LinkedIn is so much more than just an online CV. It’s professional social platform, the number one resource for professional content, a job board, a prospecting heaven and so much more. If you’re an advanced LinkedIn user you might already know my 5 tips below, but for most average users I’m hoping to create some aha moments.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With LinkedIn
1. Export your LI connections
There has been a lot of talk in my LinkedIn Expert groups about this feature because one day LinkedIn took this option away from us, then all of the sudden it was back. At the time I’m writing this I still have it and I hope it will stay for good.
In order to request an export of all your LinkedIn connections go to the main menu tab ‘Connections’, then click on settings wheel in the top right corner (see image below). From there you look for the ‘Export LinkedIn Connections’ link. They have different formats available, I usually use .csv. Do this periodically in order to keep your contacts save. You just never know … However, you should never use these e-mails to upload them to your newsletter management tool. No, no and no!
Read my post on this topic here.
2. Tag people in status updates
Another nice feature people are not using often enough is the tagging feature. When sharing someone’s blog post, or when wanting to get their attention, or simply to make sure that the tagged person sees that you are mentioning him/her in your status updates, you can simply ‘tag’ them by typing the @ symbol and then the first few letters of their name. LinkedIn then gives you a drop down & you can select the contact from the list. The tagged person receives an e-mail that he has been tagged in your update.
3. Save contacts
A handy feature for your prospecting activities is the ‘Save to contacts’ feature. This allows you to save people to your contacts without immediately asking them to connect. Just click on the little star and the person will be added and can be found again under your connections.
4. Grow your e-mail list
There are different possibilities to use LinkedIn to help you grow your e-mail list. For example: Add a shortened link to your free give-away at the very top of your summary. This link is clickable in the mobile version and the first thing people will see when they check you out on their smart phone.
5. Check out your Social Selling index
The social selling benchmark was originally only available to organizations with 25+ sales people and then 10+ sales people. But now it’s available to everyone !
And it’s actually just as useful to non-sales people as it provides a measure of your LinkedIn activity compared to your peers. Here’s the link to check out yours !
Great list, I knew a few, but not the social selling, the star/contacts and the export (I assumed there was something).
Always good to know the ninja tools