The document provides tips for maximizing your LinkedIn presence and effectively using LinkedIn for business purposes. It explains that LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that can help users create and maintain business relationships, demonstrate expertise, and find targeted contacts. Some key recommendations include completing your profile with details about work history and education, having an impactful headline, regularly updating your status, joining relevant groups, asking for recommendations, and using LinkedIn answers to both ask and answer questions as a way to showcase knowledge. The overall document provides best practices for optimizing your LinkedIn profile and fully utilizing the professional networking functions.

2. Maximising Your LinkedIn Presence
Chris Lavery
Pierce Communications

3. What is Linkedin?
• World’s largest online professional network -- really a huge
database of professionals.
• Connects you to your trusted contacts.
• Helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities.
• Powerful search tool to pinpoint the person you are looking
for.
• Great tool for both business intelligence and business
development.

4. Why Should You Use LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a superb tool to help:
• Create, develop and maintain business relationships.
• Create awareness of yourself among potential clients
and candidates (aka “personal branding”).
• Demonstrate your competence and expertise to
establish the trust upon which business relationships
depend.

5. LinkedIn Facts and Figures
• Over 70 million members in over 200 countries
• New member joins approximately every second
• Executives from ALL Fortune 500 companies are
LinkedIn members
• About half of all members are outside the U.S
• Highest income & education level of any social media
platform
• Over 1 million company pages (similar to Facebook
Fan Pages)

6. LinkedIn Best Practices

7. 1. Find Who You Know
• Start with your existing contacts
• Let LinkedIn scan your email address book to find out
who you know is on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn will NOT automatically send connection
requests to your contacts; you choose which
contacts to invite

8. 2. Personalise Your LinkedIn URL
• Change your LinkedIn profile URL (web address) from
the default setting to
www.linkedin.com/in/"yourname"
• E.g.: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/chrislavery
• Helps people find you when they search for your
name within LinkedIn, Google and other search
engines

9. 3. Complete Your Profile

10. Complete Your Profile
• By providing more information, you’re creating more
opportunities for people to find you
• Include former employers and the colleges you
attended on your profile
• You never know how an ex-colleague or ex-classmate
can help you (and vice-versa)
• Change the settings on your profile to “Full View” so
your profile can be fully indexed by search engines

11. 4.Have a LinkedIn Profile Headline That
Properly Brands You
• The space underneath your name is your
“Professional” or Profile Headline
• This is the single most important piece of real estate
on your LinkedIn Profile, and you need to brand it as
such
• Appears in search results next to your name

12. 5. Ask To Connect At Every
Opportunity
• Whenever you have business interactions with
people, ask them if they’re on LinkedIn and if they’d
like to connect
• Send connection requests after meeting with
candidates and prospective clients

13. 6. Recommend
• Give, and ask for, recommendations
• Be sincere and authentic when giving
recommendations (the recipient will often return the
favour)
• When you recommend someone and when someone
recommends you, that fact is displayed on your
profile
• Ask people who you think have high regard for you
for a recommendation

14. 7. Update your Status Regularly and
Strategically
• Going to an event? Attending a conference? Read
something interesting that is relevant to your brand?
Launched a new project?
• Post interesting information (and URLs) and people
in your network will be more likely to pay attention
to your updates
• This keeps you top of mind & positions you as an
expert in your area.
• LinkedIn now automatically shortens them for you

15. 8. Learn Advanced Search
• LinkedIn’s Advanced Search is extremely powerful –
get familiar with it
• Helps you find very targeted audiences

16. 9. Join Groups
• Search for and join industry-related LinkedIn groups
• Group icons show up on your profile which tells people you
are involved in your industry
• Easy to connect to a potential client if you already share
membership in a group
• If the group is active, join in the conversation where
appropriate.
• Many groups allow you to post links to news articles intended
to spark conversation – Don’t Spam!

17. 10. LinkedIn Answers – Ask Questions
• You can use LinkedIn’s Answer feature to attract a
new connection by posing a question to the LinkedIn
audience.

18. LinkedIn Answers - Answer Questions

19. LinkedIn Answers - Answer Questions
• Yet another avenue to demonstrate your
competence
• Only answer the questions for which you know the
answer intimately
• If you are truly helpful, the person asking the
question may assign your response as the "best
answer"
• Your answer, as well as the fact that it was the best
answer, will be displayed on your profile

20. 11. Install Applications

21. Install Applications

22. Summary
• Profile completeness is vital – you wouldn’t send in
an incomplete CV.
• Connect at every opportunity.
• When you meet a potential client, ask to connect
with them on linkedIn.
• Get recommendations from people you work with.
• Join groups (and participate!)
• Use LinkedIn answers as a information resource, but
also as a reputation builder.

23. That’s All Folks!
Chris Lavery
Pierce Communications
chris@piercecommunications.co.uk
Twitter: ChrisALavery
Any Questions?