In the past, advancing your career required a lot of social networking in the most traditional sense - mingling with people and going out to conferences to engage with others in your field. Nowadays, most professionals prefer to do their social networking on LinkedIn. 

Anyone can start a profile, and market their expertise on the platform to interact with people in their chosen field. Users can also make use of third-party apps such as SocialGreg to kickstart their LinkedIn profile. If you’re new to LinkedIn, here are a few tips to keep in mind so that you can reap the most benefits of professional networking online.

Keep It Professional, And Specific

Refrain yourself from posting irrelevant and unprofessional content on LinkedIn. Remember that the platform is created for people to interact on a professional level, so others will not appreciate memes, jokes, or other inappropriate content. 

It’s best to think of the platform like your workplace - so keep everything professional. Additionally, try to stay within your field. For example, if you’re an engineer, try keeping your posts about engineering and other related subjects. It’s your chance to showcase your knowledge and expertise. So it will not do you any good to be posting about completely unrelated topics.

Search Engine Optimization

All content on the internet benefits from benign optimisation for search engines. This is already standard practice for everything from website content to social media content of all types. That means you should be researching the keywords that people are using to find people in your field, and using them in your content. 

You should have easily readable content on your profile at all times, and if you add videos don’t forget to caption it (don’t use auto-generated captions). Search engine optimization means making content more accessible for search engines to search through it and index it. This also makes it easier for people to find your services because you are using the same input (keywords) that they are using.

Profile Pictures Are Important

We’ve all heard that a good, strong handshake is a great way to make a first impression. As we move to online communication, your profile picture replaces a handshake in this manner. 

Studies have shown that professionals prefer profile photos that show the eyes (so skip the eyeglasses) and they do not prefer far-away landscape photos. That means, that your facial features should be clearly visible on your profile photo - much like a CV photo. 

Here too, you should keep everything professional, so skip the fun party photos. As you can see, marketing your skills on LinkedIn is not the hardest thing in the world. The most important thing is that you should keep everything as professional as possible. 

Don’t forget to interact with others on the platform, by liking their posts and sharing the ones you deem worthy. You can also recommend other professionals you have worked with, and they will probably return the favor. In this way, people searching for someone in your field will be able to find you much more easily.