Below, we will go through some basic things that you may find helpful when getting started with LinkedIn. Make sure that you fill in all fields in your profile.
If you need help filling in your profile and changing your settings, there are many instruction videos available online.
A profile photo is important. For someone visiting your profile, your profile photo is their first impression of you. In addition, profiles with a profile photo receive more views.
Use a photo with a good likeness and a size of at least 400x400 pixels. LinkedIn has its own guidelines for professional profile photos that you are welcome to take a look at.
You can also add a cover/background photo to your profile.
This could be a photo that represents your field, or one of AU’s buildings, e.g. Edison. You can search for photos in AU’s photo archive.
Be aware of copyrights. You can also find photos on different online photo services such as Unsplash og Pexels.
The cover photo must be at least 1584x396 pixels.
It’s a good idea to use photos or graphics in LinkedIn posts.
As a general rule, posts with photos of people perform better than posts with photos of e.g. buildings (but how well a post performs depends on many different factors).
Images in posts (single or multi-image) should be either 1080 x 1080 pixels (square) or 1920 x 1080 (broad format). Images with other dimensions can be used as well, but they will be cropped automatically when they are uploaded. Only use images with a good resolution so that they do not appear pixillated.
You can use the free version of the online tool Canva.com to find inspiration for images and make sure that they have the right format for the purpose.
If you want to make specific people or companies/organisations aware of a post you have created, you can do a so-called mention. In everyday speech, this is referred to as tagging someone.
You do this by writing @ followed by the person’s name, after which you can select the person from a dropdown list. You can tag both personal profiles and company profiles.
When you do this, the person or company will receive a notification, which will increase the chances of them interacting with your post.
Only tag people or companies for whom you believe your post is relevant.
When you create posts about something related to your work at ECE, you are very welcome to tag ECE’s LinkedIn profile.
You can add hashtags in the text or at the bottom of your post. Hashtags are searchable and help categorise content.
The optimal number of hashtags is 3-5, which means that it affects the reach of your post negatively both if you have fewer and if you have more hashtags than 3-5.
It may be a good idea to invent your own unique hashtag such as #PetersDigitalTwins. It doesn’t matter if you use uppercase letters, lowercase letters or a combination, but it can increase readability if you use uppercase letters to indicate a new word.
Below you can see some suggestions for hashtags that you can use in your posts (remember that the optimal number of hashtags is 3-5):
By being active on LinkedIn through liking and commenting on other people’s posts, you increase the chances of people seeing and interacting with your content.
You like other people’s posts by clicking the “thumb up” icon below their post. If you hover your cursor over the “thumbs up” icon, you can select reactions that are different from a thumbs up, e.g. "Celebrate" and "Love".
You can also comment on other people’s posts by clicking on the “Comment” icon and writing a comment.
The person who has written the post will receive a notification.
Shared posts perform significantly worse than posts created by yourself, while the post you share will gain slightly larger reach. You can share posts written by others by clicking the arrow below their post.
If you want to share a post, it’s a good idea to:
In this way you increase the probability that your shared post will be seen by your own network.
There is no recipe for the perfect post, but we have listed a few parameters below, which can help to ensure that your posts receive the attention you deserve:
In principle, there are no limits to what you can write about, but if you want to use LinkedIn in a professional context, here are some ideas for possible topics:
The number of connections you have on LinkedIn affects how many people will see and react to your posts. It is completely up to you to set your own network strategy and decide the profiles with which you wish to connect. LinkedIn also helps by continuously presenting you with new possible connections.
Below are some suggestions for groups with which you may consider expanding your network:
When you send a connection request, it’s a good idea to add a note (“Add a note” button) before clicking send to introduce yourself and to explain why you’re interested in connecting.
You also have the option to simply follow a person (by clicking the “Follow” icon below the person’s profile).
This will allow you to see the person’s posts in your feed, but you will not be a part of the person’s network. Company profiles are only available to follow.