3 Basic Tips to Elevate Your LinkedIn Presence

I’m not perfect on LinkedIn, no one is, but there are a few missed opportunities I see every day and thought you might appreciate knowing what they are. Small tips like this really help to elevate your presence on the platform and ultimately, you get much better results – whether you’re job hunting, trying to raise your profile, starting a business, or other.

The @ symbol is your greatest friend on LinkedIn

Absolutely number one has to be using the @ symbol regularly. If you put the @ before anyone’s’ name (or a company name) you tag them/it into your post. Go and try it. I promise it works. It also works on Facebook, Google+, Instagram and more. Definitely a handy tool.

Why is this important? You alert them to your post, which encourages them to engage with you, and that means you elevate both of you to each other’s communities, which gives you both greater exposure. If you’re trying to raise your profile, it’s a great tool. My only tip is don’t be annoying and tag when it’s awesome for both of you.

When would you do it?

• If you’re sharing someone’s blog or a great piece of content someone shared, it’s alerts them to your share and acknowledges them as the originator. However, the best bit is you don’t have to already be connected to tag someone. That means you can link yourself to some pretty awesome and famous/infamous people, and as you’ll notice, the good ones will drop you a note and say thanks
• For businesses, alerting them is good for you, raises your profile with the brand, links you to the brand, and if you want a job with that company down the line, it’s not a bad thing. If you want that brand to know you, it’s not a bad thing either. If you’re a small business or independent business, ditto
• You’ve found some amazing information and you know people would love it. Tagging those people and starting a conversation around the information is what LinkedIn is all about. Not enough people do this, and many more don’t respond when they are tagged – missed opportunity! Aligning your personal brands online is great for everyone

Note, you can only do this directly on LinkedIn – so if you are using Hootsuite, or other – you can’t do it.

Blogging on LinkedIn

If you are already blogging but you’re not putting it up on LinkedIn, you are missing the greatest opportunity there is – wider exposure to your content. I believe everyone should be blogging and that you should be publishing your blogs in multiple places to get wider exposure. In that regard, LinkedIn has to be at the top of your list. Why?

1. Every time you publish a blog, everyone you are connected with and everyone who follows you, is alerted to your blog – it’s the little red flag at the top. This encourages your community to go and check it out. However, if you only share a link to your blog as an update, your community is not alerted. If you publish a blog somewhere else first, that’s cool, just put a link at the end of your LinkedIn blog back to the original site
2. When your friends like and comment on your blog, their entire community is made aware of it, so that extends your potential reach
3. And if the algorithms of LinkedIn pick up your blog and put it on Pulse, you’ve got a whole new opportunity to influence beyond your circle. As an example with my three recent blogs:
   • Blindly Endorsing Your Company is Bad for Your Career and for Your Personal Brand was featured in Your Career on Pulse, and that opens me up to a massive new audience
   • Event Organisers, Speakers… Hashtags & Handles I Beg You, Please was featured in Public Speaking & Presenting, another awesome community on Pulse
   • A Content Marketing Discussion with LinkedIn was featured in two Pulse communities, Marketing & Advertising, and LinkedIn Tips – double bonus
4. I don’t know how you get on Pulse, so apologies for that, but at the end of every blog, you have three tagging options. Make sure you pick the best tags for your content, as I believe this is a part of the backend algorithm that gets you into Pulse

You see that right? It’s a massive opportunity for greater exposure of your content to communities far outside of your normal reach. That’s how you move to getting greater readership of your blogs and how you make a bang in your world.

A quick final note on this – click through to the sharing tab in the statistics of your blog. In the top right hand side (see the 14 in the image above), click on the right angled arrow and now you can see who has shared your post and what they’ve said. You should like every share, and if they’ve added an opinion, say thanks and comment on their share. If they get lots of comments, you’ll be able to see what other people are saying and can broaden your engagement outside your community here as well.

However, if they’ve only shared the link (i.e. left no comment) you can’t interact with them (see next point). Engaging with people who have shared and commented on your posts is a good habit to get into. You should also reply to every comment on your post. It’s just good manners.

But PLEASE add your opinion

Finally, the thing that really really annoys me on LinkedIn (and other social channels) is people sharing links and not sharing an opinion. Here’s the thing. We are ALL overwhelmed with content these days, and when we have five pieces of content to look at and one person has added an opinion, but the rest haven’t, which piece will we read?

More than that, it’s a massively missed opportunity. Even if you are not yet blogging, sharing great content and telling people why you loved it (or perhaps you didn’t love it) is a really great way to show people how you think and what’s important to you.

So please, never share anything without offering everyone a few thoughts and inspire them to read it too. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine. You have two options here. Don’t share it and find something else that you loved. Or if you think it’s important, share it and constructively tell people what you think the article missed, maybe offering an alternative view. Remember with criticism – especially for blogs – there’s a human at the other end of it, so don’t be a troll. It’s not pleasant when people get nasty.

I could share loads of other things, but for everyone I know who’s working really hard to build a stronger professional presence on LinkedIn, I hope this helps. If you have a tip that has completely changed how you engage on LinkedIn, tell me in the comments? I love hearing new tips.

Cheers

Andrea

And please, if you like this, I’d love a comment, a discussion or a virtual hug, and of course, feel free to share with your communities. That’s what this is all about today – sharing and giving to each other. Also if you like my style and what I talk about, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, on Twitter or on Facebook. Thanks for reading.