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12 July 2016

3 Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn


Published on 12 July 2016
Tools and tips
With over 433 million users across 200 countries, LinkedIn is increasingly essential to professional networking, job hunting and business development. However, unlike other social networks, the average LinkedIn user is over 30 and earning more than $70,000 a year – in short, high net worth, time-poor individuals without the leisure to explore or learn the features of a digital professional networking platform. With this in mind, Insights spoke to Chris Jones, Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn, on the top three ways to make the most of LinkedIn – beyond well-known advice, such as include a good, professional profile photo, as photos make you fourteen more times likely to be found on LinkedIn.

1. Write a long-form article

“LinkedIn gives members the ability to write articles, based on their area of expertise, which puts them in a position of thought leadership,” said Jones. “These articles have the potential to be viewed by professionals outside of the member’s immediate network. It also becomes part of your profile, being one of the first things people visiting their profile will see.”

2. Check who has viewed your profile

“This can be a great way to create new relationships, gain new business development opportunities and also find employment opportunities,” advised Jones. “Try not to remain anonymous when you are viewing other member profiles. If you do, you won’t be able to see who has viewed your profile.”

3. Reconnect with alumni 

Gaining an education is often just as much about making connections as it is about training in a profession. To ensure these connections are not lost, LinkedIn offers features to search for alumni, which might provide a means of introduction.

“By visiting your previous university page on LinkedIn, you are able to view all students who have graduated from that institution. You can then filter down to understand the career paths of these alumni based on job types, companies and location,” said Jones. “You can then begin a conversation on more specific areas.”

What’s coming on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has big plans for the next five years. “Our missions,” said Jones, “is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. With this in mind, we have embarked on a journey to digitally map the global economy – called the Economic Graph. Our goal is to have every professional, company, job and educational institution on the platform. This will allow for talent flows to be clearly mapped – looking at areas where skills are in shortage, or over saturated, then working with education providers, government and organisations to ensure lower levels of unemployment, and a more productive society.

“We then seek to map all skills available, and skill gaps that exist – and are looking to provide knowledge to members to be able to bridge these gaps. This is taking part through our 2015 acquisition of Lynda.com. LinkedIn is now able to identify areas where a professional is lacking skills, and recommend learning courses to close that gap.”