5 Tips to Use LinkedIn Updates to Grow Your Network and Influence

By Rebecca Murtagh | SMO - Social Media Optimization

5 Power Tips for Leveraging LinkedIn Updates to Advance Any Stage of Your Career

Whether you are the CEO leading a brand, CFO seeking funding, sales professional seeking leads, career professional seeking a new opportunity, expert seeking to share thoughts and opinions, Recruiter seeking new talent, or a student looking for your first job, LinkedIn is the preferred social network for professionals. With over 225 million professionals in 200 countries worldwide, it is safe to say that LinkedIn has become the most trusted professional network in the world.

Bottom line, no matter where you are in your career, LinkedIn can work for you, or against you. The difference is in how you use the platform.

You Have to Do More Than Show Up

Just having a profile on LinkedIn is not enough to grow your network, build influence and achieve your goals. You must be engaged in order to keep those in your network current and gain access to what I call ‘Spheres of Influence’…the indirect connection to colleagues, friends and family of those you are directly connected to.

Posting updates on LinkedIn has several benefits which are not immediately clear to most users. Here are 5 ways to use LinkedIn updates to improve your visibility and reach to your target audience, whether they be customers, media, employers, partners, investors or employees.

5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Updates to Support Career Goals

1. Visibility on LinkedIn: The more frequently you post updates from your social media profile, the more likely you are to keep your network up-to-speed on your focus, and the more likely they are to think of you when an opportunity to hire or help you comes along. When you comment or like, or your update is commented upon or liked, your name appears in notifications for your connection, and in the stream of those you are connected to. Every bit of your engagement on LinkedIn (with the exception of messages) is visible to others, so the more engaged you are, the better!

2. Visibility in Search: Currently Bing displays ‘Klout’, a measurement of personal influence in search engine results. (refer to Klout score in red icon beneath profile on the right in the image below)

All search engines take queues from social media networks, and display social profiles in SRPs (search engine result pages). The more authority you have, the greater your value is to those you seek to engage, or be engaged by.

3. Visibility to New Connections: When you post something your connects like, it appears on their stream (which everyone they are connected to can see), and you are notified. This opportunity not only provides instant feedback on what your connections are interested in hearing from you, it also enables you to expand your network to others like those you currently have a direct connection to.

For example, if I write about social selling, and one of my connections is in the sales training business and they share that post in an update on their profile or in a group (that I may or may not belong to), everyone that professional is connected to is exposed to my content and becomes a potential connection for me.

4. Visibility in Groups: Much like updates from your profile, posts in groups will appear in your stream. Group posts will appear to other members of that group, even if you are not yet connected. Likes and comments on your post will appear in your notifications, and your likes and comments on others posts will appear in their notifications. This is an excellent way to connect with target audiences.Reach and frequency are key in all aspects of social media. Just as you would never expect a flurry of sales from one single 30 second radio or television ad, you must post and engage regularly if you wish to leverage the platform effectively. The more active you become, the more visible you become – earning “top influencer” status is not extremely difficult with a little time and focus.

Power Tip: Think about the audience you are targeting (not just your peers) and this approach becomes 100x more powerful.

5. Visibility on Other Social Networks and Communities: Like most social platforms, you have the opportunity to connect your LinkedIn account to another account to allow facilitating simultaneous updates on multiple networks. Push notifications should be executed with thought and de-selected when a post is inappropriate for one network or another.

You may also use your LinkedIn profile as credentials to ‘log in’ for commenting on blog posts, community forums, etc. When you do, your profile is typically connected to your comment, enabling those who see the post and your comments to learn more about you and potential become a new connection for you.

So there you have it – hopefully you’ve learned at least one little something new about the power of an update on LinkedIn.

Like this? Share it, or comment on this blog or on the LinkedIn update – doing so will elevate your visibility and potentially connect you to someone uniquely able to support your goals.

Thanks for stopping by!