50 Intelligent LinkedIn Tips That Could Change Your Life

LinkedIn is sometimes referred to as Facebook for grown-ups. That may be true, as LinkedIn is a much more respectable site on which you can network, share information, and build relationships that can grow and support your career. Check out these tips to find out how you can use LinkedIn to make a change in your life and career.
General
Pay attention to your manners, be a real person, and follow these tips to do well on LinkedIn.

1. Be polite: Remember your manners when interacting with others on LinkedIn.
2. Stay active: Update routinely-you don’t want it to look like no one’s home.
3. Keep an eye on your competition: Check out the public profile for companies to see who they are hiring and more.
4. Research a company’s health: Look for former employees to get candid opinions.
5. Say thank you: Always remember to say thanks, publicly or privately, when someone does something thoughtful for you.
6. Write like a human: Avoid dry writing-robots are reading your profile, but people are more important.
7. Ask questions: Get answers and contribute to the knowledge available on LinkedIn with questions.

Job Search
These tips will come in handy for those working on a job search.

8. Make connections where you want to work: Get connected with people on the inside that can give you an in where you want to work.
9. Don’t advertise being unemployed: Avoid the temptation to advertise that you’re unemployed-recruiters believe that employed workers are better employees.
10. Look up potential employers: Before going into an interview, make sure and look up potential employers to find all of the information you can.

Networking & Connections
Pay attention to these tips that can help you with your network of LinkedIn contacts.

11. Send personalized connection requests: When you send an invitation, make sure you’ve for a personalized message to go along with it.
12. Connect your contacts: Provide a valuable social resource and become a more influential person by connecting your contacts.
13. Initiate a conversation: After you’ve made a connection with someone, keep the ball rolling with a new conversation.
14. Raise funding: Find mentors or potential investors with the help of your LinkedIn network.
15. Look up everyone you know: You’ll never know the connections you have until you find everyone you possibly can.
16. Get answers to questions: Ask your friends to help you out with tough business questions.
17. Reply to connection requests: When you accept connection requests, be sure to send a short message back.
18. Search in terms and industries: Connect with people you don’t personally know by searching on terms and industries.
19. Start a group: Become the center of information and a connector on LinkedIn by starting a group.
20. Do small things: Click "like" on shared articles, write short notes of congratulations, and find other ways to show others that you’re listening to what they’re saying.
21. Reach out to event attendees: If you’re attending an event, be sure to talk to attendees that you’re connected with.
22. Take advantage of travel: Check out your connections by location, and let them know when you’re going to be traveling to their area.

Profile
Follow these tips for setting up and maintaining your profile.

23. Find out who’s viewed your profile: See the statistics on your profile to learn more about your performance on LinkedIn, and know when it’s a good time to follow up with a contact.
24. Update at least every 3 months: Make sure your profile reflects your changing roles.
25. Be transparent: Let people learn about you, but still be appropriate.
26. Rearrange your profile sections: Showcase what’s most important to you by putting it front and center.
27. Include your entire job history: People may be trying to find you by searching for previous companies you’ve worked for.
28. Optimize your job titles: Use descriptive keywords in your job titles to attract relevant search engine traffic.
29. Customise your links: Instead of using generic links, create personal URLs with more meaning.
30. Establish keywords: Consider what words you’d like people to use in order to find you, and make sure they are used liberally in your profile.
31. Join groups: Associate the name of the group with your search profile.
32. Don’t forget your headline: Make sure that your headline is filled in and accurately reflects your situation.
33. Create a unique URL: Use LinkedIn’s vanity URLs to control your Google results.
34. Add a repeatable photo: Of course you’re going to add a photo-make sure it’s the same one you use on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.
35. Answer questions: Win new business by answering questions in your area of expertise.
36. Create an email signature file: Display your contact info and link to your LinkedIn profile in every email you send with a signature file.
37. Are you public?: Consider whether you’d like your full profile to be publicly viewed or not, and adjust your privacy settings accordingly.
38. Don’t link to unused websites: Showcase websites or profiles that are updated regularly instead of dead ends.
39. Fill out your profile: Don’t leave your profile incomplete, or it will look like you’re not doing much.
40. Find meaningful content to re purpose: For example, use tools like Company Buzz to highlight mentions of you or your brand on Twitter.
41. Pay special attention to Specialties: Include all of your areas of expertise in the Specialties field.
42. Use applications: Make use of applications that show your blog, presentations, and more on your profile.
43. Share updates: Let people know what you’re up to, in a professional way.

Recommendations
These tips will help you get the most out of the recommendations feature on LinkedIn.

44. Use strong language: Start off with the strongest things you can say about a person.
45. Give recommendations to get them: Acquire recommendations by writing statements of review of people in your network.
46. Request while your relationship is fresh: After leaving a company or meeting someone, be sure to ask for a recommendation while you are still fresh in their mind.
47. Be brief: Don’t write an essay-write a short recommendation.
48. Ask for recommendations: Talk to colleagues and friends, and ask them to write recommendations for you.
49. Be gentle with negatives: Be careful not to crush someone in a recommendation, and if you can’t say something nice, don’t recommend them.
50. Don’t publish every recommendation: You don’t have to publish recommendations that you don’t like.

(source:accountingdegree.com)