While most people around the world have been using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and the like for fun, communication, and relationship-building over the years, it’s important not to forget just how useful the networks can also be for your career, whether you’re actively searching for a new position right now or not.
In fact, the various online platforms where people go to share data, exchange ideas, make comments, and meet new connections can be the ideal place for you to increase your network of contacts and raise your professional profile. In turn, this can help you to land an exciting new role when you need to (or even when you least expect it), or to expand your customer base for your own venture.
To make your profiles more effective though, you will first need to make sure that your information is as complete as possible and always up to date, with full descriptions and quality, professional photographs used at all times. You must maintain a professional manner on each site (no pictures of you looking drunk or taking part in illegal or otherwise frowned-upon activities!) and you need to be careful about only ever posting accurate, truthful information.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your career today, read on for three handy ways in which you can take advantage of social media.
Networking
One of the first things you should start doing if you want to boost your career is network online. Social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are fantastic for this, and will help you to “meet,” and develop connections with, other professionals in your industry.
To do this well, it is important to firstly ensure you have put up a comprehensive profile on LinkedIn, as this is one of the most popular and beneficial social networking spots for people who want to find a new job or make good contacts.
On the site, you need to post your resume in an online format. It must not only be accurate and up-to-date, but also well written and properly formatted. As such, it pays to organize a resume evaluation service to check out your information so that you can be sure that you’re not making any mistakes.
Your LinkedIn profile should include things such as:
Your relevant skills and achievements
Recommendations from people you have worked with or consulted to in the past
A business-appropriate photograph of yourself (no social pics here!)
Some relevant examples of your work where possible
Keywords that relate to your industry and job area
Once you have all the necessary info posted online, it’s time to start working on building more connections. There are multiple ways to do this. It is a good idea to post regular updates about your career successes, new skills you’ve gained, training you’ve completed, events you’ve attended, or any other relevant news that will help to generate interest in your profile.
As well, make sure you join some of the LinkedIn groups which are relevant to your position or sector. Once this is done, take part in online discussions whenever you feel you can add a unique view on the topic or some useful information. This will help you to chat and engage with potential and current contacts and to develop relationships further.
Build Your Brand
Next, keep in mind that, no matter the industry you’re in, it is always a good idea to work hard on building your brand. Branding is not just for businesses, as many people think, but rather is also important for individuals too.
Most social media sites, but particularly Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, are fantastic avenues to help people promote themselves by consistently demonstrating their brand. The updates you post online and the profiles you set up for yourself can go a long way to create an image that will help to stand you in good stead throughout your career.
Recruiters, employers, and clients typically check out social media sites when conducting research, and can use the information they see to determine if you will be a good fit for a company or position.
On your online profiles, make sure that you are always consistent when it comes to branding elements such as the images, logos, font, and language you use. This will help you to develop your own particular “voice” that can set you apart from your competition. The image and summary details that you put on one social media platform should be used across them all, so that your style becomes easily and quickly identified and gives people an accurate idea of who you are and what you represent.
You can also further your brand by using social media sites to become an industry expert. Your posts are the perfect platform for promoting your skills, knowledge, and experience, as well as a variety of content that you write or collate, such as blog posts and articles, quotes, infographics, e-books, pictures, and the like. By regularly posting information that helps others in your industry and demonstrates your expertise, you will see your standing as an industry expert rise.
LinkedIn is a booming social media channel with the highest potential. From its pool of over 460 million professional members worldwide, you certainly have a good chance of meeting the right people and probably your future business partners.
LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to increase your influence and visibility online. While Facebook still holds the most number of users worldwide, it will be difficult for you to get the message across the right people due to the diversity and vastness of its audience’s niche.
SEO optimization companies and leaders encourage businesses to be visible and active on LinkedIn as the opportunities for growing traffic and readership are relatively high with it. Harnessing the power of LinkedIn for your business can be very experimental, and there’s a chance you might go wrong, but here are a few of the reasons you should try.
LinkedIn Lets You Publish Content For Free
During the first few years that LinkedIn started, they had contacted several people to become “LinkedInfluencers,” and only those who had been called and qualified to be one are allowed to have a presence in LinkedIn when it comes to publishing content.
Of course, as you can very well tell, these Influencers have grown their networks and connections, resulting in higher traffic in their sites and conversion rates on all of their marketing efforts. Until now, Influencers are added based on an invitation basis, and although it is not on an application basis, LinkedIn still allows its members and readers to publish long- form posts for free.
If your post gains enough readership from your connections and their connections, and if LinkedIn sees it fit for its global daily publication Pulse, you will have higher chances of getting more connections and readership in your posts. Search engine optimization firms have seen a tremendous amount of opportunities coming out from LinkedIn traffic referral, especially that the traffic is purely business owners and professionals.
LinkedIn do not require original content to be published, you can republish the content you have already posted on your blog, that’s why LinkedIn referrals can give a good amount of traffic going to your site.
Although there’s a good tendency for them not to come back to LinkedIn after getting rerouted to your site, LinkedIn still allows its influencers and its community as a whole to publish already published content.
Do take note that LinkedIn allows long form posts in several languages, so if you are on a local-specific marketing game, it would be a great way to narrow down your audience.
Having Targeted Readers
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Aside from being able to publish posts for free, with LinkedIn you have the opportunity to choose which groups you would like your posts to be read by. It is recommended you join the right groups according to your profession, but if you are hoping to meet people from a different niche or industry, then you can choose to join diverse groups.
Since you are going to customize each tag you can then tag the right groups and the right readers you wish your content to reach. LinkedIn also has a particular algorithm set so that the right content reach the right professionals. And just like Google’s algorithm, LinkedIn will also evaluate your content’s relevance and quality before it gets into anyone else’s newsfeed.
So in the end, what matters most will be the quality and relevance of your content to the people whom you intend to read.
In addition to what’s said, you need to be specific when you write your long form posts. It should be addressed to one particular group of people for you to have higher chances of readership. This strategy works best in LinkedIn’s algorithm and most especially its users. This is because tagging your long-form posts to channels is not yet available on LinkedIn and it’s algorithm itself, as mentioned, will be the one to evaluate with channel your post belong to and who should be able to read it.
Although LinkedIn is still in its experimental stage when it comes to customizing user feeds right now, the opportunity that it offers is undoubtedly significant to improve your marketing strategies. Most of the web optimization companies who consider social media marketing have constantly been on the look-out for each LinkedIn algorithm update to leverage their strategies and to measure its results.
Profile Views Feature
Unlike Facebook where you can only detect likes, comments, and shares, LinkedIn allows you to know who viewed your profile. This gives the opportunity to know who to connect with and become aware of their particular interests. These profile views are also a window for you to know that you might have a common interest shared or that they may be companies or people- potential business partners.
Given this fact, it is important that you update your profile with pictures and content regularly. Uploading videos and other compelling content will also help you have a consistent amount of pageviews and potential connections. LinkedIn allows you to see every opportunity that knocks on your door.
Hand-in-hand With Google Analytics
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As you experiment and try different marketing channels and strategies, there is a need to accurately measure the results in which case you will need the help of the infamous Google Analytics which had been used by every search engine optimization company.
Google Analytics, is in fact, a free tool that helps advertisers and marketers tell which among their efforts paid off well and which flopped. Google Analytics best measures the productivity of your LinkedIn content marketing tactics, as it can tell where the traffic from your site came from, whether it is a referral from sites like LinkedIn, or a product of a search result.
In short, Google Analytics will tell you what’s working and will help you to improve them further. It will tell you pretty much how your website had been found by readers worldwide which is pretty amazing.
Google Analytics usually takes 4 to 24 hours of updating to give you an up-to-date report on your site’s performance. Aside from what’s already mentioned, the report will also include the end-user’s information, like the make and model of the device they used, the language they used to search and find you and how long they stayed on your site.
That’s just half of what Google Analytics can do. There a lot more features that are left unmentioned, but it will take another blog post to do just that.
LinkedIn offers a tremendous amount of opportunity for its users, with the right timing, readers, channels, and content, you will be able to fully harness the potential of LinkedIn marketing for your business’ growth. Together with Google Analytics, you can accurately measure the results of all your marketing efforts.
LinkedIn shares have fallen sharply in after-hours trading after the company reported its Q1 2015 earnings.
The business social network site also said it expected to make between $670 million and $675 million in the three months to June, less than the $718 million that had been expected.
The company blamed the stronger US dollar and costs related to the purchase of the online business Lynda.
LinkedIn announced it was buying Lynda for $1.5 billion last month.
CFO Steve Sordello said he expected revenue contribution from the purchase to “normalize” in the second half of 2016.
LinkedIn’s New York listed stock was down as much as 25% to $188.20 in extended trading.
The disappointing forecasts came as LinkedIn reported that its net loss for Q1 2015 widened to $43 million.
That compares to a loss of $13 million for Q1 2014.
However, revenue grew 35% in the period to $638 million.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner described the quarter as “solid” and one in which the company “maintained steady growth”.
LinkedIn has agreed to pay $6 million in wages and damages after regulators found it failed to account for all the hours worked by its employees.
This includes $3.3 million in unpaid wages and $2.5 million in damages to be paid to 359 former and current employees.
It also agreed to provide compliance training and distribute its policy on overtime work to all applicable staff.
LinkedIn has agreed to pay $6 million in wages and damages after regulators found it failed to account for all the hours worked by its employees
The company said talent was its “number one priority” and it was eager to “rectify the situation”.
“This was a function of not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly,” said Shannon Stubo, vice president of corporate communications at LinkedIn.
According to the US Department of Labor, the affected employees worked at the firm’s offices in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York.
“Off the clock hours are all too common for the American worker. This practice harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families,” said Susana Blanco, of the US Labor Department.
However, the regulator added that LinkedIn had cooperated with the investigation and had agreed to take proactive steps to prevent future violations.
“This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole,” said David Weil, administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
“We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps towards securing future compliance.”
LinkedIn is investigating claims that over six million of its users’ passwords have been leaked onto the internet.
Hackers posted a file containing encrypted passwords onto a Russian web forum.
They have invited the hacking community to help with decryption.
LinkedIn, which has over 150 million users, has not released a formal statement, but tweeted: “Our team is currently looking into reports.”
LinkedIn is investigating claims that over six million of its users' passwords have been leaked onto the internet
The news comes as the social networking website was forced to update its mobile app after a privacy flaw was uncovered by security researchers.
Skycure Security said the mobile app was sending unencrypted calendar entries to LinkedIn servers without users’ knowledge.
The information included meeting notes, which often contain information such as dialling numbers and passcodes for conference calls.
In response LinkedIn said it would “no longer send data from the meeting notes section of your calendar”.
The company stressed that the calendar function was an opt-in feature.
However, the researchers who uncovered the flaw said the transmission of the data to LinkedIn’s servers was done without a “clear indication from the app to the user”.
In a statement posted on the company’s blog, LinkedIn’s mobile product head Joff Redfern said a new “learn more” link would be added to the app so users have a clearer picture about how their information is being used and transmitted.
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Once you have all the necessary info posted online, it’s time to start working on building more connections. There are multiple ways to do this. It is a good idea to post regular updates about your career successes, new skills you’ve gained, training you’ve completed, events you’ve attended, or any other relevant news that will help to generate interest in your profile.
