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If we had to pair social media platforms with professions they benefit or boost best, then we would club Instagram with photographers and videographers, and TikTok with dancers and singers, similarly Linkedin would pair best with businesses and entrepreneurs. This business and entrepreneurial social network has been around longer than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram yet is more relevant now than ever. As it hosts more than 600 million business profiles giving each user an unlimited supply of network connections and job opportunities. It assists users from the initial stages of job hunting to bigger leaps of building a personal brand.
Hence it is important for working professionals to pay attention to their presence on this site as with the right updates their audience can increase rapidly. The platform not only lets others know about your business but gives interested parties an insight into your work, skills and growth. Whether or not hiring managers admit it but the majority of the time they look up applicants before calling them for interviews to verify details and have a clear picture of who they are dealing with. So here is a list of four tips and tricks for you to ace the LinkedIn game for your benefit.
1. Boost Your SSI
A good majority of Linkedin users are unaware that there is a Social Selling Index (SSI) that scores each profile for Linkedin to determine the content shown to the individual profile and places the profile can reach. This score essentially measures your social selling skills and executions, interestingly the score can be increased with four primary components. The first component is your professional brand which you can establish by filling in all the details asked in the profile. The second component is connecting with the right profiles. Linkedin wants users to use Lead Builder to find the right profiles. They also want you to save leads which lets them send you insights for you to take action on. The third component is engaging with these insights. Linkedin wants users to engage with the content on the platform and follow their recommendations. The platform often prompts users to update parts of their profile or publish some posts. The fourth component is building relationships. The correct way to do this is by being thoughtful about who you send a connection request. The platform is keen on seeing a high acceptance rate for your connection requests.
2. Search Like a Pro
The platform has robust search abilities that are not used enough. There are a good amount of modifiers that can be used to narrow down your search and find accurate results. Some of these modifiers are Quotation marks ‘AND’, ‘OR’, Parentheses and ‘NOT’. Using these modifiers between two or more words can help the search engine narrow down profiles easily by including or excluding profiles that match the instructions. If you only want to look at the profiles of Founders who are not CEOs, simply type “Founder” NOT CEO. Similarly, If you want both founders and CEOs then write “Founder” AND “CEO.” The parentheses are a combination of these modifiers, for example, Founder AND CEO OR Entrepreneurs.
3. Pins and Keywords
You can draw more attention to your important skills by Pinning them on your profile. Scroll down to your skills and endorsement section on your profile and hit the edit button. Then proceed to pin the skills you want to be highlighted and take this time to reorder the skills listed in order of importance. While you are doing this try to pin skills that use keywords that recruiters look for the most. This sends Linkedin a signal in their algorithm about your speciality. Since the algorithm works on Keywords to show recruiters good profiles/candidates based on individual users’ keyword usage in their respective summaries, skills and more. For example, if you are a freelance writer then you should use terms like “freelance,” “writer,” “content writer,” “copywriting,” and “web writing”. Some important areas to use the keywords are the Headline, About, Experience, Skills and Recommendations.
4. Explore Job Transitions Via Career Explorer
A tool that is often overlooked is the Career Explorer. Career Explorer assists users in finding potential career paths and real job titles based on their skills. A simple way to use the tool is by first selecting your city, which is where you live or work. Then enter your job title by selecting the job you are interested in. After this, look at what skills are important for the job and analyze the skills listed that overlap with yours. This will help you understand what you already know and what you need to build on. As a last step, find current job openings in those positions or look at potential connections with those job titles on Linkedin.