Build Credibility On LinkedIn By Answering Questions
As some like to say, LinkedIn is the Facebook for professionals. It’s considered the world’s largest professional network with over 70 million and growing rapidly (a new member joins LinkedIn every second). Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are members and over 90% of companies hire through LinkedIn! It has become one of the most popular social media tools along with Facebook and Twitter.
Most experts agree that the majority of LinkedIn users, similar to Facebook and Twitter users, are not leveraging it properly. On the other hand, those who are, could not be any more satisfied. Look at Oracle’s CFO, who landed his post through his LinkedIn profile. Or Goshido, an Irish Startup that raised $230,000 using only LinkedIn. Amazing, right?
Here’s a tip for how you can get out there and build credibility on LinkedIn so that hopefully one day you can share your success story:
Answer questions
LinkedIn has a question & answer community that many are not aware of. To access it, hover over to the “More” link in the navigation bar on top and you should see it.
After clicking on Answers, you should come to the page with a list of categories in the sidebar. Pick a category that you have expertise in and you should see a list of questions come up that fall under that topic. You can browse through the questions there or you can narrow them down even further by choosing one of the subcategories. What you see are questions that are asked by other LinkedIn users.
Make it a habit to browse through some questions on a daily basis and take some time out to properly answer them. The more questions you answer, the more people will see you as an expert in that industry. The person asking the question also has the ability to choose a “Best Answer,” that appears on the top of all the other answers, which certainly adds to your reputation.
If you’re big on using RSS readers, you can actually subscribe to a specific category on LinkedIn Answers. Go in to the category of your interest and look at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. There should be a “Subscribe” link with an RSS icon. I have my feed set up with Google Reader.
Do you have any other tips to share on how to better leverage LinkedIn? Leave a comment below!
Credit: LinkedIn by the Numbers [Infographic]
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