LinkedIn 301: LinkedIn Part 3
My last piece, LinkedIn 201: LinkedIn Part 2, gave some good beginner advice, but today I need to focus on some more intermediate concepts. This is what will get you really noticed among your peers on LinkedIn.
View
LinkedIn offers a really cool option that lets people see who have viewed their page. Use this and see who all has looked at you. View them back. They will know you checked them out, but so what? That’s the idea here. That shows interest in them and they like being noticed as much as you do. With that, look at their skills. If you know them and have an idea that they posses the skills they say, endorse them. Either way, make sure you look any anyone who has looked at you. This is not a dating site where you want to be coy about who you’re looking at, but job searching is a lot like dating too. Sometimes you don’t want to be caught looking at the person because there will be a never-ending conversation about hair or them trying to sell you something (that goes for dating or sales people both). Either way, you never know who tomorrow’s customer or human resources executive will be. Get seen!
Share
One statistic I saw said that people should share something weekly on LinkedIn. I don’t know if that is the case, but I talked about the toggle switch in LinkedIn 101. By now, that toggle should be switched back to “on” from its default position and your connections will see your activity any time you have any. Have some! It gets you into their line of sight that many times. The numbers that seems to be the most common are two and three. Share or post between two or three times a week, though with this site, I’d suggest only two (that is personal opinion). You can share pictures, websites, posts, or just a quick status. Make sure they are professional! No one gives a shit about your photos of your trip to Tahiti. One thing I don’t like is that you don’t have photo albums. I want to set my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week photos into my personal LinkedIn page, but I don’t want to go back and add the first ten right in a row. I will do so, but with the toggle turned to off so other’s don’t see them added. I wish they added photo albums so things like my T3 could be separated from the future political cartoons HoosierPoliticsToday.com will host and I would also like to add.
Post
I separated this part because it’s so important. Every time I post a new piece on FullTiltBusiness.com, I use a plugin that automatically posts it to the business pages for the site on Google+ and Facebook and then my personal LinkedIn page. This embeds as a post. You also have the “publish post” option on your LinkedIn page incase you want to write a piece from your own blog. The casual passerby won’t notice if the post you did was written in LinkedIn directly or posted from an outside source, so don’t worry about that. Posting is important. It creates a link to an idea and people love ideas, especially when they are hiring you. A résumé doesn’t always shoe the ideas behind who you are on paper, but posting does; it can tell a company if you are a good fit for a potential job or not or if your views fall in line with the views of the company. As you can see from my LinkedIn account, I have recently founded a small corporation. With the potential exception of teaching college level again or working in radio again, I am not “job hunting” now, but promoting me and trying to get connections who will, in the future, be interested in the newly formed company and what we will be offering. So why bring that up? Unless you are directly involved in politics or religion and want to make a career path out of one of those two areas, DO NOT post anything about either on LinkedIn.
Acting as an intermediate overview, I hope this gave a good follow-up to LinkedIn 201 for everyone and it gave some ideas of things to try tonight. Now get back to work; it’s a weekday.
Connect with me on LinkedIn by clicking HERE.
For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.
Picture a young Michael Beebe, fresh out of La Porte High School in ’93, diving headfirst into the world of hospitality with a busboy gig at the old La Porte Holiday Inn. That hustle led him to an Associate of Science from Purdue-North Central in ’95 and a Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from Purdue-Calumet in ’97 (those schools are now merged into Purdue-Northwest, by the way). Michael’s early career was a whirlwind—running a 140-room hotel in Indianapolis, where he learned the ins and outs of the industry but realized it wasn’t his true calling. What did spark his passion? Teaching. He found himself thriving in front of students at Ivy Tech Community College and Lake Michigan College, sharing the art and science of hospitality management. Oh, and he also moonlighted at WIMS radio in Michigan City, juggling both on-air and behind-the-scenes roles with his signature high energy.
Politics? That’s been Michael’s sidekick since he was 18, registering to vote with a fire in his belly to make a difference. He threw his hat in the ring for La Porte County Council in 2010, where he got a crash course in the power of social media marketing. Undeterred by not winning, he campaigned for Indiana’s General Assembly in 2012 and took another shot at the County Council in 2014 and 2016. Though he hasn’t clinched a seat yet, Michael’s relentless drive to serve shines through. Lately, he’s been pouring that energy into helping other candidates who champion personal liberty, amplifying their voices with his knack for strategy.
Here’s a twist: Michael once co-owned a tattoo shop, despite having no ink himself. As the business manager and marketing guru, he leaned hard into low-cost, social media-driven campaigns to put the shop on the map. That experience fueled his love for digital marketing, and now he spends his free time crafting websites and boosting businesses online—a true labor of love.
These days, Michael’s living the dream as an independent contracted transporter, crisscrossing the country while getting paid to soak up new places and cultures. When he’s not exploring, he’s parked somewhere scenic, laptop open, building his digital consulting company, Spark Plug Strategies, or penning his thoughts. He even wrote a few books.
Based in La Porte County, Indiana, Michael’s embraced a “decentralized laptop lifestyle,” blending work, travel, and passion projects into a life that’s as dynamic as he is.