LinkedIn ‘How to’ user guide
LinkedIn is a business orientated social media network, with 55 million members and counting.
It allows you to enter information about yourself, your career and your experiences, which can then be viewed by other people on LinkedIn. Most importantly, it allows you to make ‘connections’ with other people that you have encountered in your working life.
With this online network, you can contact colleagues, friends and associates at the click of a button or simply keep abreast of what they are up to.
LinkedIn also allows to you create a profile for your organisation. Complete with employee information, a detailed description and links to your company’s website, this lets other LinkedIn users find out information about your place of work and adds to the online visibility of your organisation.
Whatever your area of expertise, there will be an interest group on LinkedIn that you will want to join. Any LinkedIn user has the option to create interest groups, which other users can then be invited to join and contribute to with comments and discussion ideas – a great way of stimulating debate and interest in hot topics of your chosen field.
In summary, LinkedIn gives you the chance to:
- Create a professional online identity, with the ability to control what information is available on your profile and who you are ‘connected’ to.
- Keep in touch with people from around the world, whether they are old friend, current colleagues or even potential clients.
- Take part in debate and thought-leadership through interest groups and expert forums.
- Explore and take advantage of business opportunities – LinkedIn allows to to search for anything from jobs and research groups through to competitors and potential clients.
To get started on LinkedIn, go to www.linkedin.com and fill out the simple registration form, entering your first name, surname, email address and a password.
Then, when prompted, fill in as much information about yourself as possible to populate your profile, including your work history, education, previous jobs and current employment.
Tip: A picture of yourself will be a valuable addition to your profile, especially in connecting with those people who you speak to over the phone but have never met!
The final step is to start building your connections. This can be done by searching using LinkedIn’s built in search engine, or by importing contacts from your own address book.
Vanguard would love to connect with you on LinkedIn. You can view our company profile or, if you want to link in with our directors, click the button on each of our profiles in the Management Team section of our website.
