LinkedIn is an excellent social media platform to engage with clients, grow your professional network, find new learning opportunities and build your credibility as a training professional. But if you’re just starting out on LinkedIn, or you don’t have a huge network yet it can feel like your message is getting lost in the noise.
We want to help you make the most of LinkedIn by sharing tips and resources for improving your LinkedIn profile and encouraging engagement within your network.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is now owned by Microsoft; it is a professional networking platform that’s mainly used for:
- Recruitment and job opportunities
- Professional development
- Meeting other professionals within your industry
- Engaging with others in your industry around the world
- Sharing and consuming valuable content
- Discovering new concepts, facts, statistics and theories
- Having discussions and networking with others
- Sales and marketing
LinkedIn has always had a professional focus and it’s utilised by a wide range of industries from accountants to zoologists.
Using LinkedIn is a great idea for training professionals, but if you’re currently thinking: why do I need LinkedIn and how can I make use of it?
Throughout this article, we will discus the benefits of using LinkedIn as a training professional.
Related: How to use Microsoft’s Learning Tools for Free
Getting Started on LinkedIn
Firstly, there are two types of profile you can have on LinkedIn. You can either have a personal profile or a company/organisation profile.
Personal LinkedIn Profile
A personal LinkedIn Profile uses your real name and professional email address. If you have a company-issued email address then you should use this on LinkedIn so that your co-workers can easily connect with you.
If you have a professional headshot or portrait, then use this as your LinkedIn Profile picture. It’s a good idea to be consistent, so if you have a professional presence on other social media (e.g. Twitter or Pinterest) then make sure to use the same profile picture so that you’re easily recognisable.
Alternatively, take a selfie on your phone facing a window on a cloudy day (this is the most flattering lighting, as the sun can create harsh shadows) and use ‘portrait mode’ on your phone. ‘Portrait mode’ will blur the background just like a professional photograph!
Don’t forget to smile!
You should also populate your profile with a cover photo, your career and education history, list your professional skills, list your hobbies and any chnaritable causes that you care about.
Unfinished and incomplete LinkedIn profiles may not show up in search results.
Personal LinkedIn Profile with Creator Mode
In addition to having a personal LinkedIn profile, you can also enable the optional ‘creator mode‘.
From LinkedIn:
Turning on creator mode lets people know that your profile is a source for inspiring content, helping you gain followers.
This is similar to being an ‘influencer’ on other platforms. You can enable this in your account settings if you feel like this is something you want to participate in.
You also get access to some handy additional posting and analytical tools that will help you grow your audience on LinkedIn. This is especially useful for freelancers, self-employed individuals and professional content creators.
Company LinkedIn Page
Company LinkedIn Profiles are for businesses, corportations, venues, charities and brands.
Freelancers, self-employed trainers and contractors who operate using their own names should join LinkedIn with a personal profile.
When setting up your company LinkedIn profile, use a high quality version of your logo as your profile picture to make you easily identifiable.
Encourage members of your team to add their job role and current employment to their own personal LinkedIn profiles so that your brand’s logo will show up on all of their profiles too.
You must have a personal LinkedIn profile before creating a new company LinkedIn page. Follow these instructions for more information.
What Should you Post on LinkedIn?
So, if LinkedIn is professional social media, then you’d probably think this isn’t the place to post selfies and holiday snaps.
Yet, you’d be surprised how much of an overlap there is between personal and professional lives, especially on Social Media! Showing your personality is an excellent way to encourage engagement online.
Here are some ideas of what you can share on your LinkedIn profile. These are suitable for both personal and company profiles.
Commentary on industry news
What’s the latest big piece of news within your industry?
LinkedIn is the perfect place to share your thoughts and commentary on the latest goings on. You can also ask your audience of followers for their opinion to invite comments, discussion and debate on the topic.
Educational blog posts & resources
Have you just written and published a highly valuable piece of content on your website? LinkedIn is a great place to share it!
Most blog posts tend to fall into the ‘educational’ category and your LinkedIn audience want to learn new things. Make sure that your blog posts have a clickworthy title and image that will ‘stop the scroll’ – then follow through with an insightful blog post that your readers will feel compelled to share even further.
Videos
Like every other social media platform at the moment, LinkedIn makes use of video.
Video is an excellent medium because it keeps the viewers on your page for longer, you can make eye contact with the viewer and present information in a visually engaging way.
Short-form video (video that is under 3 minutes long) has taken social media by storm in the last few years and LinkedIn is no exception.
Perhaps you can repurpose one of your blog posts, articles, YouTube videos or podcasts by turning them into a short-form video.
You may have noticed that videos play automatically on LinkedIn. They’re also on mute by default (unless the user has turned the volume up first).
This means:
- You need to ‘hook’ the viewer within the first 1-3 seconds so they don’t just scroll straight past
- You should include text, words and captions on the screen as people may be watching on mute. This can easily be done using your phone with free video editing apps such as CapCut
Controversial Professional Opinions
It may seem counterproductive, but slightly controversial professional opinions can actually boost your engagement on social media!
We certainly don’t mean that you should offend anyone or disagree with proven scientific research – think of things on the more lighthearted side of being controversial.
Things like – when should the milk be added to tea, situations when animations in powerpoint are acceptable, what’s the worst item of stationery, typical office politics, etc.
Relatable memes and comedy
Following on from the previous point, entertainment is equally as important as education when it comes to creating content for social media, and LinkedIn is no exception.
LinkedIn has its fair share of entertaining content alongside the professional and educational pieces you’ll see in the feed.
Memes, gifs and humerous images can be applied to almost any situation. Remember that it’s important to show your personality in your content, using memes and gifs that are highly relatable to those in your profession is a good way to make people smile!
Motivational or inspirational content
LinkedIn is also a great place to share motivational stories to inspire others. Have you got a story to tell?
Have you overcome adversity, challenges and barriers to get to where you are today? Share it here – it’s highly likely that some people will relate to your story and others will feel inspired by it.
Sharing your Learning Progress
Are you currently learning a new skill or changing careers? LinkedIn is the ideal platform to document your progress, the ups, the downs, your proudest moments, your mistakes, etc.
You can also share tips and tricks with others that you’ve learned along the way.
Upcoming events
Share news of your upcoming events, training sessions and courses that your audience may be interested in attending. We often share our latest training courses and upcoming events via our LinkedIn Profile. See this example below 👇
Related: 7 Digital Tools that will make your workshops shine
How often should you post on LinkedIn?
There’s no golden rule here, it’s more important to be consistent with your posting schedule.
Committing to sharing content on LinkedIn 1-2 times per week should be simple enough to slot into your weekly schedule, especially if you’re creating content for other social media platforms at the same time.
Developing your network of professional practice
There are lots of groups you can join based on your professional interests that can help you with your development and improve networking links. As a Education and Training Professional, these are some groups to consider:
Further Education and Training Sector Practitioners Group
Innovation in Vocational Education and Training
You can also follow hashtags which will flag up relevant content to your interests such as #learninganddevelopment #
How to grow your audience on LinkedIn
Here are some tips that will help you grow your audience, expand your network and make new connections on the platform:
- Post regularly and consistently
- Share a variety of educational, entertaining and inspirational content
- Invite all of your co-workers to connect with you (they should appear as suggestions)
- Search for other professionals to connect with in your local area using the search function on LinkedIn
- Change the privacy of your profile from ‘connections only’ to public so that your content can be viewed by a wider audience
- Check your LinkedIn profile settings and make sure that your profile can be indexed by search engines such as Google
- Consider enabling creator mode to let potential followers know that you are committed to sharing high quality content
- Engage with others, leave comments and get involved in discussions
Conclusion on using LinkedIn for Training Professionals
If your LinkedIn profile is currently nothing more than a glorified CV, you’re missing out on what it truly has to offer as a professional social media platform.
LinkedIn has its own culture. You need to spend time being active on the platform to cement your place in your professional community.
Like with any social media platform, you have to dive in to get started. The best way to do this is to sign up, create your basic profile, make some connections and then spend some time browsing the content on the platform for ideas and inspiration.
