Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Once considered a social platform solely for networking, LinkedIn has proved itself invaluable for a wide range of other uses: sales prospecting, recruiting, marketing, hiring, and research, among others. There's a lot you can do with LinkedIn, so getting up to speed on and nailing the basic functions is a worthwhile exercise in itself.

For example, you can leverage your LinkedIn summary section to outline exactly how you've been helpful to prospects, allowing them to see what value you'll bring to a sales process.

But little did you know the social media platform also contains a variety of secret capabilities that can make you that much more efficient and effective. In this SlideShare, we've collected 21 of the most useful -- and hidden -- hacks in LinkedIn...

LinkedIn calls itself the “World’s Largest Professional Network” for very good reason. The service has a user base of more than 400 million people, and it is steadily growing with each new academic year as more graduates use it for professional networking. Most users join LinkedIn with the intention of posting their resumes and developing contacts within the industry of their choice. However, LinkedIn also provides you with plenty of marketing opportunities through its unique set of elements that sets it apart from other social media platforms.

One of the biggest advantages that LinkedIn has over other social media networks is that it is a business based platform. This means that the users read through the content with the intention of increasing their knowledge, instead of simply trying to entertain themselves. The seriousness of the site makes it perfect for your business to build and develop a thriving professional network. Given below are 4 hacks that can help you maximize the online presence of your brand using LinkedIn, and help it grow organically in the long term....

If you’re one of these people and you;

• Haven’t updated your profile in 6 months
• Don’t plan to in the next 6 months
• Don’t want to start to leverage the power of LinkedIn to grow your business

My suggestion is to forget about LinkedIn now. Seriously, just delete your profile right now.

Go to tools, settings and delete your account – it’s doing more harm than good for your personal brand.

Collectively, that’s what Alex and I have decided to tell people.

Now, for those that are serious about leveraging the power of LinkedIn, let me tell you why I would tell my readers to delete their profiles and what you can do to turn it around after speaking with Alex....

From a snappy headline to your custom URL, the use of keywords and strong descriptions for each of your previous jobs, a fully optimized LinkedIn profile is a thing of beauty.

Whether you’re using it as a networking tool or to find your next job, there are certain best practices that everyone should follow to ensure that your professional face online is as impressive as possible. Where should you start? Check out this LeisureJobs infographic for a step-by-step guide of LinkedIn best practices....

When you’re planning your content strategy in 2016, one tactic that most likely will come up is to publish long form content to LinkedIn. The numbers supporting this are increasingly compelling:

Users posted about 130,000 posts per week on LinkedIn in 2015
More than any other social network, most people believe there is an opportunity to establish professional thought leadership on LinkedIn through content
LinkedIn’s user demographics are uniquely positioned for targeted content distribution (discussed a little later)
Of course, relative to WordPress (3.6 million posts per week) and other content platforms LinkedIn is still pretty small. So, in this post I want to explore five best practices that can help communication professionals and content marketers optimize their content for LinkedIn....

To social selling expert Jill Rowley, ABC doesn't mean "always be closing." It means "always be connecting." She believes that because a sales rep's network is their net worth, salespeople should live on LinkedIn, researching and requesting thought leaders, industry influencers, and potential prospects.

The upshot of this mantra is that sales reps should be connecting with people they know online, but have never met in person. And the difference between being perceived as a valuable contact rather than a stalking stranger in these situations comes down to your LinkedIn request.

"I'd like to add you to my professional network" just isn't going to cut it.LinkedIn allows you to write personalized invitations that contain up to 300 characters -- take advantage of this real estate to make a strong first impression. Confused about what to write? Let the following template be your guide....

You’ve probably heard about Pulse, LinkedIn’s news aggregation platform. Normally, when you publish a blog post, it is automatically sent to the news feed of your connections and followers. Posts featured on Pulse can be seen by all members, which gives you significantly more exposure.

You may have wondered how to get your blog post picked up by Pulse. Is it completely random? Or are there tricks of the trade that help writers get featured regularly on Pulse?

Pulse is similar to an online magazine. All LinkedIn members see the same content here, divided into 85 channels ranging from the most popular, “Leaders and Management,” to topics like “Software Engineering” and “Productivity.” Outside news articles appear here, along with posts written by LinkedIn Influencers and some regular LinkedIn bloggers – like you.

So how can you get your post featured? Let’s peek behind the curtain. Gericke Potgieter has done so much research he wrote an e-book on the topic. My suggestions below reference his work....

Today companies choose who to work with based on who has become part of their buying journey. Your ideal clients are doing independent research and looking for information to help them make an educated choice about how they will spend their money and ultimately they will choose the company/person who has assisted in their buying journey.

The good news is that you can find these ideal clients, build a relationship with them and establish yourself as a trusted expert on LinkedIn.

Here is a daily LinkedIn social selling plan broken down into three manageable steps to help you effectively and efficiently manage your lead generation activities each day on LinkedIn....

For those of you who use LinkedIn on a regular basis, you will have come across a wide range of LinkedIn users. These users range from those who know how to interact in a pleasant, engaging manner and those who really upset other LinkedIn users. I have listed 5 bad habits you need to stop now....

On February 2014, LinkedIn opened up its publishing platform to the public and rolled out access to everyone in English speaking countries early this year. It will eventually roll out access to all of its members.

Last year, I did a study on how top writers were getting featured on the Pulse, including data on average post length, topics choices, best time to write and some other tips. This post ended up being popular and got over 3,000 social shares.

After that, I started experimenting with my own account. I managed to get about 1 out of 3 posts featured by an editor in a content channel resulting in hundreds of followers and email list subscribers for my blog....