Understanding LinkedIn & its Features for SMM

Hello Friends, welcome to LearnVern

In the last session we saw the features available in youtube, we learnt about shorts, we also learnt how to upload a video on youtube and how to upload shorts too. Not just this we also saw how a youtube channel works, and why should one create a youtube channel and the advantages of doing so. All this we had covered in our last session.

In this unit we are going to talk about a very important social media platform and that is LinkedIn. Linkedin is your go to resume, it is your go to profile.

If you are working for a company then the title and designation of that company will be displayed. Suppose after 3-4 years you change your job then the job title of this new company will get displayed. Thus LinkedIn is your resume on the move.

This is the most important social media platform.

If you are a student and wish to grow in a particular field or wish to create a personal brand or if you are a self employed professional or you are a startup and wish to establish meaningful connections then this social media platform is a best place to do so.

So today’s presentation is going to be very engaging. So stay with me to understand how LinkedIn works and how to create a profile.

First and foremost, I would like to share with you the reason one should use LinkedIn; the advantages of Linkedin that will help you while building your career or a profession.

The first and the most important thing that you should know is that LinkedIn is the biggest recruitment platform of the world. World’s leading and biggest social media platform widely used for recruitment purposes, for jobs, for hiring is LinkedIn.

So it is mandatory for you to be present on LinkedIn in other words you may call it important for each to be present on the platform.

Approximately 55 million companies as on date are present on LinkedIn.

MAny large companies, mega companies as on date use LinkedIn to fill in the open positions.

So Linkedin becomes a valuable social media platform too.

OVer 720 million professionals are active as on date on LinkedIn

So many users are active via conversations or via some activities on LinkedIn,

So you as a professional should take part in such conversations or activities.

Hub Sports which is a leading crm software provider mentioned in its quote that “Linkedin is over 200% more effective in generating leads for businesses than facebook and twitter”.

Here they are showing us a comparison among social media platforms, that Linkedin is more effective than facebook and twitter for generating leads. It is 200% more effective than the other 2 as a lead generation tool.

So if you are a business or a startup or a company that wishes to pitch other businesses. That means Your customers aren't your direct users, instead your customers are other companies and you want to sell them then with the help of a designation you can run a lead generation campaign. We will learn this in depth in our upcoming sessions.

40 million people use LinkedIn to find jobs. So many people are actively searching for jobs on LinkedIn. So definitely jobs are available on this platform, even the recruiters are there on this platform. Hence this platform is very much helpful to us and thus we should explore it.

Now, let us talk about the LinkedIn profiles.

LinkedIn profiles are basically of 2 types

One type of profile is of an individual and that we call as a Personal profile

And the second type is called a Business page or a business profile.

So a business profile represents a company and a personal profile represents an individual.

Let us first clearly understand the distinction between these 2 that a person is equal to an individual and is equal to a personal profile.

And a business page is equal to a company, a brand or an institution.

So how do we create a LinkedIn profile?

It is very very simple. It is as simple as the way we created a facebook profile and the way we learnt to create youtube channels. You can see the link I have kept here and that is linkedin.com. You need to open this website of linkedin.com.

Then you will see a window like this.

You will have 3 options like this, asking what you wish to do on Linkedin.

You can look for a job.

You can connect with a user or any professional

Or you can even learn a new skill and upskill.

So a window like this will open up in front of you.

You will see an option called “Join Now”

AS soon as you click it, you will be guided with a step by step process.

In which you will add your information step by step and your linkedin profile will get created.

Let us see which users have created their profile effectively and what are our learnings from them.

This is how a linkedin profile looks like. As you can see I follow them. His name is Alok Kejriwal. He runs a gaming company “Games2win India Pvt. Ltd.” His previous company was acquired by Disney.

As you can read from his profile - “Disney bought my last company. I’m a passionate digital entrepreneur with a deep affection for mobile gaming and startups.

In this way, with the use of very few words you can also write and upload a title.

We saw how the name looks, then the title.

Then this one represents the topics, the ideas or the things you usually talk about. Do you talk about startups, or do you talk about business, or talk about mobile games. So Alok has added all these topics in his profile. You can see the use of hashtags here.

Then his current location, where he is put up.

So he lives in Mumbai.

Then there is the number of followers. So as we can see, more than 4 Lakh people as on date are following Alok on LinkedIn. So that means, he is an influencer, he can influence opinions. People look forward to hearing his opinions and people wish to follow them.

A lot of students also follow him

All these things should be there in your profile too, so complete your profile like this.

You can see the cover image on the top, he has uploaded a clean neat cover image.

As you can see from the screen, Alok is an author too. He has displayed his books too and they are number 1 best sellers.

So this is how you should optimise your LinkedIn profile.

Now, the best strategies for optimising your personal profile.

If you wish to build a personal brand, or if you wish to showcase to a recruiter or to businesses how strong you are in a particular domain then here I have penned down a few strategies for you. We will discuss these one by one.

The first one and the most important one is your current title and your job descriptions. We have already seen that your current title is very important, where you work, what kind of work you do, what are your roles and responsibilities - all these things should be clearly visible there.

What are your day to day operations? If you are in HR domain or training domain or if you are in sales or in Business development, if you are the one who interacts with the customers - all this information should be updated in your personal profile. This will enable the recruiter to have more information about you.

Then the next important thing is your professional cover image and profile picture - both these need to be uploaded by you. The recruiters do not shortlist a profile that doesn't have an image as they wouldn't know how the candidate looks like, that doesn't reflect his passion or hobbies. If you add all these, a professional image of yours gets built on LinkedIn.

Then the next important thing is “Ask for recommendations from your seniors or colleagues”. So here you can ask for recommendations. I will also show you live examples of how a recommendation looks on a Linkedin profile. Your seniors, your colleagues, your co-workers can recommend your work.

Take my example, my name is Nitin and many people have recommended me for Digital Marketing and social media marketing; that i have very good knowledge of these domains.

Similarly if you are good at some particular skill, for example if you are a copywriter, or a web designer or a performance marketer then you should add all these skills to your LinkedIn profile. Then you should seek recommendations from all your seniors or colleagues or even clients, what do they think about you, about your work in 3-4 lines. This is a recommendation.

Then, the next important thing is the featured section. We will see this in our live demo also. Featured section is an important section where you can mention your important achievements, important milestones, all these can be showcased in this section.

This section comes just below the profile section on your linkedin profile. So here you can showcase your important milestones, or your certifications, or the courses that you have completed.

The next important thing is your skills. You can upload your skills. So based on your skills the auto recommendation system of LinkedIn will automatically start recommending jobs to you.

For example if you are well versed with digital marketing then you should add it to your skills. So digital marketing related jobs will be recommended to you from time to time. So adding skills is very very important for the linkedin system as well as for the searchability of your profile.

Then it is important to upload relevant education and certifications. Where have you graduated from, where have you post graduated from, if you have any certificates, if you have done a certificate course of Google - all such things you may display here. The most updated information should be kept on the top and from time to time keep updating the most updated information too.

Last but not least - you have created your linkedin profile but you need to join relevant groups by which you become a part of the particular conversation taking place and there by connecting with similar minded people.

If you see, i am a part of many digital marketing groups where many digital marketing professionals interact and share relevant information or updates regularly. A lot of conversation takes place, they publish a lot of articles. I comment on those, I converse with them, interact with them to understand their views and thoughts on the upcoming trends.

This helps in developing your knowledge, skills from the learning point of view. And believe me when you start interacting with the people of your domain you will altogether have a different experience. So you will get to see high intellectual audiences on platforms like linkedin, quora. You should keep all these in mind and try to be more active on these platforms.

Let me show you live in real time how the profile looks like. You are able to see the profile of Alok, he has kept a cover image, a profile picture. Green dot means Alok is currently online.  His company’s logo is visible here.

You can follow Alok.

From here you can save his profile, you can send him a connection request, you can report him as well - so all these options are available to you.

The featured section that i was referring to, it looks something like this.

Alok has displayed his important features. If you click on “See all” then all his achievements have been displayed here by him.

In this way you can make use of the featured section and showcase the important details.

Then when you scroll down you will see the activity section. From here we can make out that Alok is definitely very active, he comments a lot, the comments he receives on his profile he replies to them as well. So the activity section indicates how active one is on LinkedIn.

Then this is your about section. You would have heard a lot of times during interviews where the interviewer says “Tell us something about yourself”. That is a very common question.

In a way you can say that this “About section” is an answer to that question only.

You are introducing and describing yourself to the world of LinkedIn, in a few words or sentences. Alok has introduced himself in a few words. A good introduction is very important. Do not write too long, else the readers will get bored and lose interest as they might find it less interesting. So write concise and to the point. So this is about our about section.

Next we have the experience section. As we see here that Alok is the cofounder and the CEO of Games2win India Pvt. Ltd.. What does he do there, what does his company do, he has mentioned a few lines about it.

What all positions he has held so far, all these information he has updated too

Then if we talk about the education section- from where he completed his education, all these details he has mentioned and updated here.

Then comes the Skills and Endorsements section. What all skills is Alok known for, that he has updated here.

Now we have recommendation section, this is what i was talking about earlier that you can seek recommendations from your colleagues. As we see Alok has received all these recommendations from his colleagues, friends. So similarly you too can request for such LinkedIn recommendations from your colleagues. When others appreciate your work, then nothing can be bigger than this milestone or a testimonial.

When you attend an interview and when you try to convince the interviewer that you are the right candidate for this role, hire me for this role. But when others talk about you, when your colleagues or seniors talk about you or when your top management talks about you, then that testimonial has more impact than anything else.

So recommendations work highly in your favour. Hence try to assemble as many recommendations as possible for your profile.

Then you can join other groups or forums. So this is how a personal profile on LinkedIn works.

That is all for today’s session. If you have any queries or comments, click the discussion button below the video and post there. This way, you will be able to connect to fellow learners and discuss the course. Also, Our Team will try to solve your query.

In the next session we will see how LinkedIn helps businesses in getting successful. What all LinkedIn ads did they make use of to accomplish their business objectives. We will understand these through case studies in our next session.

See you, good bye.