LinkedIn

LinkedIn is to your professional life what Facebook is to your social life. In my presentations I often say LinkedIn is a professional Facebook. People are usually more familiar with the latter, and it serves as a good way to explain the former. It starts like any other social media site, you may log-in or create an account. All you need is an email address and a password. After you create an account you can start to build your LinkedIn profile. This is basically like building your resume. In fact, if you have a resume you may wish to just use that information. It is important to keep information consistent. Personally, I try to keep my LinkedIn profile and resumes in sync. They are not exactly the same, however. Resumes should be tailored to a specific position, whereas LinkedIn can serve as a comprehensive outline of your background. The added bonus of LinkedIn is that it appears at the top of Google searches.

There are many books about the details of how social media works, and these books cover specifically Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you are new to technology, check out one of these books. I would recommend "Branding yourself" by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. It is straight forward and easy to read. Also "The Tao of Twitter" by Mark. W. Schaefer, which will change your social media life. If you are already familiar with some social media, just jump into LinkedIn. You will be able to figure it out. Here are some of the highlight to get you started:

• Connections - In LinkedIn you 'connect' with people instead of friending or following. The secret to connections is maintenance. It may be cool to have five thousand Facebook friends. However in the LinkedIn world you want quality not quantity. Choose connections that benefit you professionally and interact with them on a regular basis.
• Profile Sections - You can adjust which sections appear at the top of your profile. Choose the sections most relevant to your career field and place them at the top.
• Companies - LinkedIn has a company tab at the top. Here you may search for companies that interest you, or you may just search keywords like Study Abroad, for example. Then a list will populate of companies which have pages on LinkedIn. You can follow these companies for updates. Find a few you are interested in and follow them. Or maybe even some outside of your field. I follow John Deere and Caterpillar; side effect of living in Iowa, I suppose. If you work at a company, which has a page, you may list that page in you work experience and a nice logo will appear next to you job title. Company pages also list current employees of that company. Did someone say new connections?
• Groups - Groups are similar to Company pages however they may be started by anybody. It is a great way to find like-minded connections. Just search, join, and engage.