beginner’s guide to linkedin 2015...

Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn

Preflight Checklist to Launching Your Online Reputation

2 0 1 5E D I T I O N

Table of Contents

I. LinkedIn Background ......................................................................................... 3

II. How Industry Professionals Use LinkedIn ..................................................... 4

III. What Can LinkedIn Do for Me and My Business? ......................................... 6

IV. How to Use LinkedIn ........................................................................................... 8

V. Recap and Wrap-Up ........................................................................................... 19

VI. About OutboundEngine and the Author ....................................................... 20

A N O U T B O U N D E N G I N E S O C I A L M E D I A G U I D E

2015 Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn 3

I. LinkedIn BackgroundLinkedIn is the social network for professionals from all industries worldwide. It launched in 2003.

Today it’s an enormous, thriving social network, growing at a rate of two new users per second.

Other interesting facts about LinkedIn:

• It is the world’s largest professional social network at 347 million users, and 187 million active users each month.

• Each day, 40 percent of LinkedIn’s users check the site.

• Students and recent graduates make up LinkedIn’s fastest-growing demographic, with 30 million users.

• LinkedIn’s mobile website, unique visits accounted for 41 percent of the

site’s traffic.

With this much popularity on a global scale, it’s safe to say that LinkedIn is here to stay. But what value

are its members – whether they are Fortune 500 employees or small business owners – finding from

the growing, online destination?



II. How Industry Professionals Use LinkedIn

If you still think of LinkedIn as being a glorified resume site, you’ll be pleasantly surprise to learn that it’s

so much more these days. Here are the five things that all LinkedIn members enjoy from being active

on the network

1) Online Resume and Professional PresenceStill at the core of your LinkedIn universe is your profile, which serves as the online public record of

your career. It is the foundation for how you want to be perceived as a skilled professional. Here, you

can highlight your work history, company history, accomplishments, skills and expertise.

If you’re looking for a new job, having a complete profile helps recruiters find you organically through

search, and gives companies a place to see what you bring to the table prior to interviewing. Even

if you’re not looking, it’s a great way to stand out in your industry through your track record of

professional successes.



2) Place to Showcase What Doesn’t Fit on Resume A resume confines you to one or two pages, but LinkedIn lets you provide as much detail as you

want. For each position, you can describe projects you’ve worked on, link to websites, upload videos

and media files, and add relevant PDFs or documents. LinkedIn now has sections to highlight your

volunteer work, the languages you speak, the clubs you participate in, your professional skills, and your

areas of expertise. The more details you add, the better.

3) Connected and Top of MindLike a Rolodex, LinkedIn is an easy way to keep all of your professional contacts in one place. But

unlike your contact list in CRM or your email address book – where you must manually update your

connections’ job histories, titles and contact information – your contacts update their profiles on

LinkedIn themselves.

In addition to keeping track of everyone you’ve done business with, LinkedIn also helps you stay top of

mind with them as well. Being active on the network gets you exposure through the news feed (similar

to Facebook). So when your connections log in, they’ll see what’s going on in your world, the content

you’ve shared, and more. This is a great way to stay on their radar, so they know you’re still active and

in business.

4) News Relevant to YouWith the advent of Pulse – LinkedIn’s member blog – you can log in daily to find curated content

relevant to your profession and network. Formerly known as LinkedIn Today, Pulse automatically

curates the links and articles your contacts have shared, as well as the content from the industry

professionals and businesses you follow.

And the best part about it is that you don’t even have to log in to get this information. LinkedIn emails

a digest to members daily or weekly, depending on their settings.

5) Lead GenerationLinkedIn is a great way to generate leads for your business, whether you’re building your reputation as

an industry influencer through LinkedIn’s publishing network or participating in the thousands of group

forums out there. The greater your audience reach, the more clout and professional credibility you’ll gain.

LinkedIn is no different than your real-world connections. In fact, it’s a tool that gives life to your

online professional persona and encourages future business opportunities.



III. What Can LinkedIn Do for Me and My Business?

While there are a multitude of reasons why businesses and industry professional should join LinkedIn, I

want to focus on three very relevant outcomes that impact all business owners.

1) Build and Increase Your Referral BaseFor most reading this, your industries generally have longer sales cycles than typical B2C companies.

That being the case, there’s a lot that can happen in a few months or years that could cause a past

client not return to you for business.

For loan officers or real estate agents, it’s easy for past clients to lose your contact information, not

remember your name or not know if you’re still in business. By the time they need to sell a home or

refinance their loan, they could have met new friends with a broker that they simply loved! Right there,

you lost that future sale. This is where LinkedIn helps.



With LinkedIn, you’ll be able to connect with friends, industry professionals and, more importantly, past

and prospective clients. After all the work you’ve put into deals, it’s important to stay on that person’s

radar for future opportunities. LinkedIn is that professional, social tool to help bridge that gap in a non-

invasive way. The potential for inbound referrals to your business through LinkedIn can grow daily.

Students and recent college grads make up LinkedIn’s fastest-growing demographic. This is the

potential 30-million-person audience composing a big portion of your business in the coming years.

Connecting with them online will help you create a future business relationship.

2) Free Professional Branding and MarketingYou know all too well that there’s never any available money when it comes to marketing. Well, you’re

in luck! LinkedIn is FREE. That’s right, much like every major social network out there, it’s free to join,

use and profit from. The only investment needed is your time.

3) Exposure and Reputation GrowthFrom the professional exposure for your personal and business brands, to the networking

opportunities, LinkedIn is something that you should incorporate into your everyday professional

life. Through LinkedIn groups, its publishing platform and the chance to follow industry leaders and

influencers, it’s your daily dose of professional counsel. It’s a great way to network with like-minded

individuals to help grow the reputation of your business.



IV. How to Start Using LinkedIn for Your Business

Now that you’re ready to go, I’ve put together a nine-step guide for getting started on LinkedIn. I’ll skip

the details on how to create your LinkedIn profile and jump ahead to the most relevant aspects. Let’s

get started.

Step 1: Make Yourself FindableWith your LinkedIn profile, it’s important to get yourself noticed for the right things. If you’re an insurance

agent in Texas, then showing up in local searches for “insurance agent Texas” should make sense. There

are a few areas I’ll focus on to help you get found. They are listed below with brief descriptions.

Name, Title and Position

It goes without saying that how you represent yourself on your business card and list your professional

certifications is the best way to describe yourself on your LinkedIn profile. You might be tempted to

research keywords and put them in your title and position. That’s not the right place.



To add or edit your name, titles and positions, click Edit on your profile page, and then click the little

pencil icon next to each line item. This will be the first thing anyone sees from you, so make sure you

type the right information.

Contact Information

While this section of your LinkedIn profile is now hidden behind a click tab, it’s still a smart idea to list

several ways for people to get in touch with you. Adding your email, phone number and social media

links here is a must. If you have a website, blog or corporate page, make sure those links are all included

here as well. While in edit mode, click Contact Info, located right below your connections count.



It’s also a good idea to customize your LinkedIn URL at this time too. When you first get your LinkedIn

account, the URL is a generic string of letters and numbers. While you’re editing your contact

information, click on the drop down menu next to your picture and select Manage Public Profile

Settings and then edit your URL in the top right corner. If you have a more common name, try getting

creative with the URL and include your profession. Something like: /JohnSmithMortgageAustinTX.



Headline

Below your name and above your current title, LinkedIn lets you add a headline to your profile.

While avoiding keywords in your name is a smart approach, here is your chance to use keywords to

elaborate on the qualities or skills that define you professionally. This is an important section because

when someone searches on LinkedIn and finds you, this part of your profile is shown as well. The

same goes for messages, group commentary and other public activity.

While your title might be something like “loan officer,” your headline could say something like “Loan

Officer, Austin, TX, Specializing in Auto Loans and Refinancing at Austin Credit Union.” By using more

descriptive terms to define what you do for a living, anyone searching for your skills will be able to see

if you match their needs.

To do this, click on the blue pencil icon next to your headline. This is the section that you’ll want to

enrich with the most descriptive keywords.

Summary

The summary section of your profile is important because it gives others a snapshot of your skills and

experience. They might not want to read through your entire work history, but they do want to get a

sense of who you are and what you’re about.



When writing your summary section, think of the first impression you want to make on a potential

employer, new customer or connection. It’s similar to meeting someone new at a networking event

and answering the question, “What do you do for a living?” It’s important to keep this section brief,

cover the high points and write in the same way you would talk in real life.

To edit your summary, first scroll down the page; it’s the first section that appears. To update, just click

the blue pencil on the right-hand side. This is also the place where you can attach your resume, a

video about you or your business, or something else you can tout to help boost your persona.

Pointer: Don’t write this in the third person. You’ll make it sound like an obituary.

Step 2: Add Skills to Your LinkedIn ProfileWhen building your profile, there’s a section for your skills. This is where keywords really give your

professional brand a boost. In this section, your connections will be able to endorse your skills.

Endorsements and keywords are especially important for search ranking.

If someone searches for an expert using keywords, the person with the most connections, most

closely matching the search criteria, with endorsements for those skills will show up first.

To add skills to your profile, scroll below your experience and languages sections. You can add your

skills by clicking the “+Add Skills” button.



Step 3: Connect With EveryoneAs previously mentioned, you should try to mirror your offline professional life on LinkedIn. A good

way to do this is to connect with everyone who can maximize your connections and reach. LinkedIn

offers many ways to import your email contacts and connect with them.



In addition to connecting with people you know, it’s good to reach out to acquaintances you’ve met at

events and even in LinkedIn groups. Remember, your connections will be able to see what you have to

say and the content that you share in the future. So it’s in your best interest to build a robust network

to increase your reach.

The easiest way to get started is by using LinkedIn’s tools. Hover over Connections from the navigation

bar and click on Add Connections from the drop down menu to connect to your email accounts.

Step 4: Join LinkedIn Groups and Be Active LinkedIn groups are collections of like-minded individuals, who have an interest in a particular topic

or field. There are more than 200 conversations happening each minute across LinkedIn groups. You

can join up to 50 groups. It’s a great way to network with industry professionals, learn tips and best

practices, and give you a place to share information.



When you join the conversations of a particular group, you’ll increase the potential for other members

to see you as a thought leader in your field. This is a great way to solidify your reputation and to get

in touch with people you’d like to connect with. And with either daily or weekly email alerts, staying

active in these group discussions becomes quite easy.

To find and join groups, hover over Interests, then click on Groups. Once there, start your search for

your industry. For me, this would be marketing.

Step 5: Write and Receive RecommendationsWith an updated profile and you actively growing your network, the next thing you should do is

get some recommendations. Recommendations on LinkedIn are testimonials for your work, visible

on your profile. When someone looks at your qualifications, it’s always great to see genuine, user-

generated input to really help make your case as a professional.

To get started, head over to LinkedIn’s Recommendations page. With a completed profile, you can

click on the “Ask for recommendations” link, select for a particular position and then ask someone

in your network to recommend you. At any point in time, you can have up to 200 recommendation

requests for a particular position.

It’s a lot easier to get recommendations from your contacts if you initiate the exchange. So if you’re looking

for a recommendation from a previous boss, head over to the recommendation page, click on the “Give

recommendations” link, find your boss’s profile and write a quick recommendation. In the personal message,

ask if he or she would be willing to write you a recommendation as well, and then hit the “Send” button.



Step 6: Maintain Your RelationshipsOnce you start connecting with people outside of your circle of friends, family and close professional

contacts, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with information overload. To stay as up-to-date as possible

within your network, click on “Connections” and then “Keep in Touch” at the top of your screen. The

page that loads will be a quick snapshot view of birthdays, new positions, work anniversaries and major

life events. Maybe send your connections a quick message here or pick up the phone and call. Either

way, this is your quickest way to maintain hundreds of relationships.



Step 7: Build a Company PageFor some of you, perhaps you’re the only person in your company. Or maybe you’re a three- to five-

person operation and have a decent client base. Whatever the size of your business, it’s a good idea

to have a LinkedIn homepage. You might have noticed that as you were filling out your profile, some

of the company names you were typing appeared as options on a drop down list. That’s because they

created a page for their business.

I won’t go into the details of how to make a business page because that is its own step-by-step guide

topic, but to get that process started, head over to LinkedIn’s “Add a Company.”

The business page you create will be a good way to showcase your business size, contact information,

logo and more. Post here often, daily if possible. Did you know it only takes 20 posts a month to reach

more than 60 percent of your audience? Those are some truly optimistic stats!

Lastly, you’ll want to add a link to your LinkedIn page on your company’s website and your email

signature. This way, people who visit your website or click on your email signature will be able to start

following your business on LinkedIn and receive news and content updates about your company.



Step 8: Post Lots of UpdatesGiven that LinkedIn is a social network, it is intrinsically built to be, well, social. When you log on to

LinkedIn, you’ll see the news feed. Here, you’ll find updates from your professional connections,

businesses you follow and more. The best way to stay top of mind is to show up on your connections’

news feeds, so that when they log on to LinkedIn, they’ll see you as an active voice in their networks.

Finding the right information to share can be challenging, but I’ve found it helpful to use a tool like

Flipboard to curate content that you would like to share with your professional network. Setting up

your Flipboard account to share automatically is also a breeze.

Of course, if you want to save yourself some time, OutboundEngine automates this process for small

businesses, finding amazing content to share with your network for you. So if you don’t have time throughout

your day to get to LinkedIn, you can have the peace of mind that your network is being managed for you.

Step 9: Make LinkedIn a Daily HabitLast, but certainly not least, the best way to get in the habit of using LinkedIn is to just do it. Create a list

of things you’d like to accomplish to build your network, tie in some numeric goals and deadlines and

build a list of things to do just once a day. Seriously, you can master LinkedIn in about five minutes a day.

Help yourself succeed with LinkedIn by committing to it, whether you mark it on your calendar, write

out a schedule on a whiteboard or leave a sticky note on your desk. Here’s an example of how you

could plan out your week.

Sunday (20 minutes) 7 p.m.: Find five interesting blog posts to share this week and schedule one per day.

Monday (5 minutes) 8 a.m.: Scroll through LinkedIn homepage. Comment on two posts and “like” two posts.

Tuesday (10 minutes) 4 p.m.: Look at emails from LinkedIn groups and find two conversations that look interesting. Leave a helpful or insightful comment on each conversation.

Wednesday (5 minutes) 12 p.m.: Find four people on LinkedIn you met at a recent networking event, connect with them and add notes to their profile pages so you remember important details.

Thursday (5 minutes) 7 a.m.: Scroll through homepage and share two posts you find interesting.

Friday (10 minutes) 2 p.m.: Write one recommendation for a current or past coworker and ask for one in return.

Saturday Enjoy the weekend.



V. Recap and Wrap-UpLinkedIn is an important social media tool to build your online professional identity and brand. It’s a

time- and cost-effective way to keep in touch with past clients, coworkers and friends. It’s also a way

to build stronger industry connections and relationships. LinkedIn is a great way to help you grow as

a professional, as well as grow your business. It might seem like a lot of work to get started, but by

setting up goals, objectives and a strategy, you can easily begin to make your presence known on the

world’s largest professional social network.



VI. About OutboundEngine and the AuthorAbout OutboundEngine OutboundEngine is a 100 percent done-for-you email, social media and content marketing platform

that helps business owners stay top of mind with customers and prospects, and turns online

engagement into revenue.

The cloud-based platform automates the delivery of timely, tailored emails, as well as social media

and content marketing campaigns for all kinds of industries. Its personalized approach helps business

owners nurture and reach customers, while freeing them up to do what they do best – their jobs. For

more information, see: http://www.outboundengine.com.

About the Author As Product Marketing Manager, Travis Balinas is responsible for communicating to

the world about OutboundEngine. From all content creation on the website, social

media channels and documents both internal and external, Travis crafts everything

to help our clients reach their goals.

http://www.outboundengine.com

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