Navigating LinkedIn Like a Pro: 4 Tips on Improving Your Online Presence

Living on the edge of the digital age is both breathtakingly amazing and scarily difficult. With each technological perk comes a nuisance, which if we do not act appropriately on, it could end up damaging our online presence rather than add to its value.

If you’re a professional in this day and age, there is a high chance you have a LinkedIn profile. It’s such a valuable tool, sort of like Facebook but for work, and is a great website for networking and finding job opportunities. Everybody from white collar to blue collar workers these days have a LinkedIn profile setup, but not everyone have fully utilized the site’s many powerful features, free or otherwise.

As with most social media sites, there is a good way and a not so good (or more aptly, poor) way to use LinkedIn. Think of it as any other site that could make or break your career depending on how you use it. Sometimes, we may not even be aware how certain habits on this site may do harm at all!

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when navigating through LinkedIn – improve your online presence and avoid any techie mishaps!

LinkedIn, while it is a social media platform, should also be taken quite seriously. It’s not wise to mindlessly click and send requests to random people you do not even know. This isn’t just some other social media platform – make sure you either know the person or genuinely want to connect with them. Put yourself in their shoes – how would you feel when random people just keep adding you? There is also a feature called InMail which allows you to send a message to people first, so try that before going to all extremes. Actually connect with a person and not just because of the “Connect” button.

Rather than build massive lists with your LinkedIn connections, make sure to actually prioritize the quality of these connections than the quantity. It’s a good rule of thumb in general, and it most certainly applies to this professional social networking. Don’t just go and collect people for the sole purpose of bombarding them with requests – it may or may not seem to be spam in their eyes.

Before accepting any requests on LinkedIn (or even in any other social media site), think carefully first. It may seem like an ego boost seeing all those connection requests, but you have to remember to check thoroughly – there is a huge chance you do not know the reason or reasons those people are attempting to connect with you.

Think of this as the inverse situation of our point above. It isn’t advisable to just go sending connection requests to people you don’t even know. This is probably one of the most common LinkedIn mistakes, even with all the filters the site already has when asking how you know this person. Remember our rule above, quality over quantity?