my future
role
.com
An advanced guide to using LinkedIn Over 200 million people use LinkedIn, and the possibilities the platform offers for job searching and networking are not easily dismissed. In this guide, myfuturerole.com goes beyond the information covered in our basic guide to LinkedIn, to cover features and concepts that advanced users may find useful.
Issues covered in this guide include privacy and account settings, advanced connection techniques, optimising a profile for search, the creation of company pages, LinkedIn Ads, and the use of LinkedIn Premium. Some elements may not be relevant to all users. However, understanding how the service is used by other types of user will help provide you with a better understanding of general best practice.
Many users treat LinkedIn as something of a passive space: a place to leave an up-to-date CV in the hope recruitment agents visiting the site may come across it. While our basic guide touches on how to engage via status updates, LinkedIn groups and company pages, this guide aims to help users become an even more active presence on the service.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
Account Settings Your LinkedIn profile contains many pieces of information that, while useful for the purpose of creating connections establishing your presence, are often very sensitive. Changing how information is displayed to others is important, as is keeping your general usage settings relevant to how you wish to use the service. Your account settings can be found by hovering over your name on the top bar and clicking ‘settings’. This will present you with the screen provided on the opposite page. In the top half of this dialogue, you have a number of options you’d expect to see (email and password changing) and details on your account’s status. If you have invested in a Premium account, there will be extra controls here, including the option to display a LinkedIn Premium badge on your profile. The more in-depth options located in the bottom half of this screen are sorted into four areas: 1. Profile 2. Email preferences 3. Groups, Companies & Applications 4. Account
Personnel
my future
role
.com
1
Profile If you find LinkedIn or its users intruding unnecessarily into your life, this section contains many of the most useful controls. Turn on/off your activity broadcasts When you make changes to most aspects of your profile, anyone who can see your activity feed will be able to see what has been changed. This can be a problem if, for instance, you start job searching and your employer notices your profile has been switched on to the ‘job searching’ mode. Job searchers with Premium accounts should also know that a ‘job searcher’ badge may be displayed on their profile – another dead giveaway that you’re thinking of moving on. As mentioned above, this can be turned off. Click the ‘show more items’ option found in the upper half of the settings page to find this control. Select who can see your activity feed You can control who can view the aforementioned feed here. By default, all of your connections are able to see your feed. You can relax controls so unconnected individuals in your network or globally can see your activity (the latter being especially not recommended). You can also choose to make your feed private.
Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile When you view another person’s profile, LinkedIn lets them know (in the ‘who’s viewed your profile’ section of your profile). With this option, you can control how much information you reveal: opting for total anonymity, or revealing your industry and job title alone. However, selecting either option prevents you from seeing who is viewing your profile. Select who can see your connections LinkedIn is built upon connections, and therefore, any one you are connected to can see everyone else you are connected to. You can choose to dial this back to ‘only you’ if you are tired of being asked for referrals to significant contacts, for instance. Change your profile photo & visibility Having a professional photo on LinkedIn is important, but if you’d rather not share your likeness to everybody you can choose to restrict access to your entire network, or just your connections. Show/hide ‘Viewers of this profile also viewed’ box Relating to a trail of profiles people have viewed available on your profile, you may wish to remove this if you’re attempting to completely anonymise your connections or if you’re simply hostile to the idea of making it too easy for potential recruiters to find similarly qualified individuals. Manage your Twitter settings You can use this screen to integrate Twitter accounts with your LinkedIn presence. This is only advisable if you use Twitter for similarly professional uses.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
2
Email preferences Complaints about LinkedIn emails aren’t uncommon to see on other social networks: its creators seem to be keen on fostering a more active community, but the default notifications can be rather heavy handed. This page allows you to restrict LinkedIn’s ability to send you updates about new connection requests, activity among your connections and the extent to which others can contact you. You can also turn off LinkedIn’s marketing emails – ‘LinkedIn Communications’ regarding new platform developments and third party products.
3 Groups,
Companies & Applications This section contains a number of self-explanatory controls regarding the use of groups and companies you have involved your account with. However, particular attention should be paid to the Applications listed here: if you have linked your account with any third-party website, programme or a service within LinkedIn itself, you’ll be able to revoke that access here. You can also find privacy controls relating to that access. Don’t want third parties to get hold of your details or for LinkedIn to know what you’ve got up to via said third parties? There’s opt out options for both of these here.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
4
Account This final section groups together many of the big settings available elsewhere: changes to your account in the form of upgrades, email addresses, passwords, language and even one or two options from the above menus. Unique settings to note include the option to close your account, manage your security settings and advertising preferences. Manage advertising preferences In addition to offering you the option of opting out of all advertisements from third-party websites, this subsection explains how advertising is used on LinkedIn. Manage security settings This subsection allows you to opt into browsing using a secure connection (https) where available. This secure connection is used on parts of the LinkedIn site regardless of whether you check this option (for example, on the settings page you are currently viewing).
Personnel
my future
role
.com
Advanced connection techniques Using Google to fill in the blanks Starting out on LinkedIn is arguably not as easy as it should be: you have to accrue connections to even see the surnames of people you’ve worked with in the past, and it may be a month or so before your digital connections resemble your actual real world network. Things improve and connections tend to start finding you once your network is large enough. The connections system does mean that users with Basic accounts will find it hard work to cultivate outreach opportunities and connections to industry experts. Meet someone important at a conference, and LinkedIn won’t know that you’ve had a genial chat and talked about working together.
1
Company Search Search for the company employing your contact. The search bar is located on the lower section of the header: switch the dropdown from ‘people’ to ’companies’.
2
Employee list Navigate to the list of employees in the ‘how you’re connected’ listing. On the results page, the first name and first letter of the surname of all employees is typically all that you will have access to (in addition to their position, industry, location and employer).
The key to success here is to operate outside of LinkedIn also. Follow these steps and you’ll be able to find almost anyone on the service provided that you have a third degree connection, are in a group they also use, or have some other level of tangential relationship with th em via the service.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
3
Google reveals all
Copy and paste the name as provided into Google, along with their job title and the name of the company. This will almost always result in this person’s LinkedIn profile appearing at the top of the list, complete with full surname.
At this point, you’ll have everything you need to send a connection request, and if you have made a genuine connection you can tailor that request to remind them of when and where. Alternatively, if you want to use this method to establish a connection via Twitter, keep following this guide.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
4
Further details
Search for the person’s full name with the name of their employer and the word “Twitter” in Google, and there’s a very good chance you will find their Twitter account. Engage with them, develop a relationship and eventually, pop the LinkedIn question. In a job searching context, this can be particularly useful even if you don’t know either the first name or surname of an influential person you need to contact. Simply look for relevant job titles in a search of their company.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
Job Searching with LinkedIn Premium Though LinkedIn Premium is generally considered most useful for recruiters and sales professionals, it does offer a number of reduced price plans aimed at job seekers. Key advantages include: •
A monthly allowance of ‘response guaranteed’ InMail messages (if you don’t get a reply, your message credit will be returned), allowing you to contact any recruiter on LinkedIn regardless of connection status
•
Preferential treatment as a ‘featured applicant’ in search results
•
A Premium badge on your profile and search results
•
A more comprehensive list of people who have viewed your profile
•
Membership of the Job Seeker Group and access to a support and advance webinar
The job seeker plan is offered in distinct tiers that govern how many InMail message credits you receive every month. You can choose either an annual or monthly subscription, therefore making it easy to subscribe for a short job searching period and then quickly unsubscribe once you’ve found a new position. If you want to more actively pursue recruiters, by all means subscribe for a few months and enjoy full InMail access. If you fancy being extra visible on the service while not actively job searching, an annual subscription may also work in your favour. However, LinkedIn Job Seeker Premium plans are useful but by no means essential to landing a good job – note, for instance, that InMails can actually be purchased by users of LinkedIn Basic.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
Using mobile and tablet LinkedIn apps Perhaps unsurprisingly, mobile and tablet users can find the LinkedIn experience via the mobile website (touch.linkedin.com), or the app available for Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows. If you’re planning on clearing your email inbox of LinkedIn notifications, the apps provide a less obtrusive, more immediate way of interacting via the service. In practice, certain features may not be available via the app. When this guide was created (April 2013) some users complained about a lack of group management options, for instance. Nevertheless, having a streamlined route to connect to any new acquaintance when at a networking event is invaluable. One feature unique to the app is a calendar service that provides LinkedIn profile details alongside any calendar you import. Those concerned about privacy issues are reassured this is a feature you must opt into. Search for “LinkedIn” in your smartphone’s app store for a download.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
LinkedIn Groups Groups are one of the most important venues for user interaction on LinkedIn, and contributing can be a fantastic way to get noticed and to raise your profile. It follows, then, that whoever creates a group could potentially gain an even greater prominence. Of course, creating groups without reason is likely to be viewed as obnoxious. But if you can genuinely find a niche, find that an existing group has become inactive or run a website that would benefit from a community, consider creating your own.
Creating a group Group creation takes around 15 minutes, but then, if that concerns you you’re probably not going to flourish as a moderator and admin in an active group. Just as with your personal profile, fill out all fields as completely and truthfully as possible. Choose a group name that is descriptive and attractive, use keywords in both your summary and description and upload a high quality image (a maximum of 102x153 pixels are allowed for your group’s logo).
Personnel
my future
role
.com
LinkedIn Groups Notable features After promoting your groups among your connections and channels outside of LinkedIn, you should start to gain momentum within your groups. While you should rely on your members to create some of the content for the group, there are key features you can use to ensure things keep ticking along nicely. •
•
Groups have their own analytics features, including demographics, growth and activity. These can give you an overview of who uses your group, and what content and/or activity usually results in the highest engagement
The ‘send an announcement’ option (‘manage’ > ‘send an announcement’) allows you to stay in touch with your audience, but don’t abuse it. One good use of this feature is for weekly group messages – summaries of contributions, or key events outside of the group that bring people back to debate hot topics
Personnel
my future
role
.com
LinkedIn today Along the header bar you will find the ‘news’ option. Though anyone fully immersed in their industry will already have a number of favourite websites they visit to keep up with important developments, the LinkedIn today feed shouldn’t be discounted for two reasons. Firstly, this feed is easy to customise. In the right hand column you will see the sectors you’re currently following and suggestions for others you might like to follow. Secondly, and most importantly, it’s another way to interact with the wider community regardless of the weight of your connections. Comments on the article and list of all those who ‘liked’ the article are visible, and depending on privacy settings, you will be able to find their profiles and perhaps develop a professional acquaintance. Your interactions with these posts will show up in your activity feed and you also have the ability to share the content with individuals or in your updates. This can improve your standing among connections, and see you considered authoritative with your sector.
Personnel
my future
role
.com
SEO best practice Assuming that you want to be found, how you set up your profile has an enormous effect on your visibility, both within LinkedIn’s search tools and via external search engines. LinkedIn is treated as an authority source by Google and the other search engines, so it pays to apply search engine optimisation (SEO) principles to your profile. •
It’s worth reiterating that you should complete every subsection of your profile. The more (relevant) content you can cram into your profile, the more likely you are to show up via searches both on and off site. Search engines love plenty of text and pictures, and a good LinkedIn profile can heavily feature both
•
Default LinkedIn URLs are messy and poorly optimised (http://www. linkedin.com/pub/william-gates/53/698/261 as an example). On your profile page, you can edit the URL of your public profile to make it shorter (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/williamgates). This will look better on your business cards and is favoured by search engines too. This could mean improved visibility for your profile within results for certain search queries
•
While nobody would recommend that you go around dropping a link to your profile on every page you create on the internet, linking where relevant can have indirect benefits for the importance search engines place on your profile. Add your public profile URL to forum signatures and comment profiles, and don’t be afraid to plug it in various biographies you may create on other websites
Personnel