LinkedIn launched in 2003 and is currently the 4th most popular social network among U.S. adults. The social network primarily focused on careers, and it enables users to connect and share content with other professionals, including colleagues as well as another employee, business managers, and new employees. Individuals and companies effectively use LinkedIn platform for professional networking. LinkedIn has millions of members in more than 200+ countries, including the executives from all Fortune 500 companies.If you’re an Individual or a business on LinkedIn, it can also be a used as fantastic marketing tool. The basic account features such as messaging, profile creation and ways to apply to job postings are included in the free membership, but a Premium Account has added features and resources to expand your online presence and let you get more out of the service.On this article, I will give you most essential 10 tips on how to get the most out of LinkedIn. So first let’s start with the Account type and its benefits.

LinkedIn Account Types & Benefits

Once you signup to LinkedIn. You will be on the Basic account unless you upgrade to premium. The basic account features messaging, profile creation and lets you apply to job postings, these are included in the free membership, but a Premium Account has added features and resources to expand your online presence and let you get more out of the service.

The 10 most Essential tips to get most out of your LinkedIn

1. Get a Customized public profile URL

Give your personal profile a more professional look by customizing your LinkedIn public profile URL. Instead of a URL with random confusing numbers at the end, you should have your own custom URL with your name. It will be more nice and clean, For example, like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/seorefugeeTest. For detailed instructions on customizing your URL, you may check here.

2. Add a LinkedIn background photo to your profile

LinkedIn has also jumped on the cover photo bandwagon and starting rolling out the ability for users to add a background photo to their personal profiles. It’s just like your cover photo on facebook or youtube. Give your LinkedIn profile a little bit more professional look by adding a background photo of your own or any of your work/project that is relevant.

Be noted that, LinkedIn recommends a background photo size of 1400 x 425 pixels, and that it must be a JPG, PNG, or GIF file under 8MB.

3. Add, rearrange, remove & modify entire sections of your profile

LinkedIn also enables you to reorder your entire section of your profile in any way you prefer or you would like others to see. When in edit mode, simply hover your mouse over the double-sided arrow in each section to modify it. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrowed icon, at which point you can click, then drag and drop to another position to rearrange it on your profile.

4. Find a job through via LinkedIn’s job postings

Linked is not only a social site, it’s a professional network. Now that you’ve optimized your LinkedIn profile, use the LinkedIn Jobs to help you get new job listings. Using its Advanced search feature, LinkedIn allows you to search for jobs by keyword, location, title, industry, company, experience level, and more. Also, based on your application/search history and saved searches, LinkedIn will send suggestions of jobs you might be interested in, relating to location, company, industry, and your interest.

5. Get endorsed for your skills

LinkedIn has a feature called Endorsements, which enables users to endorse their connections for skills they’ve listed in the Skills section of their profile or you can recommend something which they haven’t yet listed. These endorsements then show up on your profile within that same Skills section, as you can see in the screenshot below.

There is no guarantee that, your connections will endorse you for skills, but you’ll find that many of them will do it anyway. Also, when people visit the site, LinkedIn will often prompt them to endorse their connections. Just make sure your profile is 80%-100% complete and you’ve spent the time to list the skills you want your contacts to endorse you for. It will definitely give your profile a bit of a credibility. When recruiters searches and check out any profile, they look for skills & endorsements. So try best to have it more.

You can also remove endorsements if you find people are endorsing you for skills that don’t accurately describe your skills. You can edit, remove & add skill in your profile.

6. Find new connections or connect with old ones

Speaking of connections, the Connections tab in the top navigation offers a variety of other tools to grow and connect with contacts in your LinkedIn network. When viewing your connections, click the right side which says, “Manage you’re synced and imported contacts” From there, you will be able to sync your email contacts to see who’s on LinkedIn, and who you can invite to join.

7. Create targeted LinkedIn Showcase Pages.

 

LinkedIn Showcase Pages are niche pages that are a branch of your main Company Page. You can think of them as extensions of your main Company Page that allow you to promote specific products or cater to your individual marketing personas, providing a more personalized experience for your Company Page visitors. It’s just like your secondary pages of your company official page. You can use it and get most out of it’s functions to benefit your company page. LinkedIn users can also follow a specific Showcase Pages without even having to follow a company’s main page or it’s other Showcase Pages which allows your business to tailor the page closely to the audience specific to the page.

To create a Showcase Page, go to your Company Page and click “Manage page.” Then, at the top, click “Admin Tools,” and select “Create a Showcase Page.” Find more information about Showcase Pages here.

8. Email your LinkedIn group members and generate leads

Email is always a powerful marketing tool. One of the perks of managing a LinkedIn Group is the fact that you can email all the members of your group but only once per week. These emails take the form of LinkedIn Announcements, which are basically messages sent directly to the email inboxes of group members (if they’ve enabled messages from groups in their settings). It’s an amazing opportunity for generating leads from LinkedIn, particularly if you have built up a robust group of users.

9. Show Off your Awards, Honors & Titles

If you’ve received some kind of recognition, be proud! Now showcase it on LinkedIn to get most out of its’ value. There’s a specific section on your profile to showcase your awards and honors, and this is something you need to start working on. This will boost up your image and credibility.

10. Recruit new talents via LinkedIn Jobs

Looking to fill a position or two on your company or team or another department within your company. Then be sure to build out the Jobs section of your Company Page, which you can use to promote your available job openings and you get the best candidates.

The look and feel of your Jobs page depend on what information and images you choose to give, such as a list of jobs, people at your company, a summary section for your careers and info, what employees are saying about working at your organization, & all recent updates. One Step further, if you’re actively recruiting candidates with specific skills and expertise, this goes both ways – Either way, you can use LinkedIn’s various search criteria to find the best fit.

 

Check out this video for more tips and guideline on LinkedIn: