Career Column: Increase Your Career Success with Linkedin

Discover the many ways to use social media skills and knowledge to promote yourself, your business, customer satisfaction, or sales.

Do you have a plan for using social media to promote yourself or your organization? Continue reading to receive basic information on how to use LinkedIn for marketing, or take a course that will help you lay out a detailed social media plan.

Learn more about Communications Courses.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past several years, you're likely to be familiar with LinkedIn and may already have an account at the professional social networking site. Over the years, the site has become invaluable for both employers and prospective employees looking to connect with other professionals.

With over 364 million members, three million company profiles, and the fact that 88 percent of today's Fortune 500 companies heavily use the site for recruitment purposes, having a great LinkedIn profile is a must! Here are a few quick and proven tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile and set you up for professional success.

Personalize Your Profile URL

In most cases, profile URLs contain nothing but a bunch of random numbers and letters. However, LinkedIn provides you with the ability to personalize your profile URL with your own name. If your name happens to be taken, which is quite possible with over 300 million users, try using your initials or an identifiable iteration of your name. Not only will this make it easier for potential employers and other professionals to find your profile, but it will make it easier for them to return to your profile as well.

Identify Important Keywords

When researching desired jobs or opportunities, compile a list of terms commonly used in that industry or field. Special "keyword" tools are quite useful in finding terms that boost your chances for discovery. You can utilize these tools to add buzzwords or popular terms to your profile, resume, and more.

Be Strategic with Your Content

Try incorporating the keywords you found when weaving the step above into your profile ("About Me"), prior job descriptions, and skill selections. Incorporate keywords into the titles of your posts. By doing so, you'll optimize them for higher search rankings.

Optimize Your Anchor Links

LinkedIn allows you to add up to three of your blogs or sites, providing you with the opportunity to display knowledge, a variety of skills and experience to potential employers or agents. When asked to select the "Type" of site, simply select "Other" and use the keywords you discovered earlier to describe it.

Get Involved in Groups

Ideally, you should join and participate in relevant groups, allowing you to interact with and discuss ideas with fellow LinkedIn members. Being involved in groups also boosts your search visibility. Recruiters and hiring managers actively scout potential hires in LinkedIn forums and groups. By staying active in these groups, your profile will stand out from the crowd and increase your likelihood of being noticed.

Complete Your Profile

Make sure all fields are 100 percent complete as this will increase your views. If you've been putting off doing a section or two, go ahead and finish them. It's worth spending a few minutes to paint a complete and compelling picture of yourself and the reasons why you would make a compelling hire or business partner.

Following these LinkedIn profile tips will increase your profile views and help you make the most of this powerful professional social network. Whether you're currently looking for a job, re-doing your profile to attract JV partners, or pursuing other career prospects, these easy to do tips can bring huge results!

Expert training through our Communications Courses can help you realize even more success on Linkedin, such as with:

Even for seasoned marketing professionals, this is new territory! Electronic social networks that did not exist five years ago are now the new frontier in marketing. They present a great opportunity for exposure for you, and revenue for your company or agency.

In this course, you will learn that aside from a social outlet, when these networks are integrated with traditional marketing, they can augment your entire outreach effort, creating publicity, opportunity, and sales potential you never thought could exist. After this social media training workshop, you will have your plan ready to go.

Learn more about this training, and enroll today in our Communications Courses.