How to be more effective on LinkedIn

Linkedin is the ultimate social media sales tool. Find out how to maximise the tool for your business
By Ben Robson
Five LinkedIn features and facts to help you be more effective on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a must-use tool for business. Unlike the majority of other social channels, success on the platform relies on an individual’s ability to build their personal brand.

To be successful, you need to be active as an individual, as LinkedIn doesn’t lend itself to commenting and interacting as a brand, other than on your company’s own LinkedIn business page.

Here are five lesser-known features to help you become a LinkedIn all-star:

 1. LinkedIn can create a CV for you from your profile

Keeping your CV up to date and ready to go at the drop of a hat can be a laborious task. Sure, you can send prospective employers / clients a link to your LinkedIn profile – but even better, why not let LinkedIn create CV for you? To get started, click this link.

 2. Circumvent the need to be a ‘1st connection’ with someone to message them

In order to message someone, LinkedIn requires that you’re a 1st Connection with them, i.e. directly connected – it’s not enough to have another friend / colleague who knows the person you’re trying to message.

There’s a great way around this. If you’re a member of the same group as the person you want to message, you can send them a direct message. As long as you’ve been on LinkedIn for over 30-days and a member of the group for four days or more, you’re in business! *Note, you can only have 15 interactions back and forth with the person using this method.

3. LinkedIn cover image

LinkedIn was late to the ‘cover image party’ – Ok, that’s probably a pretty boring party – but metaphorically, we’re going with ‘party’, for the sake of coolness.

To add a LinkedIn cover image, go to your profile and click ‘edit profile’ in the top navigation. Select the image you want from your files (1400 x 425 pixels and up to 8MB in size) and hit save.

Be creative and think about adding a call to action – e.g. to get in touch, request to connect with me telling me what you’d like to chat about. Or, if you’re trying to promote your business, include your tagline, or even website URL in your image design.

Here’s mine below, with information about GOAT and our main target audience.

Linkedin-cover-image-how-to-be-more-effective-on-linkedin

4. Who’s viewed your profile

Want to know who’s been stalking you on LinkedIn? Ok, chances are they’ve been doing it for business reasons – and here’s how you find out.

To find out who’s viewed your profile:

  • Go to the home page view
  • Scroll down and look on the right hand side for ‘who’s viewed your profile’
  • Click on the first statistic under the who’s viewed your profile heading

There’s loads of detail available – as long as people don’t have there profile visibility locked down – including job position, company, location and more.

5. Hashtags don’t work – and you’re annoying people by using them

Hashtags on LinkedIn don’t work. So stop using them – they won’t extend the reach of your content or make it more visible.

Check that your other social media profiles e.g. Twitter, aren’t automatically posting tweets to your LinkedIn profile, as that may be the problem.

There we have it, five of the lesser known features and facts to be more effective on LinkedIn.

What other ‘secret’ LinkedIn features would you add to the list? Leave a comment below to spark up the conversation.

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