone to the effort of launching your professional profile in cyberspace then go all the way and make sure it is completed so people can connect with you. You can see how far you are from completing it quite easily.

3. Add a picture to your profile. LinkedIn is all about getting to know people so be personal and let them know what you look like (if they haven’t met you) A LinkedIn profile picture also helps people who do know you track you down via a search much quicker, especially if you have a fairly common name.

4. Ask for professional recommendations from people you have worked with. Have you met some great colleagues or customers who you want to connect with on LinkedIn? Hit the add button today! You never know how those relationships may evolve – keeping up those contacts could lead to your next job.

5. Make sure your professional network is up to date – have you met any customers, colleagues recently that you want to connect with?

6. Join networking groups and news groups relevant to your profession. You can dip in and out of these as you please and tailor the volume of notifications you receive. However, it will appear on your LinkedIn profile page publically so ensure there are no groups you wouldn’t want colleagues to see. Active participation in network groups related to your industry and career is great to show that you take your profession seriously and have a real interest in it.

7. Once you are happy with you LinkedIn profile then add your profile URL to your email signature, business cards etc as appropriate so people can add you and engage with you via social media quicker.

8. If you are using LinkedIn for looking for a career move, then you can use the appropriate keywords in your profile headline and your professional summary. This will help drive people (particularly recruiters) to find you from keyword job title and skills searches in the same way that SEO and search engines work for key words. 34% of graduate recruiters use LinkedIn to screen candidates for further information, yet just 5% of graduates use LinkedIn to engage with employers.

9. Add websites to your LinkedIn profile – you can add up to three websites and many people add the corporate website for the company they work for. But how can you make this more personal and powerful. Well, do you blog or do you have your own online presence? Only add these if you are comfortable with colleagues seeing these sites.

10. Link your other social media profiles to LinkedIn such as Twitter