Social media tips for employees: using Linked In

Using LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in your social media armoury – but many people make some fundamental mistakes.

Is your feed full of posts from connections that aren’t particularly relevant or interesting? 

Do you have to plough through a lot of ‘noise’ to find the posts of interest to you on here? 

Be honest.

Note: I’m flagging the quick, low-hanging fruit here, not writing a full white paper on how to use each network.

Using Linked In

As you know, Linked In is the ‘business network’. Once a place to create a profile with what was essentially an online CV, it’s now much, much more. 

For now, let’s keep things basic. 

1. Connecting, following, unfollowing

The biggest single mistake people make on Linked In is having thousands of connections but not curating their feed.

Linked In is all about connections but if your feed is full of thousands of posts that aren’t relevant to you each day (be honest, it is) – you aren’t using it properly.

You can unfollow people without disconnecting from them. 

Value your time more and use this functionality.

• Connected with someone whose posts never resonate with you? Unfollow them.
• Connected with someone whose posts are always sales, sales, sales and offer you no real value? Unfollow them.
• Connected with someone you can’t disconnect from politically but you’d just be much happier if you never saw their posts again? Unfollow them.

You get the gist. In reality, even if you’re connected with thousands of people on Linked In, you probably only need to be following a few hundred: those who post things relevant to you, your job and your business.

Clear the white noise from your feed. 

Your Linked In experience will more targeted, more enjoyable and more successful because of it.

You can follow someone again if you want to – it’s not permanent and its not personal, it’s about making Linked In work for you.

2. The feed

Linked In has a lot of functionality from groups and communities to business pages but arguably the most powerful tool you have on here is the feed. 

Comment regularly.

Post regularly.

Be useful, helpful, insightful. or interesting. 

Find a time to post every day and try to stick to it so people get used to seeing your posts at a particular time.

Post content about your job role, your expertise.

Provide insight that is particular to you and valuable to your connections. Don’t grandstand. 

Make sure you covey your personality in your posts but remember Linked In isn’t Facebook or Instagram. Unless you’re a chef, nobody on here wants to see your dinner.

Don’t be scared to be open or even vulnerable. Work can be a challenging part of everyone’s life and if you’ve overcome barriers, found ways of solving problems etc. don’t be scared to share this sometimes. People value authenticity.

Hope the above helps a little.