Online Marketing Blog

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You, too, can use Facebook and LinkedIn for fun and profit. In this three-part series, I’ll discuss:

1. What steps to take for LinkedIn success.

2. How to use LinkedIn for networking, new work, and collaboration.

3. When you should use Facebook instead of LinkedIn.

When I first joined LinkedIn, I just didn’t get it. I signed up, plugged in some of my information and let it sit. Where was the magic I expected?

Since then, I’ve heard at least one person say “I signed up with LinkedIn. It didn’t help me get a job.”

I looked at that person’s profile, and he had nearly no contacts and very little information about his background. No wonder he received no job help.

I shook my head.

I’d made that same mistake a few years earlier.

To succeed on LinkedIn, you have to follow some guidelines:

1. Add Groups: Include the groups you’ve joined outside of LinkedIn. Doing this will be important
if you want to add friends. It’s often easiest to add a connection if you’re in the same networking group. Otherwise, you will need the person’s email address (a bit of a pain to get sometimes) or what is called an introduction — and you’re only allowed five introductions.

2. Add a Link and Description: Include your website URL so people can learn more about you. Include a well-written description of your company or work to inform prospects and colleagues about your offerings.

3. Add People: There’s little that’s more important than adding people on LinkedIn. This is even more important than on Facebook. Once you add people you know to your LinkedIn profile, more people you know can find you.

After a while, the connections build upon one another, and you’ll be able to contact a wide range of people in your field.

In my next post, I’ll discuss some of the ways I’ve contacted people and how it’s resulted in future guest blog posts, collaboration of other kinds, and even a juicy job lead.

Start with those three steps, and my Wednesday post will tell you how best to use LinkedIn.