In this blog post, you’ll find a plan for making the most of your time on LinkedIn to stay visible, build your network, nurture contacts, and find new opportunities.

#1. Define your end goal for using LinkedIn

If you’ve heard me talk before, I always talk about defining your goals. You need a sense of direction – a clear vision of where you want to go and what you want to achieve from your social media. Think about how you social media can impact your whole business.

Start by defining your objectives for using LinkedIn. Who might you find on LinkedIn, what you want them to know about you and your business, and what information and insights you want to discover.

With LinkedIn, you can:

• Showcase your experience, skills, and achievements
• Create and maintain awareness of your brand
• Promote content you’ve created
• Find new business opportunities
• Gain referrals and recommendations
• Drive traffic to your website
• Identify and monitor the competition
• Keep up to date with business news, trends, and opinion
• Learn new skills

Once you know what you want to achieve, do some research to see that LinkedIn is the best platform for you. If you’re looking to develop new business, ask your existing customers if they’re active on LinkedIn.

#2. Make sure your profile is ready and optimized

Before you can consider using LinkedIn, make sure you’re ready. By that, I mean having your LinkedIn profile set up and fully optimized.

Getting found and then making the right first impression is the first step to achieving any objective with LinkedIn so ensure that your LinkedIn profile is All-Star strength and up to date.

A LinkedIn All-Star profile includes:

• A professional profile picture
• A headline with keywords
• An About section letting people know your career story and how you can help them
• A populated Experience section with descriptions for each role
• A completed Skills section with a listing of up to 50 skills relevant to your job role and industry knowledge
• Education details

#3. Engage regularly

If you can log into LinkedIn daily, great. If it’s just once or twice a week, that’s fine too.

When you start to see results, you’ll want to spend more time on the platform. Remember that consistency is the most important factor in building awareness and KNOW, LIKE & TRUST.

• Check messages, notifications, and latest news on LinkedIn
• Check your news feed to engage with others’ content

#4. Share your own content

When you create your own posts, you’ll be able to see the number of views it receives in the feed. And when you click on the graph icon, you’ll see the companies that those viewers work for, their job titles, and locations. This is valuable insight into whether you’re achieving your objectives by reaching the right people with your content.

Some people will share content daily and others weekly or perhaps frequently. This is where it’s important to be consistent and have a content plan that works for you and your business. Post when you have something relevant and interesting for your audience. Don’t post just because you think you want to cross the task off your to-do list.

Don’t forget to encourage engagement by asking for feedback or comments at the end of your post. The more people react, comment, or share your content, the more visible you’ll be on LinkedIn. In turn, you’ll receive more profile views, which is another opportunity to start a conversation.

#5. Connect with new people

Building your network on LinkedIn should be part of your regular activity. Whether it’s following up with people you’ve met (adding them to your LinkedIn network), searching for new people to connect with, or managing your invitations, this task is critical.

When you send connection requests, always personalize your invitation. Remind people how you’ve met.

#6. Measure your success

If you’re spending time on LinkedIn, you need to know that it’s time well spent. When you’re clear on your objectives, you can use your personal LinkedIn dashboard to measure your success. You can do this by looking at your Dashboard. You can see who has viewed your profile, how many views your posts have received and how many times you appeared in a search.

Conclusion

Here is what I do on a daily and weekly basis to stay visible and build my network.

Daily:

• Check the notifications tab and messages and respond
• Respond to any connection requests
• Share my own content
• Scroll through my news feed and engage with the content by reacting, commenting and sharing

Weekly:

• Review my success by looking at my Dashboard

What do you think? Is this something you can do? Comment below with your thoughts or questions.

More articles about LinkedIn:

• 10 Steps To A Better LinkedIn Profile
• What You Need To Do For Your LinkedIn Profile Picture
• Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile