A beginner's guide to LinkedIn

A beginner's guide to LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great website for business networking, brand promotion, socialising, and finding yourself new jobs or clients. It’s a great asset to have even if you’re not regularly using it, and an even greater one if you are. If you’ve never used the service before, take a look at our tips below on how to get started.

Use a high quality profile photo

Though it’s not the case for most social media sites, your LinkedIn profile photo should be high quality, as the purpose of the site is to make work connections. Photos from holidays where you’re holding a €3 cocktail won’t do as well on there as they do on Facebook. Make sure to pick a photo that best represents your business – professional headshots are a good choice, as are photos you’ve had taken for lanyards and such.

Upload as much information as possible

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to fill in information about past jobs, work experience and education, so people can get a good idea of your strengths. You’re even able to pick from a selection of skills that you consider to be your best traits. Make sure you fill out as many of these sections as possible, as it increases your chances of being noticed by potential employers or clients.

Get connected to people you know

Even if they’ve never brought it up, it’s likely that a large chunk of your friends and associates are already on LinkedIn. Use the site’s search function to find people you know and build up your connections, or choose to sync your account with your email address for a quick and easy way to search. Once you start to increase your friends list, you’ll be shown people in your area that you may know – checking their profiles to see if you’re working in similar fields is the first step to making new connections.

Let recruiters know you’re available

If you’re using LinkedIn primarily because you’re actively looking for work, you can let potential employers know that you’re available by going into the Jobs section of your profile and selecting ‘Let recruiters know you’re open’. You can specify the type of work you’re looking for, your availability, and the areas you are willing to travel to.

Post often

If you want to increase your visibility and keep your connections engaged with what you do, you can regularly post text, images and videos to your account that your followers can see and interact with. As with Facebook, your posts can be liked and shared, so if you have something exciting coming up from your business or you want to share a post from a friend’s company to help them out, LinkedIn is the best place to do it.

Once you’ve signed up to LinkedIn, follow the KCOM company page for news, updates and career opportunities.