What's the Purpose of LinkedIn, After All? | Christine vs. Work

0:00Christine:I was scrolling through LinkedIn today and I had to wonder, wait, why am I on this platform? Tell me. Why? What is this? What am I doing here? It is not really fun. I see someone is following another company, but I'm on it every day, all the time. There's a sponsored like ad. Why though? If you think about it, LinkedIn is this like kind of dorky social media cousin of all the platforms, but it's, you know, where you're a professional and you go to connect and network and maybe find things about jobs and it's like a resume place. I just have to ask myself, am I doing this right? Am I using LinkedIn properly?

0:50So when I look at my profile, you know, there's some thoughts.

0:54Christine:No, I'm not reading this super closely because I think I might... No, no, it's too... I can't read... No, okay. About me. I put all the people and pieces in place to produce stellar content for deeply targeted audiences, thereby growing and feeding an engaged and loyal community. I work best in deep thinking, fast moving, mission driven teams. That's the first of four paragraphs. How many experiences do I have under my background? Okay, one, two, three, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. There's also more that I didn't put on here. I need help with LinkedIn. I need to find an expert who can answer all my questions because, you know, I'm on it, but clearly I don't understand it.

1:46LinkedIn is a place where you reach second and third degree connections and beyond without having a large following. As far as if you're comparing it to other platforms, it is significantly easier to gain traction on LinkedIn.

1:59Christine:This is Madeline Mann. She's a human resources leader, and she's the host of Self-Made Millennial on YouTube, and she teaches personal brand management and thought leadership techniques on LinkedIn. A disclaimer, this is not sponsored in any way by LinkedIn. First things first, why should I even be on LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a place for personal branding. So it is a place to say, here is the value I add to the world. And it makes you so discoverable and connect to people where in times pre-LinkedIn, you would have never been able to get in contact with that person. I think for most people, LinkedIn is that place you go when you're looking for a job or you're hiring.

2:41Christine:And that's certainly the way I viewed it. But Madeline, unsurprisingly, disagrees. There are people constantly scouring LinkedIn wanting to give you opportunities, wanting to, you know, have you come on their YouTube channel or wanting to give you your next job or wanting to have you be a lot of my, you know, my students have been expert witnesses in trials, like really cool opportunities. and because LinkedIn is a search engine. And so you are missing out on sitting on your butt, watching TV and having opportunities come to you without really any outbound effort. I actually had Madeline audit my profile.

3:20Christine:How would this thing look to a pro? Give it to me straight. Okay, sounds good. The photo with the headline is the true most important parts that you really want to first get because those are the things that are going to make someone click. The photos that perform the best on LinkedIn that attract the most opportunities are ones where you're looking directly at the camera and smiling. Madeline also strongly suggests checking your privacy settings, especially the visibility of your profile photo. You want it to be visible to the public, not just a subset or just your connections. Your headline is effective in saying what you do currently, but I would love to see a few additional keywords.

3:59Some keywords you could add is the industry you work in, or maybe some, maybe journalism would be a word or something else that kind of pertains to what you do. And then what I like to add at the end is a unique value. Maybe it could be that you are the creator or the lead of this programming, right? Or something like that, that is really unique to you. For your about section, almost every sentence, you want it to be where it's impossible that someone else could have written it about themselves. So instead of saying I work best in deep thinking environments, maybe say when I was at X place, we had a deep thinking environment where I was able to build out this and that.

4:41Christine:How many experiences do I have under my background? Okay. One, two. Oh, yeah. You have to click several times to get all the way. Oh, my gosh. And you keep going. What an adventure. Okay, great. I'm with you, Christine. I have had at least over 15 jobs in my life. I deleted almost all of them from my profile. We want to tell a cohesive narrative and a story. Madeline said my profile overall wasn't too bad, but there was, if anything, just too much information. And she told me that the profile is not there to tell your full story, but to tell your best story. Okay, I have a lot of work to do. I've taken her advice and I've broken it into eight steps.

5:29Christine:I'll replace my photo with one where I'm actually looking at the camera, and I'll also add a banner image. Something simple. I'll rewrite my headline, job title, company, keywords about my industry, and a specialty. Be super specific in the about me section. You want to write something that not anyone could say, so avoid cliches. I work great in teams. 4. You want to craft your narrative. You want to tell your best story, not just your full story. 5. You want to post at least once a week. And when you do, try to draw from your personal experiences and maybe a little vulnerability to spark discussion and others to share.

6:11Christine:6. Give. Don't ask for, but give recommendations. 7. Review and update your profile quarterly, because your goals or focus may change. This is tough. Being on LinkedIn is about opportunities. And if you're not there, it's not gonna hurt you, but you may lose out on those opportunities. I'm exhausted, no lie. Feels really good to get this work done, but I know I won't see the results or the huge transformation for a while. It's a long game. I have a lot more knowledge about this. Hopefully you find this helpful as well. And, you know, maybe we can keep each other accountable, support each other, give each other tips.

6:55And you knew this was coming.

6:58Christine:You could follow me on the old link. If you're still watching, one, thank you. But two, I'm really curious. Like, what do you want me to explore? Like, what problems do you have at work? I love to solve them. Please leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you have any other ideas, throw them my way. All right. Peace out.