How to Effectively Manage a LinkedIn Profile?

LinkedIn is a space that is gaining increasing popularity in professionally building the image of both employers and employees. It is an excellent tool for establishing business contacts, presenting a company's or its employees' activities, and finding and posting job offers. How to manage a LinkedIn profile? We present the 4 most important rules that will help you create an effective and representative account.

1. Complete your profile

Complete your profile

Many people forget about a basic thing – they do not fill in all the information on their profile. This translates into its ineffectiveness and poor visibility in the search engine. LinkedIn's algorithm displays first those accounts that are the most complete, i.e., filled in. Therefore, it is worth completing them thoroughly to be visible to other users.

On LinkedIn, you can create a company page (LinkedIn Page) and a brand page (Showcase Page). The LinkedIn Page is the basic page where you can include a description of the business, employees, contact details, followed hashtags, and updates. It is an ideal solution for small companies and organizations.

The Showcase Page is a solution introduced for companies that manage pages for multiple brands or own a product. It serves as an extension of the LinkedIn page, and its purpose is to present a brand, company department, or initiative. Each subpage can have a unique product logo, banner,
and description for that specific service, and even share content. Sections that can be created include: "About us" (business description), "Company culture" (presenting values and everyday life of employees), "Jobs" (collection of company job postings), "People" (employees who have listed the company as their employer),
and "Ads."

On the company profile, you should primarily provide the name, location, and company description (its activities, mission, and values) as well as unique keywords (so-called hashtags), keeping in mind the 120-character limit. Thanks to them, the account will be displayed to users following a given hashtag or searching based on it. It is also worth placing a logo in the profile picture, a short and unique slogan
in the description, and the website address, i.e., the company's website. Equally important is including a so-called Call To Action, i.e., a button with a call to action, e.g., Contact us, More information, Sign up, Subscribe, and Visit website. Once you do this – you will use this space optimally.

2. Expand your network of contacts

Expand your network of contacts

As in any network, contacts matter here too. For the profile to be fully effective, you should initially add a minimum of 30 contacts. Who can you invite? Both acquaintances, e.g., from work or the industry, as well as strangers. On LinkedIn, what matters is not who you actually know, but the contacts that will help you develop your career or fulfill professional duties.

When building your network, it is worth using internal tools:
• invitations – inviting a LinkedIn member to join your network
• InMail messages – sending a private message allowing direct contact with people outside your network, available only in a certain number of credits in the Premium version, with limitations: subject – 200 characters, content – 1,900 characters
• "find nearby" – allows you in the mobile app to find people who are near a given location.

3. Be active

Be active

How to effectively manage a LinkedIn profile — learn 4 rules

A completed profile and a large network of contacts are not everything. You must also remember to be constantly active on the profile, because through it we build our own or the company's image. Such activity has two dimensions: within recommending, commenting on, and sharing others' content, and publishing your own. Thanks to these actions, you can promote your account and build an expert position in a given field by sharing knowledge. This will translate into expanding your business contact network on the portal. Remember to provide value – consider whether these materials will be useful for your contacts.

When publishing posts, first of all create short content, e.g., infographics or video. Users do not always have time to read through extensive materials. Here the key is to attract attention or at least provide basic value. As part of your activity, you can post content that builds awareness, position, and a professional image, as well as "behind-the-scenes" content. It is worth presenting the activities and competencies of employees, publishing specialist content, and redirecting to a company or personal blog. We also recommend informing about successes, achieved goals, and awards won. A good idea is also publishing case studies, event reports, question-based content, or introducing employees.

4. Promote yourself

It is worth engaging employees themselves in promoting the company. Their advocacy is the best way to increase presence on LinkedIn and grow content reach. Each of them has their own followers, thanks to which you can reach a wider audience. A useful tool is the LinkedIn Elevate app, which allows organizations to create and distribute social content among employees within one platform, and then track results. The product offers three roles: administrator (controlling topics and setting roles/permissions), curator (finding and approving content so that employees can share it on social media and publish it in the app), and employee (sharing content from the Elevate channel on social networks).

Do not forget that LinkedIn is a fundamental tool for recruiters. On the service, HR specialists can post job advertisements, search for candidates and contact them, as well as plan communication to build a positive brand image. In the free version, there is limited ability to add offers, so their publication may prove insufficient. However, a paid tool dedicated to recruiters has been created, helping in searching for potential candidates and managing recruitment projects – LinkedIn Recruiter. The tool has a set of filters with additional subcriteria: job titles, skills, companies, and keywords, as well as the ability to contact candidates through 30 InMail messages per month and view the full list of users who viewed the profile in the last 90 days.

Also consider purchasing the Premium version, which includes a set of features unavailable to a basic account, including the ability to check who viewed your profile, advanced contact search by criteria, InMail messages, and a golden profile badge that adds prestige. You can test it for one month for free, and after that period decide whether to extend the package.

The more substantive and valuable content you present on LinkedIn, the more you will gain. Remember to keep information on your profile up to date, systematically expand your network of contacts, and participate in discussions. All these actions will translate into the effectiveness and representativeness of your account” – says Iwona Kubicz, President of Procontent Communication.

ABOUT PROCONTENT COMMUNICATION:
Procontent Communication is a PR and communication consulting company belonging to one of the world's largest public relations networks, Global Reach PR, which through 35 offices on five continents offers its clients the management of global communication campaigns. The network's main headquarters is located in the capital of the United Kingdom, London.