Guest Post by: Karen Wessels, co-founder and COO of VA Connect
Are you using LinkedIn to its fullest potential? I sure hope so! LinkedIn is my all time favorite social media site. It's the place to see and be seen. So, in order to get the best value from LinkedIn I've compiled a couple of pointers I would love to share with you. Who knows, you may too experience the magic of LinkedIn and see excellent returns on your business growth!
Complete Your Profile
It may seem obvious, however, how many people have incomplete profiles? Either they have no profile picture or the one they are using doesn't quite depict their professionalism. Is your headline up to date and attention grabbing? This is an opportunity for you to display your creative skills and entice people to want to learn more about you. List your achievements and skill set.
Recommendations
Getting recommendations are essential as they tell an important story about you and your capabilities. Reach out to peers, clients, connections and ask them to recommend you. You can also passively seek recommendations by recommending your connections and LinkedIn will ask them to recommend you back. Ta-da!
Be active
It is really important to join groups and actively participate by means of commenting, sharing and the like. By being active in groups means that your profile will be viewed 5 times more than those that don't. Become a thought leader in each group and by doing so others will seek you out for advice and your sage input.
Create & Optimize your Company Page
Create a digital footprint for your business by creating a company page in LinkedIn. When posting updates on the company page be sure to like and share these posts with your network. Create an eye-catching banner that is LinkedIn optimized. Now you can also create Showcase pages that branch off from your company page. As the name says it showcases a particular product or service and the message can be tailored to the audience specific for that page.
There are so many other pointers to boost your LinkedIn profile and company page. If you missed it, Hubspot created the ultimate cheat sheet for boosting your LinkedIn profile.
Below I've highlighted a few industry experts' top tip for a great LinkedIn profile.
Stephanie Sammons - If you spend 10 minutes a day engaging personally with 10 of your valued LinkedIn contacts, you will grow your influence.
John Rampton - Don't be shy about calling out your LinkedIn profile. Put it on your email, business card, etc... anything with your name on it, your profile should be there too.
Alex Pirouz - Not having a plan is the number one reason businesses aren't using LinkedIn to it's full potential.
I would love to hear your top tips on making LinkedIn work for you!
Drop me a line at karen@karenwessels.com
Karen Wessels is the co-founder and COO of VA Connect, a South African virtual assistant platform that provides outsourced administrative support. Prior to establishing VA Connect, Karen spent over 10 years in different sales, marketing & admin support roles. Having worked with MDs, SMEs and professionals, she is very familiar with managing different workloads within tight deadlines. This has equipped her with the invaluable skills required to run a successful VA business. Follow Karen on her Personal Website | Twitter | Facebook | Google+
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