Change is never easy, is it? But if there’s one New Year’s resolution I’m proudly sticking to, it’s the one about making better use of LinkedIn to manage my personal brand and find like-minded people to support me in my work.
And, for many smart people, using LinkedIn better takes little more than remembering to use the platform more regularly and with a curiosity to uncover smart ways to ‘hack’ the platform to serve their personal or business goals.
So, in the spirit of keeping things insanely simple, try this 3 step process:
- Go to www.linkedin.com and update your personal profile so it reflects the ‘you’ you’d love to be in 2015
- Set www.linkedin.com as the homepage in your browser and put the app front and centre on your smartphone (this will help you get into the habit of discovering great features on the platform more regularly)
- When, and only when, you feel you’ve outgrown your free LinkedIn account, consider whether you could justify getting a paid-for premium account. But, if you do decide to upgrade, be sure to sniff out the secret Personal Plus or Spotlight account types to save some money. Check out this page for advice on how to do this.
That’s it. I rarely, if ever, meet a business professional who cannot benefit from using LinkedIn better. Maybe it could help you achieve more this year too.
Good luck!