The Guide To

PART 1

TheSophisticated Technology Marketer’s Guide to VolumeBUILDING YOUR 2 PROFESSIONAL BRAND ON LINKEDIN

PART 1: Why does my business need LinkedIn? 1 Table of Contents

BUILDING YOUR PROFESSIONAL BRAND ON LINKEDIN

3 OPTIMIZING YOUR PROFILE

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LINKEDIN SEARCH

EXPAND YOUR NETWORK OF INFLUENCERS

6–7

EASILY KEEP YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE

8–9

2 Building Your PROFESSIONAL BRAND ON LINKEDIN

This guide is the second of four knowledge you need to contribute volumes for the technology marketer unique insights and participate and explains how both you and in thought-provoking discussions your company can benefit from with your network. optimized LinkedIn profiles, as well as the benefits of expanding your Kelly Kyer network of influencers. We’ll also Global Marketing Lead — dive into the Pulse — the latest way Technology Vertical to stay current with top insights and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions trends shared on the platform by your network. Easily discover and gain access to professional content As a technology marketer it’s so and tailored news based on personal important for you and your colleagues interests from websites, blogs, and to maintain current, up-to-date, and newsletters. Share this information complete LinkedIn profiles. That’s with your network to help position because LinkedIn delivers the most you and your brand as thought leaders. relevant search results based on your network, professional identity, LinkedIn provides the essential platform and how the professionals within to shape and communicate your brand. your network engage with LinkedIn. Build and maintain an invaluable Hundreds of searches are conducted network of affluent, influential, and daily and you want to ensure your educated professionals with whom to profile and company appear at the share your technological knowledge top of those results. and your company’s updates. This guide will ensure you create and maintain the most effective, up-to-date profile and gain the

Building Your Professional Brand on LinkedIn 3 This infographic highlights all the opportunities for getting the most Optimizing from your profile. YOUR PROFILE Every day we see millions of professionals find others and get found through LinkedIn search.

Whether someone is searching for such as SlideShare presentations, videos, people, jobs, companies or groups, and infographics to your profile is a we provide the most relevant results fantastic way to showcase visual assets based on your professional identity, your to profile visitors. network, and how the people in your network engage with LinkedIn. Plus, one How Your Company Can Benefit of the first steps many members take from an Optimized Profile when receiving content from a company It goes without saying that your company or another member is click through to and all of its employees should optimize the personal profile or Company Page their LinkedIn profiles. After all, an to learn about the sender. That’s why optimized profile can boost the visibility it’s critical for you and your company to of your company and its content in the maintain complete and optimized profiles. search results — both on and off the network. That’s because search engines How You Can Benefit from like Google scour pages and URLs for an Optimized Profile keywords, and LinkedIn profiles offer As a marketer, you can use LinkedIn many opportunities to embed keywords, for networking and to further your such as within the LinkedIn URL, other profession. After all, these days very URLs you list within your profile, job few people end up working for a single titles and descriptions, and content links company their entire career. So whether you include. So if your company and its you’re actively seeking a new position or employees have optimized their profiles, maximizing the job you are already in, it’s you could very well gain an advantage wise to make sure your profile is set up when prospective customers are for maximum exposure and engagement. searching for companies, products In addition, adding rich media content and services like yours.

Optimizing Your Profile 4 5 Things You Need to Know ABOUT LINKEDIN SEARCH Here are five things you need to know about LinkedIn Search, as summarized by Stacy Donovan Zapar, the Most Connected Reap the Rewards of Networking Woman on LinkedIn: Did you know… the size of your LinkedIn network and participation in LinkedIn Groups can significantly increase 1. When people search LinkedIn, the • Everyone else (those outside your results are sorted by relevance, which network), ranked in descending your visibility on the LinkedIn network? takes into account the following: order by profile completeness

• 1st level connections with profiles 2. Keywords in your name, headline, that are 100% complete (or close company name, job title and skills to it) and have the most in-common rank higher in the search results connections/ shared groups, than keywords in other sections. ranked in descending order • 1st level connections with the 3. Using all fields and options fewest in-common connections/ available to you — like joining shared groups, ranked in descending 50 LinkedIn groups — boosts order by profile completeness your ranking. • 2nd level connections ranked 4. Use a variety of keywords and in descending order by terms in describing what you do profile completeness and offer to show up in a variety • 3rd level connections ranked of search results. in descending order by 5. View LinkedIn search trends to see profile completeness how many times you’ve shown up • Shared group members (outside of in search results and how many your network), ranked in descending people have viewed your profile order by profile completeness over the past three months — and then adjust your profile as needed.

5 Things You Need to Know About LinkedIn Search 5 Expand Your Network “It thrills me to see LinkedIn gaining ground as an interesting place to hang out. I’ve long held that LinkedIn OF INFLUENCERS is the dark horse of the social media platforms — or, In late 2012, we made it possible The Influencer program numbers at least, it’s the workhorse of the bunch. for any LinkedIn member to follow (as of Q1 2014) 500 of the most If Twitter is where you go to meet people you don’t an exclusive group of Influencers on influential thought leaders, Posts LinkedIn. From C-level executives that our Influencers write on LinkedIn know and Facebook is where you go to talk with people and entrepreneurs to world leaders garner on average more than you already know, then LinkedIn is where all and philanthropists, these Influencers 25k page views, more than 300 likes of you can meet up to get stuff done together.” contribute unique business insights and 100 comments. And you can and spark thought-provoking directly engage with any of these Ann Handley, Author of , Chief Content discussions on a range of issues. Influencers, either by “Liking” a post Content Rules Officer at Marketing Profs Displayed via Pulse, the Influencers or jumping into a conversation about program is a source of truly original a post. Moreover, through threaded content. But more importantly, it’s comments, you can reply to a post meant to inspire, inform and make by an Influencer to start conversations you a better marketer. and debates with others who are reading that post. You can mention other people to draw them into a discussion, and get notified when your comment has received a response.

Expand Your Network of Influencers 6 You can follow an Influencer without being connected to them. CONSIDER THESE EXAMPLES: In addition to joining in rich reading and reacting to, helping you conversations, you will see which unearth new ideas. Want to broaden Influencers and topics are driving the your horizons? Take advantage of most interest — perhaps sparking an discovery modules within LinkedIn to 3,94 4,139 idea of your own for a post or content help you find more relevant content asset. Plus the ability for LinkedIn based on the people you’re following LinkedIn FOLLOWERS members to like and share Influencer and the posts you’re reading. Bill Gates is an Influencer with over content lets you quickly find out 3,944,139 followers. One of his posts what the people in your network are garnered over 1.9M (1,942,112) views, more than 11K (11,816) thumbs up, and over 4000 (4350) comments. 1,146,194 LinkedIn FOLLOWERS Ryan Holmes, a thought leader, entrepreneur, and CEO of Hootsuite — a global leader in social media, has over 1,146,194 LinkedIn followers. One of his posts pulled in 831K (831,548) views, 2,800 (2,852) thumbs up, 781 comments. It’s easy to be part of such a rich discussion.

THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES:

The average Influencer post garners nearly 30,000 VIEWS 49% of Influencer 22% are entry-level followers are director- professionals level and above

Expand Your Network of Influencers 7 Easily Keep Your Finger Easily discover new professional content ON THE PULSE We’ve not only improved the overall search functionality With all the news websites, blogs, and newsletters out there, with faster auto-complete suggestions, but we’ve also staying in-the-know can be time consuming. made it easier for you to find “What’s New” across timely world events and what’s trending among In fact, like most marketers, you 750 publishers, such as Harvard professionals like you worldwide. probably find it’s increasingly difficult Business Review, TechCrunch, to figure out what matters most when and Fast Company. reading news across multiple sources. Millions of professionals invest their Pulse makes it possible to access time on LinkedIn, staying on top of tailored news based on your interests. industry news through Pulse, the news Specifically, you as a marketer can app and content brand for LinkedIn. easily leverage all the great business knowledge flowing through LinkedIn Pulse offers a more relevant news in the form of news, Influencer experience with content tailored to posts, industry updates, discussions, your professional interests throughout comments and more. And because LinkedIn. It’s the main vehicle for our you can customize content based on social news experience across web your preferences, you can zero in on and mobile. And it’s a key way for what matters most to you. Think of marketers to stay current on all the Pulse as your daily “newspaper”— latest insights and trends. one that let’s you stay up to speed whether you’re on your desktop, Access more relevant content mobile phone (Android or iOS), With the LinkedIn Pulse app, you can or tablet! access full articles and rich graphics from a wealth of resources, through our partnerships with more than

Easily Keep Your Finger on the Pulse 8 Organize your daily reads And here’s a suggestion for a Lists in the Pulse app allow you to Channel to follow right away for organize your channels into topics fresh insights on marketing and of your choice, such as Technology, advertising from LinkedIn Influencers: Sports, Favorites, or Must Reads. the Marketing & Advertising channel Jumpstart your Any Channels or Influencer content https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ that you follow on LinkedIn.com will channel/marketing_advertising automatically sync with the Pulse Pulse experience app, and you can also add any Share with your network blog or news feed via the robust We’ve made it even easier for you to When you download the new Pulse app on iOS or Android, share news and insights from your search functionality on Pulse. As a you will be prompted to sign in using your LinkedIn profile. Pulse app. With the new, enhanced result, you gain instant access to Once you’ve done this, we will automatically bring in the the most relevant and personalized social features — easily accessible news content that maps to your within every piece of content at the channels, Influencers and LinkedIn content you follow professional interests. top of the screen — you can see into your Pulse experience. Additionally, Pulse will offer what other professionals are talking personalized content recommendations that are customized about and instantly like, comment or share an article with your professional to your LinkedIn preferences and professional interests. network on LinkedIn.

Delivering Smart Recommendations We display stories based on a proprietary algorithm that weighs your interests and the stories trending among professionals worldwide.

Easily Keep Your Finger on the Pulse 9 To lean more... DOWNLOAD THE OTHER THREE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES! Volume 1

ABOUT US RELATIONSHIPS MATTER Laying the Foundation LinkedIn members number more than With LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, 347 million professionals. That’s over brands build relationships with the half of the 600 million professionals on world’s professionals by using accurate the planet. This represents the largest targeting to deliver relevant content group anywhere of influential, affluent and communications. and educated people. Volume 3 As today’s connected professionals Professional Publishing Platform seek out ideas and insights from the Tapping into the Our evolution into a professional people and brands they trust, publishing platform drives increased marketers use LinkedIn to target Power of LinkedIn engagement on LinkedIn. Compared advertising and publish relevant with other professional publishers, content in a professional context. content on LinkedIn works differently. Brands extend reach through the The rich data on our platform means social sharing that occurs naturally we can deliver the most relevant on LinkedIn, as well as by extending Volume 4 content to our members. LinkedIn data to their sites and brand experiences through APIs. Content Marketing For more information, please visit on LinkedIn our Marketing Solutions site.