LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tools.

Using LinkedIn to help you with your marketing is a strategy for both your business and your career. Here are some tips to help you.

The Stella Network started as a LinkedIn group to support women in financial planning through an interactive discussion forum through LinkedIn. Of course that makes me a little biased towards the social networking group – which has been described as Facebook for business – but I believe that LinkedIn is an essential part of your career success today.

Any business today without a web presence is doing itself a disservice. The first thing we do when looking for any business is turn to the internet – we search for restaurants, recruiters, car sales and a myriad other things. When it comes to checking out someone for a role, again we turn to the internet to find out what we can about them. To make it easier to have the right information presented in the best way, we need to spend some time compiling our internet profile – and currently LinkedIn is the best platform for this.

To check this, Google someone you know and if they have a LinkedIn profile this is likely to be the first thing that appears in the search engine.

So to make sure you are making the most of yourself and your talents make sure your LinkedIn profile is doing the best job for promoting you.

For those unfamiliar with LinkedIn or just starting to update their profile here are some tips to help you reach Best Practice standards with you profiles and use of the social media network.

5 LinkedIn essentials

• Your profile photo. A LinkedIn profile without a photo looks dodgy. It looks like you’ve set up in a hurry, there’s something you’re trying to hide, or you couldn’t be bothered completing it. Choose one that looks professional, not with other people, or in very casual attire or at clearly non-work activities – such as a ball, or at the beach. Just something simple is best.
• Your professional headline. This is very important – and what you say here is searchable. This means that if people are looking for someone with your skills you should make sure that your profile is included in that search. Your current position is not necessarily the most descriptive of who you are or what you do. So if your title is marketing manager BT financial group you might be picked up in a search but if you are a superannuation expert   in marketing – you’d be better putting that in your description, or whatever specialities you think are relevant for you.
• Your summary. This is a searchable area also – so make sure you add in as many relevant terms as possible to describe what you offer. This includes specialities – if you are proficient in accounting systems, or IT systems or design programmes or financial planning specialities – or anything that might set you apart – list them in this section to potentially expose your profile to clients or anyone who is seeking your talents.
• Complete your job histories. When you are adding in different jobs, especially with your most recent, remember to put in enough detail to give someone looking at it a good picture of what you achieved in that role. If you won awards, achieved, particular goals, mention it. Add video/ photos/screengrabs/links to make your profile look as good as it can. This is often the best chance you have of winning someone’s attention for a role or for work if you are using it as a marketing tool. In essence, you are marketing yourself so take it seriously.
• Ask for recommendations. To complete your profile ask for recommendations – from people from different roles where you’ve worked and those who are going to be most relevant to the profile you’re presenting. There is a simple tool to use when asking for recommendations (and those people must also be on LinkedIn). They are not compelled to provide a recommendation but most will.

Other tips

• Look at other colleagues to see how they present themselves to give you an idea if you’re not sure what to put up.
• Make sure you switch off notifications when updating your profile – as you add to it bit by bit, if you don’t have this switched off, all your contacts will be alerted, which will be annoying for them and not professional for you.
• Keep it up to date. When you change jobs, you might not want to put all the details of your new role in until you’ve perhaps passed probation, but it looks odd if you’ve still got your old role featured as a current one six months down the track.

Julia Newbould is lead for The Stella Network , which is an initiative of BT.

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