Simple Ways to Make LinkedIn Work For You

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We know, we all know – we need to do a better job with our profile and interacting on LinkedIn. We know that carving out 10-15 minutes a day to engage on LinkedIn can have a tremendous return on investment, but what is the most efficient and effective way to make it work for you?

 

LinkedIn can be a very useful tool to help further your career if you can “customize” it. Here are some useful ways to do just that:

  • Timing for Content & Interaction
    • The best times to post and interact are on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8am – 2pm EDT. If you can take just 15 minutes in the morning or afternoon to interact on the site, you’ll see your profile raised. The time invested will be well worth it.
    • Share and post articles, videos, personal stories, triumphs, and failures
    • Utilize hashtags, and tag people in your network
    • After posting, be the first to comment on your post.
    • Ask a question and tag a couple people in your network
    • Respond and interact with commenters.
    • You can ask commenters to tag their connections to expand the conversation. For example, “@JohnTaylor, who do you know that has a great story like this/utilizes these ideas effectively?”
  • Complete Your Profile
    • Think of this as your public CV. Add a brief, professional summary giving insights as to what you do, a general comment on your career goals, and some personal insight (family info, university info, hobbies, passions, personal struggles overcome, etc.). Maybe you’re a volunteer basketball coach, participate in your community park or library systems, or fix classic cars on the weekends. These are all interesting facts to share.
    • For every promotion or career move, add a brief description of the new role. You can utilize the job posting description and requirements as a starting point. This will also help when updating your CV.
    • Endorse others in your network and ask them to endorse you.
      • *Pro tip: Send an example of an endorsement to your contact. It can be difficult for others to write an endorsement from scratch. Providing a template will give them a structure to follow and help to engage thoughts from the person that’s endorsing you.
    • Join industry organizations and boards and connect and engage with influential people with a large number of followers.
      • Become a go-to person in your specific field and share your expertise. Simply follow the lead of those who’ve done it before.
      • Follow and engage with high follower influencers. Reply to the people in their comment sections on posts that pertain to your industry or speak to you. Commenting on someone else’s comment will engage that person and maybe some of their contacts as well…and there you go! You just made at least one new connection.

 

Let’s say reading this post took you 5 minutes. Take the next 5-10 minutes to update your profile. You should see some activity on your page from some simple updates. It’s a quick, easy way to engage with some people you may have lost touch with!

 

Tomorrow, take 10-15 minutes and make a comment on an article, post, or someone’s update. Maybe comment on someone else’s comment to start a conversation. You just made another connection or two, and for those that check, your comments have popped up on their newsfeeds.

 

The next day, take another 10-15 minutes to engage with some influencers that you like or industry zines or organizations. You can also check and engage with those that have reacted to or commented on your posts from the previous two days.

 

The key to using LinkedIn effectively is to consistently spend the time on the platform productively engaging with others. If you carve out 10 minutes a day, you will build your expertise and profile, make yourself more marketable, and further your career.