What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is one of fastest growing and largest professional networks in the world with over 120 million members! LinkedIn lets you connect with people to exchange information, ideas and opportunities with other professionals. LinkedIn is a cross between an online resume and a professional Facebook page. It allows you to give details about your career while also sharing personal information and your personality.
Profile
How do I achieve a 100% completed profile, and what does that even mean? LinkedIn has a set list of requirements to meet until they consider your profile to be “complete”. Now you are probably wondering, why does it matter if it is complete? Profiles that are 100% complete are 40 times more likely to be seen. The requirements include: your industry and location, your current position, two past positions, your education, your skills, a profile picture, and at least 50 connections.
Contacts/ ConnectionsAfter creating your LinkedIn profile, the next step is to connect with other members on LinkedIn. There are several ways to do this. You can use: email contacts, Facebook contacts, colleague search, classmate search, name search or advanced search. After you find someone you know that is on LinkedIn, you send out an invitation through LinkedIn and the other person has to accept it. Once they accept it both parties automatically are added to each other’s list of connections. You can then search their connections to see if you recognize anyone else.
Groups
There are over one million groups on LinkedIn that you can get connected to that are categorized by name and industry. Groups can help you hold discussions with other professionals in your field. LinkedIn groups help you to: build long-lasting relationships with customers, gain exclusive access to an audience of professionals, and raise awareness to position yourself as a thought leader.
How can groups you may like help you? Members can not only find people with related interests, but they can also find communities on specific topics relevant to their professional life. Groups You May Like (GYML) is a personalized group recommendation that finds groups based on your interests and career. It works through matching key words on your profile with key words in groups.
Jobs
Under Corporate Recruiting Solutions on LinkedIn you can: source top candidates, distribute your jobs, and promote your brand. You are able to search out candidates based on their company, location, industry, skill set, and keywords. You can then contact potential employees directly through InMail and get responses quicker than calling or emailing. You are also able to view their profile to get a more complete picture of their qualifications. There is also the referral engine where you are able to collect top leads from your current employees. This is a much more effective way of filling a vacancy in your company than posting a job listing on your company website.
Inbox
Your inbox controls all of your user interactions on LinkedIn. It’s basically your email/notification center on LinkedIn. Here you can see your invitations to connect with other people, request an introduction with a potential investor, or reviewing a profile forwarded from an employee.
Companies
After creating your own LinkedIn account, you might want to make sure your company has one as well. On your company page you can list an overview of your company, your products and services and it will also let your employees connect to the page as well. You should also follow companies within your industry or potential collaborators. This is a great way to see what your competitors are doing while also searching out other companies to work with.
LinkedIn Today
LinkedIn today is the daily news that is tailored to fit your interests. It showcases articles about your industry, interests and companies you follow. It shows what your industry peers are sharing and talking about as well as your connections. Lastly, it also shows what topics are appealing to a larger audience that is outside of your industry. It is a quick way to see what is going on without having to check several websites, blogs and newspapers.