LinkedIn Tutorial For Beginners - How to Use LinkedIn In 2022 (10 EASY Tips!)

are you wondering how to use linkedin to get noticed and gain exposure maybe you're new to linkedin or maybe you created a linkedin account years ago and now you're wondering what to do to get the most out of the platform if this sounds like you tune in because in this linkedin tutorial i'm going to show you exactly how to build a stand out linkedin profile so that you can get potential employers and clients to come to you if we've never met before i'm heather austin from professoraustin.com and on this channel i teach professionals just like you how to build your personal brand so that you can land your dream job and grow in a field you love so if you're new to my channel make sure you hit the subscribe button down below also don't forget to hit the bell notification so you're notified when i host a live training or publish a new video every week and for even more linkedin guidance make sure you save your spot in my free linkedin mini course where you'll learn time saving methods to help you build a powerful linkedin profile that shows your real value and helps you stand out from your competition i'll place a special link for you down below now unless you've been living under a rock you're probably very aware that linkedin is the world's number one professional network it's one of the only places on the line where you can find high quality career opportunities build a professional network of like-minded individuals and command authority in your industry so if you don't have a knockout profile and you're not using linkedin regularly you need to get started right away now i'm going to jump over to my computer to show you exactly how to build a profile that helps you stand out and get noticed i'll see you over there now here we are on my computer and i'm about to share with you 10 tips to help you build a standout linkedin profile and get a potential employer or client to come to you so let's jump into it tip number one pay special attention to anything above the fold so we all know that it's important to make a good first impression in a job interview or even on your first day at your new job so you'll understand when i say that it's just as important to make a great first impression on linkedin now this starts with anything above the fold this is anything that the visitors see when they first visit your profile so the higher up this section is the more important it is and there's four main sections you need to pay special attention to your profile picture your headline your background photo and your about section so i'm going to dive deeper into all four of these sections let's first start with your profile picture a professional looking profile picture is one of the best things you could do for your linkedin profile and a bad profile picture is one of the biggest turn offs to a potential employer or to your new connection so if it fits into your budget i highly recommend a professional photo shoot a lot of local studios can take a few snaps of you really quickly in a nice setting you can even check with your local target or walmart if that isn't an option for you you just need a friend with a front-facing camera on their phone and a simple background like a wall or a simple office space i want you to go somewhere with really good lighting like near a window make sure that you're smiling in your photo and make sure you look at the camera now ask your friends to shoot you from the shoulders up so that we can see your nice beautiful face you also want to make sure you're dressing appropriately for your industry and avoid distracting accessories like makeup or things that might be distracting in the background so to make changes to your headshot on linkedin you'll click on the edit icon right here at the top of the linkedin page you'll notice that you'll be able to edit your profile photo right from here clicking on the edit icon again now notice the different options here i can edit my photo i can add a photo or i can add frames we'll go through each of those in just a second let's first take a look at the edit icon this allows you to crop your image you can zoom in you can even straighten your image if you need to you can add a filter i would recommend not getting too crazy with the filters but linkedin does keep it fairly conservative so i could add a spotlight filter if i wanted and then i can adjust the brightness the contrast the saturation and so on and so forth so there's a few things i can do here now i want to go back to the frames option you can keep it the original you can add if you're hiring or you can add if you're open to work now i am going to cover the open to work feature in just a second here but i really want to quickly suggest at the time of this recording i don't recommend having the open to work feature on your profile i would say just keep it to the original now we'll talk more about that in just a minute so i'm going to close this out and then notice that you can change your photo by clicking here and uploading a photo or using your camera now before we jump into your headline let me make a quick note about your name and how your name is displayed so i'm going to x out of this box i'm going to x out of the profile photo box and notice right here linkedin added a new feature where it allows you to record your name pronunciation so if you have a name that's harder to pronounce i highly recommend recording a pronunciation so that any new contact including a recruiter a hiring a manager or someone in your network can listen to how your name is pronounced now notice that it says name pronunciation can only be added using your mobile device so you'll have to use your mobile app to record your name i do have a video that goes into more detail about how to use the linkedin mobile app i'll place that link down below so you can watch that as soon as you're done with this one now let's move on to the second most important part of your linkedin profile and that is your headline so your headline is one of the most important parts of your linkedin profile it tells a new employer or your new connection who you are who you help and how you help them so a really good headline will include industry specific keywords tailored to the position or the industry you want to be in it will also state your specification or some unique detail about you for example if i'm a graphic designer i wouldn't just say graphic designer i would get a little more specific and say something like graphic designer specializing in logo design and personal brand awareness now notice how jam-packed this example is when i add those keywords that are specific to the industry now a couple more tips here when it comes to your headline you want to avoid the default headline that linkedin provides and never use the words actively seeking or open to new opportunities hiring officials know that at any given time a majority of professionals are open to exploring new opportunities so you don't want to wave a big red flag and show your desperation now let's jump in to the edit icon again and i'll show you where you're going to add your headline you're going to type it in right here where it says headline again make sure you're using industry specific keywords make sure you're telling us who you are who you help and how you help them and that's really all there is to the headline let's talk about the third section on your linkedin profile that must be optimized and that is your background photo now this is an easy and effective way to stand out you have a few options with your background photo you can either choose to leave it as the default background photo which isn't very interesting or you can use a custom image from linkedin's image library or you can use a free graphic design tool or create something on your own that shows your personality and character so let's look at how we edit the background photo again we're going to click on the edit icon that's going to take us in to the background photo dialog box this is where we can add or change the photo just by clicking on the change photo button we can crop the image we can filter again we can adjust any of the items in the adjust panel so again that's another option if you wanted to adjust the brightness the contrast and so on and so forth and then once you're finished you're going to click apply and then you'll close out of the background photo now i'm going to share a few resources with you that i like to look at for interesting unique background photos the first one is canva.com the next one is unsplash.com and then the next one is pixabay.com these three options are my favorite the cool thing about most of these resources is that they offer pre-done templates that you can customize and make your own let's talk about the fourth most important part of the top half of your profile and that is your about section in addition to your headline this is one of the most important sections on linkedin and the crazy thing is this is the most overlooked section and it's such a missed opportunity for anyone that doesn't have their about section optimized the about section is considered your professional summary this takes the lead of your headline and should be an easy to read snapshot of who you are what you've done and what you can do for someone else this is very similar to your professional summary on your resume but it's going to contain more detail it's also going to be written in first person it's going to be a little bit more eye-catching and it's going to show more of your personality and character so i recommend starting with one strong sentence in its own paragraph that hooks your reader this is going to explain your professional motivation your passion and your drive next follow that up with a paragraph about one of your greatest professional achievements or your greatest strength now you can write up to three or four paragraphs with about one to three sentences per paragraph and for extra emphasis add an expertise section at the bottom of the summary this is where you can pack in lots of keywords and keyword phrases that will make your profile show up in search now this is very similar to the competency section on your resume now you want to keep your summary organized with bullet points and with section headings you could even sprinkle in some emojis however i don't advise making it look too gimmicky you should still look professional if you choose to use those things use them sparingly let me show you really quickly how you'll add to your about section or change your about section you're going to click on the edit icon in the about section area you'll notice that it brings up your summary and this is where you change your summary so this is where you're going to add your bullet points your paragraphs and your section headings to make it look nice and easy to read and to captivate your reader so let's go ahead and exit out of this and let's jump into tip number two and that is to use the featured section wisely the featured section is perfect for highlighting a few things you want to show to potential employers so the featured section comes right below the about section on linkedin you can add posts linkedin articles links like a personal website or a youtube channel like what i've done here or you can add media like projects images or even documents now you can add as many of these things as you would like but i don't recommend adding more than three or four after that it begins to defeat the purpose of the featured section and makes it hard to look through now if you don't have anything to add to your featured section right now that's okay you don't have to include any featured content however especially for professionals that have worked for 10 to 20 years you should try to find or create some content to feature here on linkedin so to add content to your featured section you'll simply click on the plus icon in the featured section area notice you can add posts articles links and media so if i wanted to add a post i would select that content this is going to show me my most recent posts on linkedin and if i want to feature one of those posts all i would do is click on the feature star if i didn't want to feature that post i could click on remove from featured once you're done with that area you can x out of that now if you want to edit a post or edit something that you've already added to the featured section you would click on the edit icon simply click on that and this is where you can go in and edit or you can delete that content now let's jump into tip number three to creating a profile that stands out and gets you noticed and that is to optimize the experience section even though this section is further down it might need some extra attention the good news is this part can be a lot like your resume but don't just copy and paste from your resume it's a little bit different especially since you aren't limited to one or two pages plus this is your chance to make it a little bit more personal and relatable than your resume now you can write these sections in bullet points but i highly recommend using paragraphs write no more than two paragraphs with about two to three sentences in each paragraph and just like on your resume you should have results driven achievement statements that show the actions you took and the results you made now as much as you can use quantifiable results like number of products sold or percentage increased of productivity and try to choose numbers that show the effect you had on your team or on the company not just on yourself this will show a potential employer exactly how you can help them so to add a position to your experience section you'll simply click on the plus sign inside the experience section and you'll go through and you'll add each of these details including your title the company you can even choose to add the location even though that's not a requirement the dates you are employed are a requirement so make sure you get those in there and then go through and evaluate the other sections inside this box you can choose to update your industry if you would like to about your new position and you can choose to update your headline while you're adding this new experience and it gives you a little dialogue box down at the bottom where you can change your headline so once you get everything in here solid how you would like it you'll add a description and you could choose to add media if you would like let's say that you wanted to make a change to one of your existing positions i'm going to go ahead and exit out of that box i'm going to click on the edit icon in the experience section and this is where if my title changes i could go ahead and change the title i can even change the description of the position and then of course if i needed to i could change the dates that i worked in that position and hey real quick if you are enjoying this linkedin tutorial and you have learned something so far today make sure you hit the thumbs up button down below this tells youtube that this is a good video and it puts it out to more people wanting to learn how to use linkedin so i'm going to close this position out and let's jump into tip number four and that is to fill out your education and licenses section so to add education and licenses to your linkedin profile you'll simply click on the add profile section you'll notice that you have education and licenses now i already have education added to my profile so we'll jump down to that section so this is where you're going to list any degrees you have and if you don't have any degrees you can still list any colleges you attended or your high school education now whether or not you have a degree or not you should take advantage of the licenses and certifications section this will show off your qualifications and your continuing desire to learn and stay relevant and if you have a degree and you've been out of college for five to ten years you don't need to list that high school experience now it's not just enough to list where and when you got your education to stand out you really need to write a powerful descriptions about your experience now this is where you can mention involvement in clubs maybe if you had a high gpa or maybe very high test scores so minors and emphases that you had scholarships and maybe other special achievements so to add a school or degree to this section i would simply click on the plus icon and i'm going to go through and i'm going to make sure that i enter all the required areas and then if i choose to i can add activities in societies i can even add more of a description inside here so this box is very self-explanatory but you can add some pretty cool things in here to show your potential employer what some of your qualifications are i'm going to x out of this and i want to show you really quickly the licenses section so again i'm at the top of my profile and i'm going to add profile section and i want to click on licenses and certifications so the great thing about this section is that linkedin has a lot of certifications that you could already plug in to this area so get the name of your certification type it in here you'll then also type in the issuing organization if you have the issue date or the expiration date you can add that in there a lot of certifications have a credential id and a lot of them have a url that you can share so once you get that in there then you'll click save and that's going to pop up right under your education section now real quick just a heads up if you are looking to connect with other professionals just like you jump in and join my free private facebook community the career club it's the perfect place online to ask questions about anything career related get feedback share your wins and build relationships i'll place a link for you down below let's jump into tip number five and that is to add a volunteer experience section this section is not 100 necessary to fill out but it is a section that can give you a big leg up over your competition employers really like to see people who give back to their communities now it's especially helpful if these volunteer experiences involve doing work in your field and applying your professional skills so to fill out your volunteer experience section you're going to simply click on the add button this is going to allow you to add an organization you can put your role in you can add a cause if you can find the cause in the list here you can also add that you are currently volunteering in this role or you can add the start and the end date now i highly recommend adding a description to this roll you'll add the description just like you would in your work experience section now i'm going to close out of this and if i needed to i could edit the volunteer experience section by simply clicking on the edit icon that's going to take me into any position that i've recently held in the volunteer capacity and i can change my dates i can change the description i can even change the role if i need to and that's really all there is to the volunteer experience section now let's jump into tip number six and that is to use skills and endorsements to your benefit so the skills endorsement section falls right under the volunteer experience section linkedin lets you add up to 50 skills to your profile that will help your name show up when recruiters search for for people like you to fill jobs you're looking for now i only recommend adding skills you want to be known for or skills you are actually really good at sometimes less is more now even if you have some basic knowledge of something you might want to promote it and the skills and endorsements area is the best place to do that i want you to focus on your field or the field you want to go into and get as specific as you can for example the term training is super ambiguous but leadership training or leadership development coaching is much more specific you can choose which top three skills you want to list first for people to see now it's fine to ask for endorsements from other people this will demonstrate that others in your network agree with the skills you have so to add a new skill you'll simply click on the add a new skill area linkedin will suggest a set of skills for you to add based on what's already in your profile however you can click on the skill section and type a skill that you would like so for example when i talked about training we wouldn't want to just have training but notice i could choose training and development i could choose training delivery i could choose project management i could choose personal training we want to get as specific as possible with these skills now once you get your skills added that you would like you'll notice that the top three skills are going to show up in that section if you want to edit your list of skills simply click on the edit icon you'll notice that the top three skills are showing up first that's what is shown on your profile page again these are the most important skills and the ones that you really want people to be endorsing you for now you can go through and add or delete or even rearrange some of these skills you could even choose adjust endorsement settings this will allow you to manage how you receive and give endorsements i highly recommend keeping all of these set to yes now let's jump into tip number seven and that is to give recommendations to get recommendations recommendations are a fantastic way to build your reputation and authority in your industry you want to give recommendations to people you have worked with really closely in the past or are currently working with especially direct supervisors or people who worked on your team once you've given a recommendation to someone send a request for that individual to give you a recommendation most likely they will return the favor so to make sure the recommendation actually gets written including your recommendation request a few skills or abilities you'd like your connection to mention in the recommendation and make it super easy here's a quick template you could use to write a recommendation for another linkedin member or have another linkedin member write a recommendation for you you're going to list the professional's name is a passionate motivated and enthusiastic individual i had the pleasure of working with name at companyxyz and have witnessed names drive and passion to reach a designated career goal i am passionate that name will reach great heights and will be an asset to any company name chooses to work for now remember that name is going to be you or you're going to use that recommendation template to write a recommendation for someone else so to ask for a recommendation all you need to do is to click on the ask for a recommendation area you're going to then say who do you want to ask so in here you can type the individual's name this will allow you to go through the recommendation request process now this process is super simple the dialog boxes are very self-explanatory so i'm going to close out of this and i want to show you what you can do to edit a recommendation so i'm going to click on the edit icon and notice this will allow me to ask anyone that has written a recommendation for me for a revision so let's say that they mentioned something in the recommendation that i want them to expand on a little bit further i can go ahead and click on that and that will take me to a message where i can then ask them to change something in their recommendation so i'm going to close out of that and really that's all there is to giving and receiving recommendations let's jump into tip number eight and that is to add any other relevant accomplishments here's the cool thing linkedin allows you to add additional information in the accomplishments section so you'll find this section at the very top of your profile under add profile section i'll click on that button right there and then notice i can scroll down to see the accomplishments area so these are things like publications you've written courses you've taken languages you speak you can even add special projects that you're working on or organizations you're affiliated with i want you to think of the accomplishment section as a bonus section it's great to take advantage of this section but you should only add what you are really proud of and anything that shows off your working skills especially if it relates to the field you're in or the field you want to be in now let's jump in to tip number nine and that is to edit your public profile and url so i can't tell you how many times i've reviewed someone's linkedin profile and their url contains a random string of letters and numbers ugh if you have not yet customized your linkedin url you need to do it right away this is an important way to polish off your linkedin account so all you need to do from your linkedin home page is to click the edit public profile and url button at the top once inside you'll click on the pencil icon right under the edit your custom url now notice that your linkedin url can contain anywhere from three to a hundred letters or numbers you can't use spaces symbols or special characters so my recommendation here is to do your very best to use your first and last name now if that combination is taken try to use some form of your first your last your middle name anything that identifies you but that's simple and easy to read and remember now let's jump into tip number 10 and that is to use the open to work section strategically the open to work section is one of linkedin's newest features essentially it allows you to signal to a recruiter or a hiring manager or well anyone in your network that you are open to new opportunities now there's a few ways to get to the open to work feature on linkedin you can click on the open to button on your home page that allows you to scroll down to where it says finding a new job you can also from the home page outside of that box click on the area in your header where it says show recruiters you're open to work so either way those items are going to take you to the exact same place so let's go through these really quickly it wants you to list what type of work you're open to so this is where you can add your job titles you can also add job location you can add your start date and then you can also add your job type so this is full-time contract part-time so on and so forth now this is where i want you to pay special attention where it says choose who sees your open you decide if you want only recruiters or all linkedin members to see this so if i click on that arrow i can choose that i want all linkedin members to see it or if i click back i can choose that i want only recruiters to see this so i would highly recommend if you use the open to work feature to select only people using linkedin recruiter so that's again going to be your hiring officials and your recruiters now remember when i said earlier most hiring officials know that at any given time a majority of professionals are open to exploring new opportunities so again it's okay for you to signal those hiring officials on the back end of linkedin but do not turn this feature on to everyone in your network you do not need to wave a red flag and show your desperation now i might change my thoughts on this as time goes on but at the time of this recording i highly recommend only using that open to work feature for recruiters now comment down below with what your biggest takeaway was from this linkedin tutorial and if you want even more guidance on how to use linkedin don't forget to save your spot in my free linkedin mini course i'll place a special link for you down below now here's the thing a great linkedin profile doesn't go far without a great resume so to make sure you create a resume that's landing you more interviews and better job offers take a look at this video right here and if you enjoyed this linkedin tutorial make sure you hit the thumbs up button down below be sure to subscribe to my channel for more videos just like this and i'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Professor Heather Austin

Views: 162,919

Keywords: linkedin profile, linkedin profile tips, linkedin tips, heather austin linkedin, professor heather austin, linkedin, how to use linkedin for beginners, linkedin profile tips for job seekers, linkedin tutorial for beginners, how to use linkedin, how to use linkedin to find a job, getting started on linkedIn, linkedin learning, how to get started on linkedin, linkedin profile tips 2022, linkedin 2022, how to use linkedin 2022, how to get started on Linkedin 2022

Id: X3OzK2w8kUs

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021