Last night I hosted a small LinkedIn training session for some friends at Sunridge Church in Temecula. As LinkedIn (and the other social/ professional networking sites) grow and evolve, it’s challenging to keep up with how they work, which features are most important and how to best utilize these services to meet our career and business goals.
Our discussion included identifying intent and using LinkedIn with a purpose; planning to make periodic updates and investing reasonable time into your profile while avoiding getting bogged down and spending more time than it’s worth. After all, we’re all so busy already that we need to focus our efforts on marketing and networking tools that deliver. And LinkedIn is definitely worth investing some time.
We also reviewed some of the profile basics, like how your profile components work, including education, projects, work experience, publications and more. And we discussed techniques for finding and connecting with new people.
Lastly, we discussed in detail how LinkedIn handles endorsements and recommendations. For endorsements, it’s important to understand how you can manually add and remove skills and expertise so your connections can endorse you for them. Likewise, we reviewed how LinkedIn automatically selects skills and encourages your contacts to endorse you for those as well. For recommendations, we reviewed where they’re located within your profile (a recent change on LinkedIn) and how to both give and receive recommendations with your contacts.
Could you use some help with LinkedIn or other social/ professional networking sites to promote your business or organization? Let’s talk.
I thoroughly enjoyed the LinkedIn training that Matt Smith offered. There was so much to cover that it could have easily been like drinking from a firehose, but Matt made sure that he understood our goals for the training prior the meeting and focused on our top priorities. Without question, I will benefit from the tips Matt gave regarding how to improve my profile by adding projects and publications. In addition, he removed the haze I had regarding endorsements and recommendations. By the end of the meeting, I had a fresh new understanding of LinkedIn and feel confident in using it with purpose.
Thanks Bob! I’m glad the session was helpful to your goals. LinkedIn really is the professional network of choice and it works quite a bit differently than other social platforms. As such, it’s worth reconsidering with a new perspective. Glad I was able to help!
I attended Matt’s LinkedIn training at Sunridge Church because I wanted to learn how to make better use of LinkedIn to benefit my copywriting and editing business.
Like many people, I have had a LinkedIn account for years and connect with others regularly, but I didn’t understand how to optimize this valuable network.
Matt showed me how changing the wording in my profile will help the endorsements I receive to more accurately represent my strengths. He also made suggestions for expanding my profile and updating it regularly. Somehow I had two LinkedIn accounts with different email addresses, and Matt sent me a link enabling me to transfer my connections to my preferred account, and close the other account. It was an invaluable evening!
Thanks Holly! I think many people are in the position you were with LinkedIn. It’s important to analyze the potential ROI of using LinkedIn and re-focus efforts accordingly. I’m glad our session was helpful and provided you with some actionable steps moving forward to aid in your professional networking efforts and promoting your business.