LinkedIn is a social network with now over 500 million users. But LinkedIn is much more than a social site. It’s a community of professionals and is THE place, particularly if you are a writer or publisher. Almost 95 percent of all editors and journalists are on LinkedIn, which makes it easy for writers to connect with them.
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Don’t waste your time and money with useless press releases. Now you can connect with the right people on LinkedIn – if you have a carefully created and appealing bio on your site – search-engine-optimized. And if you choose the right followers. As more people you’re connected to, as better for your business. But in order for LinkedIn connections to have value to you, it is always better to be already connected through other Social Media sites or to have an offline connection, too. Can you offer any value to your LinkedIn connections or are they are able to offer any value to you in the long run? Developing a strategy for finding the right people on LinkedIn will be your ticket to success.
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LinkedIn Groups
Pattie Hunt Sinacol wrote on Boston.com: “Joining groups is important on Linkedin. Groups should be related to your career interests and/or geography. Updates from these groups keep you connected and keep you current in your field.”
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Alex Pirouz advises on his helpful blog
- Update or edit your skills regularly on your LinkedIn – visible for others
- Move your Skills and Expertise Section to the Top of Your Profile
- Arrange Your “Skills” in order of importance to you, dragging them up (only 10 top skills are shown). Once your connections start endorsing your skills, then the number of endorsements will dictate the rank of each of your skills. This also makes it important to eliminate any skills for which you don’t want to be ranked highly. The *best* you can do is ask your very best friends, connected to you, for “Endorsements” on specific “skills. When you endorse your connections they receive an email notification. That email notification also asks them to endorse you. Win-Win! Of course, it helps when you also give “Endorsements” to your connections.
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Blog On LinkedIn!
Blogging on LinkedIn: Use this free feature to get more exposure for your writing and your books. Many readers and potential customers are influenced by blog posts. So, it makes sense for every writer to post articles on their blog, their website and on LinkedIn to reach and connect with their audience. It could be the same content on each platform since you will be connecting with different audiences on each site. However, it’s possible that Google may penalize content that appears in two places, for example, both on your blog and on LinkedIn. To avoid this, you can change the title, the images and some of the text.
Publishing on LinkedIn provides more value to connections who view your profile. LinkedIn is about relationship building and one of the best ways to build a relationship with your connections is by providing value first – which you can do with your content.
If you use custom graphics or images, you have the additional benefit of adding a visual element to your profile as your three most recent posts on LinkedIn are part of your profile.
Your connections are notified each time you publish a post on LinkedIn. You are also encouraged to send a note to your own Twitter and Facebook followers. Posting long form content on LinkedIn should be a priority in your marketing efforts.
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Kim Brown, assistant director for Syracuse University’s Career Services department spends a good portion of her day looking over LinkedIn profiles for job seekers and students. Some of her tips for LinkedIn users include:
“Adding a picture to your LinkedIn profile can make a world of difference. Always use a professional photo – not a party or holiday snapshot! Studies have shown that profiles with pictures are much more likely to get clicked on LinkedIn than those without. Keep your Facebook and your professional LinkedIn profile separate, and don’t link to Facebook from your professional LinkedIn page.
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Participate in groups. Join groups related to your business and your interests. … Send messages and invitations to those in your network and to other group members. But don’t be a spammer …
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With well over 500 million members and two people joining per second, LinkedIn is becoming more and more important as a professional networking tool and is by far the most dominant professional networking site.
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Join any or all of the best groups for writers on LinkedIn. Read also the descriptions of the best 20 groups for writers. What about you, are you on LinkedIn? And which groups did you join?
More tips on how to use LinkedIn can be found here:
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/how-to-successfully-use-linkedin-to-promote-your-publishing-business/
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