Welcome to Module 06, when you complete this lesson you’re halfway through the course already! As I’ve mentioned before, this course is designed to work through at your own pace, and you can take each module as a stand alone lesson.
This week I’ll get straight into it, we’re talking about LinkedIn and here is this week’s lesson plan, click on the link below to access the PDF file.
I’ve been using LinkedIn for several years now, but rather spasmodically. I was first encouraged to use it by a Brazilian friend who lived in London. She saw the potential of this tool early on and used it well – she was actually headhunted twice via LinkedIn for amazing jobs.
My husband is an engineer and LinkedIn is his favourite social media tool. He uses it to keep up to date with his industry worldwide and also likes to follow the careers of friends and past colleagues. He also found out about his current vacancy via a connection on LinkedIn.
I’ve made sure my profile was up to date when I was applying for previous jobs, and also researched those who were interviewing me on LinkedIn! Over the last few years, I’ve also spent some time building my network by inviting new connections and accepting requests.
It’s totally up to you how you used LinkedIn. I have one client at the moment who is happy with a fairly small network and is simply there as she feels she needs to be represented on this tool, but isn’t likely to use it all that regularly. She’s also used it as a place to compile a list of qualifications and publications, linking this back to her website.
Others are much more active and you may receive “marketing messages” in your inbox. Due to the various keywords you use when describing your skills and career, this can be highly targeted for others to find you, often with relevant information of interest.
As with all social media networks, I would recommend checking your settings and going through these systematically. For example, you may wish for others to be able to see who is in your network, or you may wish to hide this list.
If you get stuck using LinkedIn, visit the LinkedIn Help Center but like most of the social media tools we’ve been using, it’s quite user friendly and helps you as you go along setting up your profile.
Once you have set up your account, I’d recommend heading over to Social Media Examiner, which has a lot of articles you can read through to help make the most of LinkedIn.
Zestee 