If you find yourself feeling stuck when it comes to leveraging LinkedIn, you’re not alone. Like many technology platforms, LinkedIn may look and feel complicated at first. However, once you understand the basics -- including the what, why, and how -- you will see and experience its value in supporting, and even steering, your job search. 

What is the purpose of LinkedIn? 

With over 575 million users, LinkedIn is a highly diverse, global networking platform. Over 100 million people use it every day!

LinkedIn helps you communicate to the world who you are. It is a platform for you to share your experiences and accomplishments through a personal lens, in a way that's hard to do on a resume. That’s often why you’ll see many profiles written conversationally, and in the first person.

While it’s often considered to be a platform solely used in a job search, LinkedIn provides unique opportunities for building your brand and highlighting career milestones. 

LinkedIn has two primary purposes. It is a:

1. Channel for you to share your professional story

2. Digital hub that connects and strengthens your network
   

Defining your Unique Purpose for LinkedIn 

Before you begin crafting your profile and making connections, it’s important to understand how you can use LinkedIn, what success could look like on the platform, and what you’ll need to do to achieve those goals. Understanding your goals will guide where you spend your time and energy interacting on the platform. 

Here are three key questions to consider and possible answers to help you think through your goals: 

Why might I use LinkedIn?  

• To find others to connect with and learn from 

• To get noticed by a recruiter or hiring manager

• To find out about job opportunities

• To learn more about specific companies and organizations

• To research potential career pathways 

• To showcase work for freelance or business opportunities 

• To aid in business development and sales 

What might success on this platform look like for me?

• To get insights into a specific industry or type of work to determine if I want to make a career pivot

• To share my expertise on a certain subject or sector to build my brand 

• To strengthen existing connections that are dormant

• To build new connections in order to grow my network and/or find a new job

How often and in what ways might I interact with LinkedIn to achieve those goals? 

We find that people who have the greatest success with LinkedIn create small, achievable goals in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. Depending on your larger goals, you’ll choose different methods and features for interacting on the platform. 

Bottom line: the more you interact with LinkedIn, the more you’ll gain from the platform. Your strategy drives your behavior and it is crucial to design a strategy for every element of your LinkedIn presence. From crafting your profile, to connecting with others, to following thought leaders, to engaging with others -- be intentional to increase your chances of success. 

How To Engage with LinkedIn Users 

While having a robust LinkedIn profile was once considered a signal to a current employer that you are looking for a change, it is no longer. In fact, maintaining regular engagement on LinkedIn can prove incredibly valuable, regardless of whether or not you are looking to make a pivot. Networking should be viewed on a continuum, rather than as a one-off exchange.

There are several ways to engage on the platform. Here are some ways you might deepen your engagement on LinkedIn: 

• Invest time in building your LinkedIn profile (our next blog post will be dedicated to this!)

• Create and/or share posts from others 

• Follow companies, groups, and thought leaders that align with your interests 

• Write articles that demonstrate your expertise and add value to your network

• Add comments to posts, articles, or in groups 

• Announce professional updates/news (i.e. new job, new degree, etc.)

• Reach out to new and/or dormant connections via InMail

• Leverage LinkedIn data for research purposes (salary tool, alumni tool & more)

• Endorse others or receive endorsements for hard and soft skills 

• Recommend others or receive recommendations from trusted colleagues 

• Search for jobs 

There is no need to do everything at once (although it can be tempting)! Being strategic is key -- start by revisiting your goals -- then choose one engagement channel, and take it one step at a time. 

How To Grow Your Connections 

The data speaks for itself -- the larger and more diverse your LinkedIn network is, the more opportunities you will have to explore connections that are one or two steps removed. Here’s a quick breakdown of how LinkedIn defines connections: 

• 1st degree connection is someone you know

• 2nd degree connection is someone who knows your 1st degree connection 

• 3rd degree connection is someone who knows your 2nd degree connection (you are 2 people removed from the 3rd degree connection)

So, where to begin? There are several ways to search for connections. LinkedIn has sophisticated algorithms, which helps the platform suggest people you may know. You can also import email addresses or search for connections manually. 

One question we get often is, “What do I do when someone adds me on LinkedIn who I don’t know?” There are many different perspectives on this. 

Here’s our approach: If we don’t know the person, and they haven’t told us why they want to connect, we’re probably going to ignore their request. Likewise, we wouldn’t reach out to connect with someone we don’t know without telling them why we’d like to connect with them. 

We think it’s better to know the people in your LinkedIn network rather than have hundreds of people you don’t feel comfortable reaching out to (because you don’t actually know them!). You’ll find some people that are comfortable with, and love connecting with people they don’t know - and it might be the right strategy for them! Revisit your goals, consider  how you like to network, and pick a strategy that works for you.

If you do want to connect with someone who you don’t know, be sure to add a note when asking to connect. It might sound like:

• “Hi (name), I loved your last piece on xyz and would like to connect so I keep seeing your content.”

• “Hi (name), I’m looking to transition from x industry to y industry and I see you’ve made that transition as well. I’d love to connect!” 

Should You Pay for Premium?

Here’s another question we get often: “Is paying for LinkedIn Premium worth it?” 

LinkedIn Premium gives you the ability to message people you’re not connected to, to see who has viewed your profile, and to access salary info without submitting your own salary. It also gives you unlimited people searches. 

Most of the time, we think you can network effectively, promote yourself, access information and connect with others without paying for LinkedIn Premium.

However, if your strategy involves frequent messaging of people you don’t know, it might be worth subscribing. Additionally, paying to see who has viewed your profile might help you gain insights on the types of people and industries that are attracted to your background. By understanding how others view your experiences and accomplishments, it might help you determine how to market yourself, especially if you’re trying to make a career switch. 

But for most people, knowing who looks at your profile isn’t actually that helpful - ask yourself what knowing that information will do for you, or if it’s just something that satisfies your curiosity. 

Make This Work Sustainable 

After reading the above, you may be thinking “wow, getting my LinkedIn up to speed is going to be a lot of work!” You’re not wrong. The challenge and opportunity of a professional network is to continually invest in making new connections, before you find yourself in a position to leverage your network. 

There are maintenance and motivational aspects to LinkedIn, and to make it sustainable, it’s important to find your balance. The good news is, getting to a place of sustainability is possible. 

If, for example, your two goals are to find out about new job opportunities, and to be seen as an expert in a certain type of work, you might set the following goals for yourself for the first 30 and 60 days:

30 Day Goals: 

• Set up job alerts with keywords

• Update your summary and/or experience sections of your profile to highlight accomplishments and expertise 

• Connect with and/or follow thought leaders that align with your interests

60 Day Goals: 

• Author a piece sharing your expertise on a certain issue to add value to your network

• Join a few groups and post in those groups sharing your knowledge 

• Comment on other people’s posts or re-share content 3-5x a week on a subject you want to demonstrate your expertise in

• Write a recommendation or offer a skills endorsement for a past colleague you respect in an area you want to show mastery in

As you spend time on LinkedIn, take note of what pushes your energy dial and what feels depleting. Seek out support from an accountability partner if you need it. Add LinkedIn to your to-do list and consider it a part of your work that needs to be done when making a change in your career.

So, to sum it up: 

1. Establish your goals and what success would look like for you on the platform

2. Identify the features and interaction methods that will help you reach your goals

3. Interact consistently but in a sustainable way

Up Next!

Stay tuned for our next post where we’ll walk you through all the components of an awesome LinkedIn profile.