Did you know that LinkedIn recently celebrated its 15th anniversary? Yes, 15 years since LinkedIn first started and not a lot of folks appreciate that LinkedIn was around before Facebook, it was one of the forerunners and it’s evolved and morphed significantly over the years.
I was an early adopter of LinkedIn, certainly in the UK. I’ve been on LinkedIn for around 11 years now and I’m the author of ‘Sales Success on LinkedIn’.
Getting started on LinkedIn
I was asked “what about somebody who’s not on LinkedIn yet, or somebody who’s set up the very basics of a profile, what are the important bits to get the initial set-up right and getting your profile just so?”.
My top tips
I think for getting the whole LinkedIn piece right, it’s not even down to the profile, it’s understanding why you are on LinkedIn; a lot of folks are kind of typical in this. I ended up on LinkedIn because somebody else suggested I should be. A lot of people tend to end up on LinkedIn that way. So, what we encourage people to do is to sit down and think about, what’s the purpose of LinkedIn?
What are they trying to achieve?
What are their goals?
Beyond that, how does it tie in to a wider sales and marketing plan?
One of the big mistakes that people make and one of the pitfalls that we need to help people avoid is the fact that people have LinkedIn as a stand-alone and don’t think to tie it in with their existing marketing messages, their sales messages, their networking approach. So, it’s about sitting down and thinking, well actually, I’m about to join LinkedIn or I’m on LinkedIn and want to use it a bit more. You need to stand back and think, well actually what would be a perfect outcome? What’s a great goal to get to on LinkedIn? What are the things that I’m trying to achieve before I start even building my personal profile?
In my next blog I’ll be talking about, ‘How should my LinkedIn profile look?’ and helping you to choose the perfect photograph.
You might want to take a look at one of our free resources called, ‘How to build your perfect LinkedIn profile’, click the download button below
Image courtesy of Pixabay
