By Lynne Williams

Do you realize that there are over 645 million people on LinkedIn and how important it is to be on this platform for your career … AND be active?

Every second of the day, two people join LinkedIn. This is a place where you can establish your brand and tell your career story … past, present, and future. Your can reinvent yourself or begin a career all over and tell your future forward.

In case you are not aware, there is a large community of WordPress website aficionados gathering in Philadelphia for an all day training on Saturday, October 5th at WordCamp Philly and they may even have some tickets left for last minute purchasers. I am honored to be speaking there on Why Getting Noticed on LinkedIn Is Important for Your Career and hence the inspiration for this article.

Here are just some of the reasons why you should be on LinkedIn whether you are employed, self-employed, a freelancer, unemployed, or a student:

• Start building your online resume that grows with you in your career
• Start collecting endorsements and recommendations from employers, clients, teachers, etc.
• Connect with alumni and classmates for internships, future jobs, and client work
• Add a customized LinkedIn URL to your business card, resume website, brochure, etc.
• Highlight awards and honors, as well as projects and publications
• Explore companies and higher education
• Use a Boolean search in LinkedIn to find industry professionals
• Use a Boolean search in Google to find industry professionals on LinkedIn
• Search for jobs and get found by potential employers
• Connect with others you meet at networking events
• Engage in conversations in LinkedIn groups on topics of interest
• Give/receive recommendations and endorsements
• Lead generation > write about your area(s) of expertise on the home page, in groups, or write articles
• Create projects where you have worked with others to showcase collaboration
• Create a company page to highlight your expertise and get followers (check out this LinkedIn resource for your small business)
• Let LinkedIn be your online portfolio
• Start or join an engagement pod to get your groupies to like and comment on each others’ posts
• Tell your story and your WHY you love doing what you do
• Add media to your profile to showcase your talent, creativity, skills, products, services, etc.
• Find the hashtags for your areas of interest and post using 3 hashtags
• Create meta tags and alt tags in Linkedin with keywords
• #UBU and add emojis, icons, and symbols to your profile for a pop of color
• Find out your Social Selling Index (SSI) score to get your “report card grade” on LinkedIn
• Use the FIND NEARBY feature on the app on your phone to connect with others in the nearby vicinity

If you have no clue what some of these things are or what they mean to you, you can probably find an article written about most of them in the publications section of my LinkedIn profile or on vista.today and enter my name in the search bar.

No matter what … keep on learning! You don’t know what you don’t know.

If you need to attend a LinkedIn workshop, you will find the upcoming dates on the meetup under the events tab on our website including 10/15 and 10/19.

Don’t miss our upcoming featured events. If you are a working adult, come learn and network with us. You must be a member of the meetup before you can RSVP to any of these events or our partner events and see the location and other details.

• 10/7/19 Turning Reinvention Failure into Future Success – Marc Miller (Speaker is coming in from Mexico so don’t miss this!)
• 10/8/19 Embrace Creative Destruction or Be a Turkey! It’s Your Choice! – Marc Miller
• 10/9/19 Virtual Career Success Group Online Meeting
• 10/9/19 Using the Marketing Mix to Rise About the Competition – Curtis Jenkins
• 10/10/19 Ladies Night Out! Women’s Fall Happy Hour
• 10/10/19 PowerThinking: Rejuvenating Your Amazing Mind Resilience Building Call
• 10/11/19 Nonprofit Career Network – The Basics & The Board of Nonprofit Organization
• 10/11/19 What’s Your Shtick? Personal Branding – Lynne Williams
• 10/26/19 All Day Hands-on Job Search Accelerator with 4 subject matter experts – Brynne Tillman, Ford Myers, Alex Freund, Lynne Williams

Need to accelerate your job search or manage your career? Explore our kickstarter offerings.

Missed the previous LinkedIn article on LinkedIn? Click here!

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Lynne Williams is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Area Great Careers Group, a 501(c)3 nonprofit of almost 4300 members providing career education and networking. Contact Lynne by phone at 484-393-2951, email at director@greatcareersphl.org, on social media @GreatCareersPHL and #GreatCareersPHL and connect on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/lynnewilliams Check out the website!