I am forever, it seems, banging on about how important it is to be visible, whether you expect to get a new job, help with your existing one, to keep informed about your field or whatever.
Well this random statistic from LinkedIn might interest you.
People who are moderately active participants on LinkedIn groups get four times the number of profile views when compared with their passive counterparts.
“What are LinkedIn ‘groups’?” I hear one or two of you say. Oh dear. Well being registered on LI and having a profile is a tiny part of the proces of engaging there. Groups are where collections of people with a common interest gather together to exchange information and discuss topics of mutual interest. There are groups based around the Alumni of courses, universities, and employers. There are groups based around common interests; such as operations management, sales and (often quite specific aspects of) marketing. There are some based around local areas; there’s about a dozen for Oxfordshire businesses, for instance. And so on. If you can’t find one that suits your need then you can always create one, though that is often a slow process to build membership and you might be better compromising slightly to join a closely related group.
If you register for a free membership of LI then you can join up to 50 groups. If you are looking for a job, then I’d argue that you’d be daft not to join the full quote – if some aren’t active then you can always leave and join another – it’s called experimentation.
If you just want to boost your engagement with your professional discipline, then you might only join a handful. The choice is yours.
But key to getting anything substantial, personally, out of LI is for people to see your profile and then for you to engage in dialogue (that’s a two-way conversation) with them. And the statistic from LI is pretty clear – participate and people will look at your profile. You then just need to make contact and have those exchanges. More on that another time, but for now… get joining!
Best wishes
Graham Wilson
the-confidant.info | executive-post.info
