Social Media Advice Archives - Page 3 of 3

When I was living and studying in Rome one of my favourite activities on the way back from lectures at the Gregorian University was to sit in Piazza Navona for an hour with a cup (or two!) of coffee and watch the world go by.

I have always been a great people watcher because just by observing people you can learn so much. As I am sure those of you who are familiar with Piazza Navona will be aware there is no better place to people watch. Observing the jugglers and entertainers, the tourists rushing to their next historic sight and of course the residents of Rome going about their business can give you some great insights.

So what’s all that got to do with the question I posed as the subject of this post you are wondering? Well a little like sitting in Piazza Navona watching the activities of your LinkedIn connections can be fascinating (you can find me here: Paul Duxbury) and insightful. You get to see the interesting people they are connecting with, they share posts that they find interesting and they offer their own posts and insights to engage you. Well, most of them do! Isn’t that what LinkedIn is all about? Building relationships, sharing interesting content and supporting people in your network? So why on earth would I be suggesting to a job seeker that you should consider disconnecting from people?

Let me set the scene for you! Early one morning a few weeks ago I received an invite to connect from someone I didn’t know, who had no photograph and who had used the default LinkedIn connection request with no personalisation. Now ordinarily I would have declined the connection. However, that particular morning for some reason I accepted the invitation. I say “for some reason” but perhaps on reflection I was opening myself to a learning experience without realising it and of course all learning experiences are good! Yes, I know it’s the Learning & Development Professional in me! For the sake of this post let’s call the person in question “Josephine.”

An hour or so later I logged back onto LinkedIn and was met by a long list of “Josephine has connected to…..” which I assumed must have been because the person in question was relatively new to LinkedIn and was connecting to people they knew – so I thought nothing of it.

But over the ensuing days I noticed, in fact I couldn’t fail to notice, that Josephine was connecting to between 10 and 30 different people every day. They hadn’t responded to the message that I sent them shortly after accepting their connection request nor had they shared anything, commented on anything or interacted in anyway. I reached the stage towards the end of last week that I started to wonder how many people they would have connected to since I last logged on! I also became aware of others who seem to have the same approach to their use of LinkedIn. I started to question the value I was getting from learning how many people they were connecting to each day. More importantly I began to realise that because my timeline was full of these “Josephine has connected to…..” I was missing updates from my other connections.

So over the weekend I decided to purge my LinkedIn connections and remove those that appeared to be simply treating it as a numbers game and adding dozens of connections every day.

So yes in my view there comes a point when you should disconnect from others on LinkedIn. If you are getting nothing from the relationship and the other party (Josephine) doesn’t appear to want to engage or interact then that’s the point at which to say “not tonight Josephine” – sorry a little corny I know!

LinkedIn is a professional network where you can engage with others, interact with them, learn from them and hopefully add something to the relationship. It’s not like Twitter where your sharing of content is on a much more superficial level because with LinkedIn you allow people into your network and share a lot about yourself that you may not choose to share elsewhere. Below is a brief Prezi that I created a little while ago which may help you with building relationships on LinkedIn.

When Paul asked me to write a post for his new blog, ‘Job Search Advice for 2014’ I knew I’d have to write about something current and when it comes to job search techniques, there’s nothing more current than social media.

The big player in the ‘Social Job Search’ is undoubtedly LinkedIn, so for this post I’m going to take a closer look at how you can make the most of it.

Create a Strong Profile

In the past LinkedIn profiles were thought of as merely an online representation of your CV. Nowadays the LinkedIn profile has morphed into so much more. Whilst a CV is limited to 2 pages, a LinkedIn profile gives you the opportunity to tell an employer a little bit more. To ensure that your LinkedIn profile is showing you in the best light you need to include the following:

A professionally taken headshot
An eye catching headline
A summary that oozes personality and passion
A detailed experience section
Keywords that relate to your role or industry – This will help recruiters to find you when they are scouring LinkedIn for new staff
Recommendations and endorsements from past or current colleagues

Set Your Privacy Settings

Just like the drunk at a party who tells you way too much about their personal life, your connections don’t want to hear about every little change that you make to your LinkedIn profile. Be sure to turn off activity broadcasts and change the setting to “select who can see your activity feed” to “only you.” You can always change it back when you want to tell your network something important such as actively looking for work or that you’ve just gained a new qualification.

GarnerNew Connections the Right Way

There’s an art to making new connections on LinkedIn and from experience I’ve found that a lot of people are doing it wrong. It seems that a large proportion of people are using LinkedIn’s auto connect requests and stock messages. These are to be avoided like the plague (read a little more about this here). Make the effort to write a personalised message explaining why you should connect and include the following:

A reminder of where you met or a little information about where you found out about them
Why you’d like to connect with them – Ensure that this isn’t one sided, it’s not just about what they can do for you; primarily it should be about what you can do for them!

Become a Groupie

One of the best ways to find new connections within your industry is to join industry specific groups. Being a member of interest groups will enable you to interact with people in your industry by taking part in discussions. Ensure that your answers are well thought out and insightful and you’ll be able to show that you’re a thought leader, impressing would be connections. Being a groupie gives you the chance to reach out to new connections that aren’t already contacts, allowing you to expand your network without upgrading to LinkedIn premium.

Revisit Old Connections

Whilst you may talk to some of your LinkedIn connections regularly, for others it may have been a while. Reconnecting with old connections can be a great way to reinvigorate your LinkedIn network. I challenge you to pick 10 connections that you haven’t talked to for a while and send them a message asking them how they are, checking what they are up to nowadays and letting them, know a little about what you’re doing at the moment. Importantly, they may have changed roles, got a promotion or they could even be in a management position with a need for new staff. Rekindle those old connections and breathe a little life into your LinkedIn network, you never know what it might lead to!

If You’re Actively Job Searching – Tell the World!

If you’re on the job hunt and either don’t mind your current employer finding out or are between jobs, why not tell everyone in your LinkedIn network by including it in your LinkedIn headline. Before you change your headline you’ll need to make sure that you’ve changed your privacy settings back to ‘broadcast’ temporarily so that everyone in your network knows that you’re looking for work. Hopefully some of your connections will know of opportunities coming up or they may even be in the market for new employees themselves. It’s a great way of letting recruiters know that you’ll be open to their approaches.

Leo Woodhead writes extensively about Careers and was named as one of the Top 10 Careers Advice people to follow on Twitter by Guardian Careers.

If you want to talk about your LinkedIn networking or about your career in general he says that you should feel free to send him a tweet @thecareersblog and be sure to keep an eye on his blog here for useful advice.