LinkedIn Tips: 10 Smart New Moves
Ready to take your LinkedIn success to the next level? Check out the newest tools and features to get you there.
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Your profile is up to date and you've built out your network, but now it's time to take your LinkedIn game to the next level. Where do you begin?
LinkedIn has launched a number of new features and redesigned a handful of old ones this year to keep you active and engaged, whether you're job searching or not. It's added new insights to help you fine-tune your profile, more ways to keep you up to date on news and content from your network, application integration to organize and digitize your contacts, and more.
While LinkedIn has evolved into more than just an online resume repository, how you use the social network should evolve as well, said Michael Idinopulos, CMO at PeopleLinx, a software provider that helps companies enhance their social presence.
"LinkedIn used to be just a resume site, but it's gone way beyond that," he said. "Your profile has dual roles: If you're looking for a job, your profile is your resume. If you're looking to do your current job well, your profile is a marketing tool for you as a professional."
[Learn more about LinkedIn's newest paid features. Read LinkedIn Tips: 5 New Ways To Stand Out.]
If you're not searching for a new job, Idinopulos recommends editing your profile to attract potential clients, customers, business partners, or people you may hire. This could mean including links back to your company's website, adding company messaging in your profile description, and uploading relevant multimedia to promote your business, he said.
"As an employee of your company, you spend a lot of your time telling other people about why your company is great and promoting its products and services," Idinopulos said. "This is an extension of that. Your LinkedIn profile is on duty 24/7 and should be a reflection of the conversations you have every day."
Beyond shifting your profile's audience, Idinopulos recommends taking advantage of LinkedIn's other features: participating in groups, commenting on your connections' status updates, and sharing interesting articles, for example.
Click through our slideshow for a look at the latest updates and changes on LinkedIn, plus tips on how to use its newest tools to your advantage.
Most recently, LinkedIn added a new tab to its most popular feature, Who's Viewed Your Profile. Called How You Rank, it shows you how much traffic your profile generates compared to your connections and other people from your company. LinkedIn displays your rank among your connections at the top -- both in percentage and numerical rank -- and shares whether your rank has improved or decreased in the last week. This information is visible only to you; your connections cannot see it.
The new How You Rank feature is a handy tool for all LinkedIn users, the company said. If you're looking for a job, hiring managers are more likely to look at your profile if you look at theirs, LinkedIn said. "Nearly 80% of candidates today are found through networking -- so if you notice a recruiter at a company you're interested in has viewed your profile, don't be afraid to reach out to them."
LinkedIn recently redesigned its Groups homepage to help you do a better job of managing your participation in and discovery of new groups. If it's been a while since you last participated in groups, revisit the section and you'll notice a few changes.
Before, your LinkedIn Groups landing page displayed only a static list of the groups you joined. The updated look presents each group in a separate card that displays group details -- such as the group's number of new discussions, updates, and job postings -- when you hover over it.
The new Groups homepage also makes it easier to keep up-to-date with posts and quickly share your thoughts: The new design features an activity stream specifically for updates from the groups you belong to and lets you post directly to a group or comment on a group's post right from your feed.
"It's important to join relevant industry groups and participate in the conversations," said PeopleLinx's Michael Idinopulos. "Make a habit of browsing Group content every morning; usually if they find it interesting enough to post, you'll find it interesting enough to read."
If you have stacks of business cards lying around, Evernote wants to help you organize them. In May, the company announced a partnership with LinkedIn that will improve business card scanning and make it easier to digitize, archive, and organize your contacts.
Evernote's card-scanning service, which it introduced to iOS last year, pulls in additional information from LinkedIn's 300 million members. To start, open the camera mode in Evernote's iOS app and snap a picture of the business card. The app will digitize the information and Evernote will surface profile information from LinkedIn's 300 million members.
As part of the deal, LinkedIn will end CardMunch, a free scanning service that the company acquired in 2011. CardMunch merely transformed business card information into another contact in your phone. The Evernote/LinkedIn partnership makes this information much more useful -- the business card acts as a visual marker in Evernote when you take notes during meetings, add documents, and forward emails from your new contact into a notebook, for example.
Existing CardMunch users have two options: They can either transfer their existing scanned business cards into Evernote and receive two free years of the service, or export their CardMunch data to a file, which will include scanned images.
LinkedIn members who don't use CardMunch will receive free Evernote business card scanning for one year if they connect their LinkedIn account to Evernote, LinkedIn said. Otherwise, the scanning service will require a premium Evernote account, which costs $5 per month.
Back in April, LinkedIn unveiled an Android app and new mobile features for SlideShare, the presentation platform that it acquired in 2012 for $119 million. SlideShare lets users upload Keynote, OpenDocument, PDF, or PowerPoint files to share publicly or privately.
SlideShare's Android app is similar to LinkedIn's Pulse app, which aggregates news, in that it focuses on content discovery. You can't use the app to create or upload presentations or files; rather, the app is designed to follow topics, view presentations, save content for offline access, and share content with others.
The content it serves you includes presentations uploaded by your LinkedIn and Facebook connections (as long as you log in via LinkedIn or Facebook), trending presentations in your network, the most recent presentations on topics of your choice, and daily editors' picks. You can browse through the content by swiping through a presentation deck without leaving the main feed. To view content in full-screen mode, just tap. For now, SlideShare's app is available only for Android.
LinkedIn offers a number of options for paid accounts, but they don't come cheap, ranging from $75/month for job seekers to $720/month for corporate recruiters. But LinkedIn's latest addition to its roster of paid options is a lot more affordable: The Premium Spotlight account runs just $10 a month.
Signing up for a Premium Spotlight account gets you access to five new features: a new profile redesign with a larger profile photo, an expanded profile header, and a cover photo. Premium Spotlight account holders also wil gain access to an exclusive gallery of stock cover photo images.
Also included: keyword optimization suggestions to help you appear in more search results; bigger placement in search results; the ability to accept messages from anyone on LinkedIn; and an expanded list of who's viewed your profile and how you rank among your connections and coworkers.
If you're bombarded by annoying messages or marketing spam from someone, LinkedIn now lets you prevent that person from contacting you by blocking him or her.
To block a user on LinkedIn, navigate to the person's profile and click the drop-down menu next to the button in the top section of the member's profile (this button might have different names depending on your account). Select "Block or Report" next to the member's name and click continue. On the next screen, click Agree to confirm it. Once you block a member, he or she will appear on your blocked list. LinkedIn lets you block up to 50 people.
To unblock a LinkedIn user, move your cursor over your profile photo in the top right of your homepage and click Privacy & Settings. Click "Manage who you're blocking" at the bottom of the Profile tab under Privacy Controls. Find the person's name on your blocked list and click Unblock.
According to LinkedIn, you won't be able to block a member again within 48 hours of unblocking. Also, unblocking a member does not restore a connection if you were previously connected. You'll need to send the person a new invitation to connect.
LinkedIn's blogging platform lets you share your expertise and views on industry news. To access it, visit your LinkedIn homepage and click the pencil icon in the "Share an update" box. This will take you to the writing tool, which also lets you add images and other media.
When you publish a post, anyone can see it. It's visible to your connections and followers through the newsfeeds on their homepages. Members who are not in your network can follow you from your posts, too, LinkedIn said. People don't even need a LinkedIn account to read your posts.
LinkedIn gives you access to analytics to gauge the reach of your posts. You'll receive occasional emailed report on page views, Likes, and followers, which you can also access from your profile.
Make your profile more engaging by showing off your work: LinkedIn lets you upload images, videos, presentations, and documents. To add these to your profile, click Edit Profile from the menu at the top. Under your Summary, Experience, and Education profile sections is an icon: a square with a (+) symbol. Click this button to upload a file or add a link to something you want to share.
Once you upload an item, a picture of it will display with a prefilled title and description. To edit these fields, scroll to the media sample and click the pencil icon in the lower right corner. Click inside the Title and Description fields to edit the text, then click Save.
People who share images with their LinkedIn network are five times more likely to have other members notice their update, according to LinkedIn. And while uploading images to your profile from your desktop is easy, it's just as easy to share images with your network when you're on the go.
Earlier this year, LinkedIn for Android, iOS, and mobile web received an update that lets you quickly snap and share photos in a status update. LinkedIn offered a handful of examples for prime opportunities to share images, which include when you're attending a conference; an action shot of your team; or even a photo of yourself during a presentation.
To start, open LinkedIn from your mobile device and click the pencil icon in the top right corner. Below the status update box is a camera icon -- use this to access your photos or to open your camera.
Forty-two percent of hiring managers agree that volunteer work is just as valuable as paid work experience, according to a LinkedIn survey. Twenty percent said they would hire someone because of his or her volunteer experience.
To add volunteer work to your profile, click the Profile button from the menu at the top and select Edit Profile. Find the Volunteering & Causes button in the right-hand margin or scroll through your profile sections until you see it.
Fill in the fields and click Save. You can also click the double-arrow button and drag it to move this section higher up or further down in your profile.
Forty-two percent of hiring managers agree that volunteer work is just as valuable as paid work experience, according to a LinkedIn survey. Twenty percent said they would hire someone because of his or her volunteer experience.
To add volunteer work to your profile, click the Profile button from the menu at the top and select Edit Profile. Find the Volunteering & Causes button in the right-hand margin or scroll through your profile sections until you see it.
Fill in the fields and click Save. You can also click the double-arrow button and drag it to move this section higher up or further down in your profile.
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