James Potter, ‘The Linked In Man’, has helped over 10,000 people with their LinkedIn use over the last 14 years, including a lot of educational establishments, to drive growth within LinkedIn. He discusses some top tips perfect for careers leaders looking to find and engage alumni on the networking tool.
When you look at the number of people in the UK that are on LinkedIn it can be quite daunting. What can you do to help you stand out amongst 37 million others? How should you use it to help you, your school and your alumni?
If you were to go looking for an educational establishment (primary, secondary, higher or admin) on LinkedIn within the UK you might be surprised to find over 1.7 million users – that is almost 5% of users, the other 95% being made up from a wide spectrum of business people and industries.
The other challenge is social media, we all know social media right? But LinkedIn isn’t social media, yes you read that right, it is a social network and that makes it different, it wants different things, works in different ways, and that confuses people too.
Making LinkedIn work is a combination of things:
- Good profile
- Good network (notice network not audience)
- Talking to people (notice talking not sharing content)
- Evidence of excellence (before someone meets you)
- Demonstrating some great behaviours, values and purpose
But many fall short, not knowing how to do it well, or what to write or do.
Even within the free version of LinkedIn you can easily find anyone (and everyone!) whose profile includes a reference to you, wherever they have ended up in the world, or even ex-members of the teaching staff through their work experience – it’s simple and takes seconds when you know how. Using LinkedIn is so much easier than hours trawling records, expensive data sets, and hope.
If you are not sure how to make LinkedIn work for you or your educational establishment here are some simple tips you can follow to make your LinkedIn profile stand out from the crowd:
Ok it’s an obvious one, but you might have thought you set up a profile years ago when LinkedIn first started when in fact you hadn’t.
a half finished profile or one with little information in it looks like you can’t be bothered and think how that would reflect on your perception, reputation, and professional standing.
don’t include any of these types of photos found here.
Make sure your headline includes some stand-out feature about yourself and about how you empower and enable students, rather than just stating your job title. In reality people rarely care about your title, but do care about your focus and outcomes.
email address, phone number, and website address in your contact section on your LinkedIn profile. It is much more difficult for ex students, alumni, and more to engage with you if you don’t include them!
Ensure your summary includes information about you, not just your school, college, or University. This needs to reflect you – why you, your outlook, your approach to education, and your value.
Share regular updates on LinkedIn to keep in touch with your network, remind them of what you do without being pushy – this keeps you in the forefront of their minds so when someone asks them if they know a good event, school, or where their ex-school “mates” go they will immediately think of you.
