Archive for the Career Development

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There are so many businesses out there that started before the advent of the internet and are still going strong even today. But even the strongest businesses need to make changes to adapt to the online market or else competitors will gain the edge and these businesses that refuse technological change will end up fading away. With the current economic issues, more companies are striving to make that huge leap and take their business to the digital world.

Transitioning your business to the online world is by no means a simple task. You need to first analyze your current business flow and see how that can fit on the web. Then you need to a professional design website that represents your business for brand awareness. Some minor adjustments to your logo and branding may be needed as well. This is just some of the things you need to do to make the jump. Although it is not impossible to do, the whole process easily discourages business owners especially if they are not very computer literate or not willing to invest so much in making the transition.

Thanks to LinkedIn, many tools that are offered free from its service can be used to easily place your business on the map. Here are some easy tips for starters on how to set things up right away.

Fill up your Professional Profile

As a business owner, you are face of your business and people will be checking you out to see the person behind the business that you are trying to promote. Make sure all of your information is as complete and accurate as possible. Include things that will impress viewers like your history and the company history as well as major milestones that you have personally took part of. Logos and other elements that you used to promote your business always helps.

Network with all of your Current and Past Colleagues

Although your profile can make a great impression, not everyone will take your word for it and if you are new in LinkedIn, you need to do more than just completing your profile. There should be some people that are familiar with you professionally and the business that you are representing. See if those people are in LinkedIn by using its search facilities. Find any professionals that you know and trust to convince other people that your information is indeed true. If you can’t find anyone, you can invite them too and build your businesses together. Don’t limit yourself to just colleagues; reach out to your former clients and get them in your contacts list.

Join LinkedIn Groups

Even the newest LinkedIn users can be exposed to hundreds if they get into the LinkedIn groups. Join big groups that are similar to your business description and see how others think. Remember that you joined LinkedIn to set up your business and give it exposure.

These simple steps should already jumpstart your business and the steps never involved any complicated tasks like building a website. But if you want to make it big in LinkedIn, learning these skills will help greatly and can be surprisingly easy to do. Observe other businesses that are similar to yours and observe how they use LinkedIn and adapt.

Well over 26,000,000 million people and businesses are using Linkedin.  If Linkedin is a place to be “found” or find people”, wouldn’t it be interesting to know how some of them are using it?  Here is a quick list of 7.  There are many, many, more ways which we’ll cover in future posts, but let’s start with our first seven.

1. Find industry news or follow “thought leaders” – focus on your particular industry or for some general “gurus”
2. Increase your credibility – use it like reality tv – have people follow your significant business moves through the “what are you working on now function”
3. Increase your web traffic – use Linkedin to drive traffic to your blogs, web sites, etc
4. Idea Generator – use Linkedin Answers to get ideas for articles and posts to your own blog
5. Informal Advisory Board – use Linkedin Answers to get with a variety of expertise to answer your questions for free
6. Enhance your brand – it’s about giving more than you are getting
7. Competitive intelligence – follow your competition, learn what they and/or others in your market are focused on

We’ll be adding more, but in the interim, feel free to let us know how you are using it.

LinkedIn is more than just another social networking site in the Internet. It can actually help you in your career development. There are around 20 million professionals connected by LinkedIn. With millions of professionals out there that you can connect with, you can make your career grow with the help of LinkedIn and other professionals.

Your LinkedIn profile maybe considered as your online resume. As a professional, your educational background, your organizational and company affiliations and other important professional information may be shown in your LinkedIn profile. This way, other professionals and employers can easily learn who you are and what you have to offer.
You can also increase your visibility by adding keywords that are related to your profession and to what you do best as a professional. If employers and people who are looking for a resource person related to your field will search for those keywords, you get a better chance of being the first person on the list.

Connect and grow your network. From your email address book, you can easily add friends to your LinkedIn network. You can also search friends who were employed by the same company you are connected with right now. There should be at least 50 people in your first degree connection in order for you to maximize your use of LinkedIn. Anything less than this would just make you another one of those less effective users of LinkedIn.

Use LinkedIn Answers to the Max. Just like Yahoo Answers!, LinkedIn has LinkedIn Answers that allows people to post questions to the network. If you have any concern in your career development or in the way you do your work, you can just use this feature and solicit answer from all sorts of professionals in your network. You can also answer the questions posted by other people in the network so that people can notice what you know and what you have to offer.

LinkedIn is one of the best features of Web 2.0. It connects people and gives them a chance to get together for professional and work-related reasons. With its 20 million users worldwide, it would be great to connect and promote your own professional expertise.