Your Career: How To Use LinkedIn To Advance Your Career…Out of the Dozens of Valuable Career Management Features in LinkedIn, Here are the Ones I Think are the Best

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As you know if you have been reading my posts, LinkedIn has been adding features that make it even more valuable for personal branding. These features make LinkedIn uniquely powerful because the site can now be your exclusive career manager – helping you with virtually all aspects of your career if you use the features correctly.

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Out of the dozens of valuable career management features in LinkedIn, here are the ones I think are the best:

Increase Visibility and Credibility

Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is you when you aren’t there. Since LinkedIn is the place where people go to learn about you, it’s the ultimate opportunity for visibility with decision-makers who need to know you. With all the features that let you personalize your profile (like the custom background image and the ability to shuffle the sections of your profile) you can paint a compelling portrait of the value you deliver.

Your profile then does double duty as your complete career portfolio – a repository of wins and key accomplishments that are important to your career success. Because it is a living virtual document, your profile grows as you grow. And now that you can add reports, whitepapers, images, presentations and videos to your profile, you can deliver a rich multimedia experience for viewers.

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Blogging

The LinkedIn long-form publishing platform gives you the opportunity to convey your thought-leadership and achieve visibility in an inimitable way. It also helps you enhance your credibility by reinforcing your profile with your content and your point of view. And you can make your thoughts known to more than 330 million members – expanding your reach by the millions with just one click.

 

Build and Nurture Your Network

Contacts and Connections

You can use LinkedIn as your single contact management tool. It allows you to import all of your contacts from your iPhone and email. Thanks to custom tagging, you can organize and group your contacts, too, making LinkedIn your one-stop shop for networking.

Relationships

A little-known but extremely valuable tool is available under LinkedIn’s Relationship link, found right under the photo in each connection’s profile. Click on Relationship, and you can make notes to record important information about your connections. LinkedIn also gives you the ability to manage conversations, track how you met, and even set reminders so you your key connections don’t forget about you.

Groups

Think of groups as virtual professional associations on steroids. They’re the place to see and be seen by “your people.” Engaging in conversations with other group members keeps you connected, lets you express your point of view and allows you to stay current with the most important trends and news in your field.
LinkedIn Connected App

The fairly new LinkedIn Connected app provides an efficient way to nurture your professional relationships. Since most career opportunities come from the people you already know and from warm leads (the people they know), it’s essential that you maintain relationships and stay top of mind. LinkedIn Connected provides updates about your connections (things like their birthdays, work anniversaries, promotions, etc.) and lets you reach out directly to acknowledge them.

 

Learn and Grow Professionally

Pulse

Found under the “Interests” tab, LinkedIn Pulse helps you stay on top of what’s happening in your area of expertise. It contains customized, relevant news with content tailored to your job function or industry. You can personalize your Pulse feed and identify the influencers from among hundreds of trusted sources, choosing the ones who will provide you with the greatest value.

Discussion Topics

Joining LinkedIn groups will enhance your network, but actively participating in their discussion topics will help you keep the saw sharp. You can see which topics become relevant, be alerted to content that you might not otherwise have seen, and stay at the forefront of different views related to your industry and job function. 

Lead

Search

LinkedIn features are especially great for enriching your role as a leader. One of the best LinkedIn benefits is the ability to search within a web of professional connections, finding the resources you need when you need them. You can source staff, build partnerships, identify vendors, open clients’ doors, etc. With over 330 million members, it’s the best place to go when you need to augment your team or expand your client base.

Endorsements and Recommendations

LinkedIn endorsements and recommendations allow you to publicly acknowledge your team and others in your network. It’s a positive way to stay connected, express appreciation, and publicize achievements.

Engage In Your Company

That’s right, LinkedIn is a great way to stay informed about what’s going on inside your own organization. Select your company from the menu when you are creating your experience section, and you will automatically become a follower, receiving updates from your communications people. This helps you stay on top of what is happening in product development, for example, even if you work in market research or accounts payable. This also gives you the opportunity to become a brand ambassador when you share your organization’s updates  – delivering greater value to your employer, regardless of your role.

Follow me on Twitter and check out my latest book, Ditch. Dare. Do! 3D Personal Branding for Executives.

 

Forbes.com |  February 22, 2015  |   William Arruda