Congratulations and welcome to the leading social networking site for business professionals, LinkedIn! Whether your goals for using the site are to build your brand, business, or career, you can do it on LinkedIn. Becoming a LinkedIn member is your first step to broadening your reach to a global audience of people who are interested in sharing, learning, discussing, growing, and helping each other succeed.
You’ve made another great decision by picking up this book. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn takes you through the process of setting your LinkedIn goals, creating your strategy, developing a comprehensive profile and company page, and being an active, welcomed member of the LinkedIn community through the various tools, features, apps, and groups available to you. If you read this book cover to cover, you’ll learn everything that a beginning LinkedIn user needs to know.
I recommend that you read this book from start to finish to ensure you know everything you need to understand in order to effectively use LinkedIn. However, the book is written in a way that allows you to skip chapters or parts and focus only on the sections you need help with. For example, if you’re not interested in creating a LinkedIn Company Page for a business, skip Chapter 4. Similarly, if you have no plans to pay for advertising space on LinkedIn, then you don’t have to read Chapter 11.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn is more than just a beginner’s guide to creating a LinkedIn account. As a 20-year marketing veteran, I guarantee you’ll get access to personal and business marketing tips, strategic planning help, and more. It’s this strategic insight that sets this book apart from other beginner’s guides to LinkedIn, and you can access it at your fingertips!
How This Book Is Organized
Part 1, Carving Out Your Space on LinkedIn, begins by posing an important question: “Why LinkedIn?” The answer is likely to be slightly different for each person who reads this book because each person has slightly different goals for their LinkedIn efforts. Thus, Part 1 starts by helping you define your LinkedIn goals and put a strategy in place to reach those goals. Next, you learn how to create a powerful profile and Company Page (if you need one for your business) so you can begin to develop your online visibility and build your LinkedIn network of connections. Without an audience, your LinkedIn efforts will go unnoticed. No worries, you’ll find your audience if you follow the steps and tips provided in Part 1.
Part 2, Building Your Reputation and Community, is where you learn how to turn your static LinkedIn profile into a powerful communication tool where you can tell your story, develop your reputation, build a network of interested people, and establish your own online influence. Using groups, LinkedIn Answers, apps, recommendations, and more, you can turn your LinkedIn profile into a brand-, business-, and career-building powerhouse.
Part 3, Marketing Yourself Through LinkedIn, teaches you how to promote yourself, your brand, or your business on LinkedIn the right way. Although excessive self-promotion is frowned upon across the LinkedIn member community, there are ways that you can directly and indirectly market your business or yourself through LinkedIn to increase brand awareness, boost sales, or take your career to the next level. You learn all about them in Part 3.
Part 4, Using LinkedIn for Job Searching and Hiring, covers everything you need to know about finding and applying for a job on LinkedIn or posting a job opening on LinkedIn so you can attract applicants, find the right new employee, and expand your talent pool.
Part 5, Analyzing and Retooling Your LinkedIn Strategy, brings your LinkedIn efforts full-circle by teaching you how to analyze those efforts to learn what’s helping you reach your goals and what needs to be changed or eliminated. You also learn about the various types of free and paid LinkedIn accounts, so you can feel confident that your account gives you access to the features you need to reach your goals.
The appendixes include an easy-to-understand glossary (Appendix A) where you can get definitions to common LinkedIn terminology, and also links to useful resources where you can find additional help and tools are provided (Appendix B).
Extras
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn includes several helpful sidebars to draw your attention to important information. Pay attention to these sidebars when you see them, because they can make your life using LinkedIn easier and enable you to more effectively reach your goals. These sidebars are represented by the following icons:
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DEFINITION |
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QUICK TIP |
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WARNING |
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INSIDER SECRET |
Thank you to my husband, Scott; to my children, Brynn, Daniel, and Ryan; and to my parents, Bill and Carol Ann Henry. Without each of them I wouldn’t be able to do what I do each day and this book certainly wouldn’t have been written. They provide me with the daily inspiration, motivation, and sanity checks I need.
A special thank you goes out to my literary agent, Bob Diforio, for bringing this project to me, and to Tom Stevens, Michael Sanders, and everyone at Alpha Books/Penguin Group (USA) who worked on this book and helped bring it to you.
And thank you to all of my LinkedIn connections for making LinkedIn such a useful and meaningful place to spend time. I’ll see you online!
Special Thanks to the Technical Reviewer
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn was reviewed by an expert who double-checked the accuracy of what you’ll learn here, to help us ensure that this book gives you everything you need to know about using LinkedIn to build your business, brand, or career. Special thanks are extended to Viveka von Rosen.
Viveka von Rosen is a nationally renowned LinkedIn speaker, trainer, and consultant, working with business professionals sharing the secrets and strategies of using LinkedIn effectively. She helps clients create a more powerful presence on LinkedIn, grow a truly useful network, and build connection and relationship strategies unique to their company culture.
Trademarks
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be or are suspected of being trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Alpha Books and Penguin Group (USA) Inc. cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.