Introduction: LinkedIn As Community Building and Marketing Tool
https://www.linkedin.com/
The beginning of every professional relationship always starts with proper self-presentation, LinkedIn is no exception.
Whether an inexperienced student or a seasoned academic, LinkedIn supports a professional environment allowing individuals to connect and communicate with others seeking collaboration and opportunity.
Due to the self-driven nature of the platform, profile appearance, proper job posting and effective marketing are three key techniques that you will find invaluable in utilizing LinkedIn to its potential.
Step 1: Tips for a Great-Looking LinkedIn Profile
Those who put more effort into creating a good LinkedIn profile will benefit by having their profile stand out, and be noticed by other employers.
Here are some important tips to consider to help enhance your LinkedIn profile.
Remain comprehensive and concise.
The section where you write your summary is one of the most important sections of your profile. Your summary should provide an overview of everything you can present about yourself, such as work experience, unique qualifications, and skills to name a few. Therefore, we want to avoid superfluous words and include all the aspects of your qualifications so that your summary remains comprehensive and concise. Outside of the summary, you should go into more detail about your specific qualifications while remaining concise, which can be achieved by avoiding buzzwords. In addition, buzzwords should be avoided because they are often vague and not comprehensive. Thus, by avoiding buzzwords your writing is more specific and conveys a better idea to the reader of your qualifications.
Choose your best photo.
Your photo is often the very thing other readers see first before viewing your profile. In other words, your photo helps someone make a first impression about you. Your goal for a profile picture is to give off positive feelings to the viewers because it makes you look more approachable to others. So, you want to choose a clean, simple, and appropriate photo of yourself that best represents you. For a professional social environment such as LinkedIn, it is recommended that the photo is, but not limited to a head shot of yourself. Also, remember to avoid any other distracting factors in your photo like pets or any props. Furthermore, a photo alone can convey to other people things about you that are difficult to express through words. Therefore, you should put in more of your time and effort to take a nice photo of yourself because your photo is the first thing other readers see on your profile.
Now, by this point you should have a great-looking profile and you are ready to start making connections.
Step 2: Posting Jobs With LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers the ability to post jobs on behalf of a company on to its network and make the best use of its users. This offers an opportunity for the employers to seek out potential candidates through networking of its users.
Targeting the right audience
LinkedIn is set up in a way that is automatically targets your open roles to candidates with the right skills and experience via e-mails and across the social network itself. The jobs are also neatly suggested in one of their features named Jobs You May Be Interested In. According to LinkedIn, there are over 500 million members on its network, among them, an average of 22 million professionals view jobs on the network every single week.
Posting the job opening
Posting jobs on the network is a great way to promote a company or a college for instance to increase the number applications.The step-by-step process on LinkedIn for posting jobs is very straight-forward, listed as follows:
- Click the Post a Job button
- Fill Up Prompted Details
- Company: Link the ad to its LinkedIn Company Page
- Job Title
- Location
- Job Description
- Let your candidates know how you would like them to apply.
- Select Daily Budget
- Publish Ad and follow feedback
You can easily manage your candidates by reviewing and contacting candidates, monitor real-time analytics with insights into how your job post is performing.
Networking your employees
LinkedIn groups are a great way to network professionals in the same industry or similar interests. You can build a thriving LinkedIn group and network people from your workplace or organization to share content, find answers, post and view jobs, make business contacts etc. It is a fantastic way to promote events, advertise upcoming conferences and so on. Spend your time giving kudos to group members who start discussions and contribute to discussions by commenting, liking and sharing their post. A good way to build a community is linking like minded people together though such a group focusing on a particular topic, event or industry.
Step 3: Marketing With LinkedIn.
Now that you’ve prepared your profile and understand job posting, the next step is marketing.
Discover your audience
First and foremost, to market effectively one must define their goals and the audience they are trying to reach. Once you’ve decided what it is that you want to accomplish with your profile and network, whether that is creating awareness or generating opportunities, it will then become easier to define your audience.
Integrate yourself
Next, with a clear understanding of the people who may seek interest in you, it will be necessary to increase your visibility on the platform. One major way you can get your name out there is to join Groups, these are some of the most active areas on the website. Begin to seek out groups that may fall inline with the audience your trying to make traction with. Make sure not to join to many groups, for it will become difficult to maintain connections and remain engaged. Additionally, if you can’t seem to locate a group that reflects what your looking for, make one yourself!
Stay Active
Once a member, look to make meaningful connections by contribution to conversations, asking advice or answering someone’s questions. Post frequently and remain active in your circles, this will make sure your activities won’t go unnoticed and will appear alongside everyone’s updates. Throughout all of this, make sure you take the time to make quality content to contribute. That way people will clearly understand your intent, know that your serious, and will prevent contacts from getting burnout with poorly crafted, aggressively mediocre content.
Lastly, after all your efforts, make sure to follow up on leads and pursue individuals looking to make a connection. Don’t let your hard work go to waste by forgetting the reasons you joined this site, to expand your realm of influence and meet your goals.
Step 4: Learn More
In-App Marketing: https://www.instructables.com/id/In-App-Marketing/
