How to make the most of LinkedIn CIM Spring Marketing Mashup Rob Hurst April 2013 What we do Omobono is the digital agency for business brands. We help complex, global businesses manage their digital presence both internally and externally – with customers, employees and stakeholders. What’s your goal? • Looking for a job • Increased notoriety • Want to stay in touch with industry news • Curious what colleagues are working on • Thinking about a new job • Want to look good in front of clients • Want to keep tabs on ‘the competition’ • Want to look good in front of your peers • Don’t really know… • Have I missed something? We all want to be ‘Influencers’ (I think) Make your profile public Or at least your status updates - What have you really got to hide? What are you going to say? What’s your personal ‘brand’ going to be about? One topic, or many? Regularly or occasionally? Staying on top of it Understand the implications of contributing ‘content’ – you need to keep posting. Market yourself Set your own KPIs • Appearances in search • Keywords causing you to appear in search • Views of your profile • ‘Likes’ of your posts • Traffic to other sites from LinkedIn. • Clicks on your links Recommendations vs. endorsements Both are valuable, but one is much harder to get than the other… Who has been looking at your profile? And who hasn’t? Why not go and look at them? InMails These can be a great way to contact people – LinkedIn guarantee this, in fact. SEO – for yourself Everything has a purpose LinkedIn is always trying to get you to ‘improve your profile’ for a reason - Even if we don’t know what it is yet. Google pulls the same tricks Google + is already starting to show importance in search. How are people finding you? Gold/Pro membership helps you understand the keywords that are bringing people to your profile. Think about the terms you want people to find you for and optimise your profile to incorporate these terms. Groups What groups should you join? You can search for groups based on popularity and popularity amongst your network. Look at the group stats – is there a lot happening? Who’s in your groups? Groups now have ‘top influencers’ – those contributing the ‘best’ (and most) content to the groups. Becoming a top influencer is a great way to increase visibility. What’s happening in your groups? You can ‘follow’ almost anything on LinkedIn, but tracking the top influencers in a group and new and existing discussions within groups will help you stay on top of things. Think about what you’re saying Jargon doesn’t help your cause People want your opinion because you can help them make sense of things they can’t. ‘Projects’ Another good way to tell people about what you’re doing and what you’ve done in the past. Be consistent & helpful What do you want to sound like? Put your content on third-party platforms Platforms such as Slideshare, Scribd, Prezi, YouTube, Vimeo and more will soon be embeddable on your profiles (Trust me, I’m part of a ‘limited roll out’). Say what you like This is your opportunity to speak as you’d like to be heard – no one can hear you. Who to be online ‘LinkedIn is “just for work stuff”…’ Most of us have more than one web presence nowadays – this means we need to be careful about how we manage these different presences. Remember that usernames carry – both for you and others. Look at your LinkedIn page and chances are that you’ve chosen a profile URL (www.linkedin.com/in/username) The majority of people don’t think twice about this, and just use the same thing as they do on every other site. If you’ve done this and you’re trying to separate those accounts from your professional presence, you’ve just failed. Automate your life LinkedIn, but somewhere else – RSS Feeds You can have some ‘updates’ delivered via RSS, allowing you to read them in whatever application you prefer. Email notifications They drive some people mad, but if you do all your work from your inbox, they might be a real time saver for you. Think back to your ‘reasons’ – looking to stay on top of industry news and affairs? There are email digests for that too… IFTTT.com – If this, then that. This website is your new best friend. I use it to post status updates for me, based on various trigger actions. Automate your life Update everyone at once - Hootsuite You can post updates across all your social networks from one place - you can even schedule posts for later. When there aren’t enough hours in the working day – take things home Instapaper & Pocket are applications that allow you to send a piece of content somewhere to read later, when you have time – you can even send content to your Kindle or create print-friendly versions, if you’re so inclined. Do things while they’re fresh in your mind This is good advice full stop, so why not employ it elsewhere and ask colleagues and clients for recommendations as you finish projects, people will be more likely to endorse you for something while they can still remember what it was! Obviously offer to recommend them in return too…