How to Be Successful on LinkedIn

I joined LinkedIn a few years ago as a way to stay connected with others. My interest at the time wasn’t my career so my page was created more as a means of staying connected with friends than establishing a successful network. After graduating in May of this year I decided it was time to wipe off the cobwebs and put my profile to good use. It took about a month of research, trial and error, and creative writing to get things up in full swing. The last two months have shown tremendous progress so I decided to write an article sharing the results of my adventure in hopes that it may help those in need.

The Results Were In

In less than two months my inbox was filled with job offers and my company rank had increased by 99%. Out of a total of 76,867 LinkedIn profiles, I now ranked in the top 5 or 1% of the entire company in as little as two months. How did I do it? I made numerous connections with companies/people of interest, made an appealing profile, and expanded my knowledge base on effective networking and social media marketing. I made new friends, asked a TON of questions, and shared in the happiness of others success. Furthermore, I learned all about the wonderful tools available on LinkedIn, and how to use them to successfully expand my network.

The Bigger Picture

Before climbing the ranks, my journey started with a simple question.

How can I get people engaged in my content?

I ran a search for relevant articles and found several things that helped me improve my chances for engagement. What I came to find was that in order to get people engaged in what I had to offer I needed to go beyond listing my skills and abilities. I needed to build an appealing brand and a profile that stood out from the rest, but before doing so I needed to understand what my brand would be.

Know the Product That You Want to Sell

When you know what to put out there, it becomes a whole heck of a lot easier to development a method for engagement. Start by exploring what you have to offer and continually add to/redefine that definition each day. If you find that you have a hard time knowing what it is you want to sell, you can always search for successful people in similar roles to see how they define themselves. However, I’ve found that when you believe in yourself it becomes clear what you have to show/offer others. When you are confident in your skills, experiences, and accomplishments it inspires you to create interesting material that others can engage in; it makes it easier to be a storyteller rather than someone just listing skills.

Be a Giver Until It’s Time to Take

Once you know what you’re selling, evaluate the environment you want to be effective in. LinkedIn offers an environment based on giving and taking, this can be used to your advantage in the right situations. For example, endorsements and recommendations can be used to create, build, or strengthen relationships with a connection. You’ll build a stronger relationship by focusing on giving the things you want to take. If you want an endorsement, ask for it by offering it to others first. People are usually nice enough to offer it in return and if they don’t, you are still left with a warm fuzzy feeling of doing something good for someone without receiving anything in return. Furthermore, you may log in one day to unexpectedly find a much-needed job offer from the endorsement that finally decided to return the favor.

Engage, Engage, and Engage Some More

LinkedIn offers tools to be engaged like staying up-to-date with birthdays, new jobs, and promotions. Utilizing these tools is great for two reasons: first, you get to celebrate in the happiness of others by congratulating your connections on their performance, life events, and talents, and second, you make a positive impression on a connection that you may need later on down the road. It’s also important to engage others by means of social interaction. Provide intelligent/humorous material daily for others to feed on. Whether this is in the form of a published post, comment, group discussion, or sharing an article, it will benefit you in more ways than one. Think of it as a free way to advertise your profile. This can be especially helpful if you are posting in circles where your comment/profile will be seen by a large audience. Certain connections will have an extended reach that you can take advantage of. Just be careful not to express inappropriate content, feelings, or thoughts – be professional.

Adding the Masses

Spending time each day adding the right connections is crucial when it comes to successful networking. Don’t just add people you know; add people you want to know and engage with those people. When I first started using LinkedIn, I failed to understand this concept. I only added people I knew hoping that one of those people would help introduce me to the kind of people that I wanted to know, but that never ended up being the case. Don’t wait for things to happen, make things happen. As the saying goes, “If you want to be successful, surround yourself with the right kind of people”; so I added people that I felt would contribute to my success and it ended up being a game changer. However, there are a few things you need to know before adding random profiles.

Don’t Just Add Random People

I focused my efforts on adding people based on job title and company. Since LinkedIn is based on 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd level connections, adding connections that belong to company ‘XYZ’ will start to expand your reach of connections within that company; under the ‘People You May Know’ section you will start to see more populated connections from company ‘XYZ’. This is so effective that I’ve never had to actually use InMail to talk to the people I’ve wanted to talk to because no one was ever out of my network. Moreover, it’s also wise to add people with a wide reach of connections in your field of interest. Recruiters are great for this very reason, they not only open the door to job opportunities, but they give you super powers when it comes to expanding your reach on LinkedIn.

Look the Part

Before you go building your empire you need to look the part. Design and appeal is the foundation for being successful on LinkedIn. The bottom line is your profile needs to stand out; this starts by drawing in a reader with a professional / interesting profile pic and an effective job title. Take for example the awesome people over at Riot Games. This company not only offers a cool work environment and awesome games, but also has an impactful appeal and online presence.

Brittney Sigsworth – Recruiting, Esports at Riot Games

During my search for roles within the tech industry I met Brittney Sigsworth, a recruiter for Riot Games. Brittney has an awesome profile pic that draws you in. It’s the perfect example of a profile that stands out amongst the rest. Furthermore, her job title is clear, descriptive, and focuses on two important things, position and company. When recruiters search for a profile this is extremely helpful for them to find your profile and narrow down their search.

First Impressions Are Important

Once you grab someone’s attention you need to give her or him a reason to stay. This is where the summary comes in- an extremely important and powerful weapon to keep a reader engaged. When done right it has the power to keep a reader engaged rather than make them scramble for the browser’s back-button. The summary is the first thing that people get to read about you, it should have a powerful one line opener followed by an intelligent or personal description of yourself. I’ve seen profiles that list skills in the summary, but I don’t think this is the best method for two reasons. First, a summary that focuses more on humor / story is more interesting to read, and second, you won’t get readers engaged by talking about things they don’t understand; there are sections for this called “skills.”

A Final Word

Being successful on LinkedIn is a combination of being transparent, engaged, and interesting. You should develop a professional space that people want to visit again and again; one they will remember, and one that shows off your hard work and passion. Focus on the creative quality of your material, which allows you to stand out in a never-ending sea of unoriginal profiles. In addition, besides offering an eye-pleasing page, you need to fulfill a reader’s interest by telling a wonderful story about yourself and your accomplishments. Finally, remember that whether you are selflessly engaging or connecting you are extending an invitation for others to discover you.

What strategies have you found to be most effective on LinkedIn?

The Key to a Meaningful Day

“How you start your day, is how your day will go.”

Growing up, I was always told to make the most out of my day. I was told to dream, to never wake up, so I stayed asleep for most of my youth. I missed the teachings on reality and lived my life as a superhero waiting for my chance to rescue a damsel in distress. When I reached the age of reason, I had a hard time understanding life because life had always been reasonless. In one fell swoop, I had lost my cape and my abilities to fly. Things had stop coming naturally to me so I began to try and force the puzzle pieces to fit. It was only after many days of trial and error that I caught a glimpse of the puzzle that I had created; what started out as a masterpiece became a lost cause for concern. The once promising glue that held the pieces together held no more and the puzzle, my life, had come tumbling down.

The Later Years

The later years of the dream became a nightmare caused by a confusing upbringing. As my mind developed, I uncovered a series of lies that were set in place to keep me young and inspired; getting up each day became a challenge. I had to adapt by way of force, I trained my self to stay ambitious, but the more I pushed the more I struggled. Half of my day would be ambitious and the other was half was spent trying to recover from the exhausting expectations that I had set for myself. Something had to change.

Self Discovery & the Battle Within

The time spent deciphering the cold truth left me questioning all sensation. I began to wonder about human perception, which led me to search for answers in an unfamiliar place, myself. Armed with mindfulness, I focused on every breath and sensation, and the thoughtless space in between. In the quietest places you hear the tiniest things; I found thoughts that I had muted. When the time was right I turned up the volume, observed ignorance, and battled it with compassion and wisdom. The thoughts that once held me in place where used as a vehicle for growth and understanding; the mindless child inside of me never stood a chance.

No Regrets Only Lessons Learned

Although this sounds like wasted youth, no time was wasted, the years spent as a lost child drew me a map for the remainder of my life. My life had gone from permanent and linear – to boundless and vertically expansive. The start and end became of little use to me anymore as I placed emphasis on the process, and on the moment. In the blink of an eye I had awakened. No more bad dreams, only reminders of the nights I had them. Out of the ashes arose a series of lessons that had to be learned; the most important one, the man who once saved the distressed now had to save himself.

The Take Away

Starting the day with productivity in mind was not the best idea. I was setting the stage for an anxious day; my productivity would tank from the overwhelming standards. My days would usually end with me having to fight off irritation, anger, and depression. Over time the message became clear – how you start your day, is how your day will go. The key to having a meaningful day has everything to do with how you start your day, not how you end it. This obvious fact seems to get buried under the never ending list of things to do. If you’re searching for more meaning in your day, dig deeper, and start the day by prioritizing the things that matter to you.

How do you start your day? Do your morning rituals help or hurt you?

The Secret to Solving Any Problem

“The real question ends up becoming not about what you are missing from the problem but what you are lacking in yourself in order to see the solution.” -Brandon Meyer

Some days the solutions to your problems are right in front of you while other days you seem to never find them. There seems to be a distinct difference between good days and bad days. On the good days your mind is picking up all the details of a problem. On the bad days you feel the trickery of the mind – judgment, opinions, and illusion sets in and you start to think that something or someone greater is testing you. A random thought arises in your mind… Could these tedious tasks lead to something bigger? In my experience they usually do – a state of freedom. However, that’s beside the point. The focus of this discussion is on balancing the mind, the importance of a break, and trying to answer some of the questions that arise surrounding your search for a solution amongst the chaos of a cluttered mind.

The Typical Scenario

It’s no mystery that breaks are beneficial. After focusing hard on a problem it’s almost mandatory that you allow yourself some time to rest. It’s an all too familiar situation; it’s a process that usually consists of making any excuse to get up out of your chair. When you do you either leave with confidence, exhaustion, or sheer frustration. If you’re fun like me you try to make a game out of it and leave as a reward to yourself after solving the most difficult problem you’ve ever encountered. Other times it seems as if it is required as a preventative measure to not jump out of the nearest window.

Let’s say it’s the latter of two and you’ve considered every option but there is no solution in sight. You step outside to take a walk and on the way you run into a close friend who tells you a funny story. After a laugh or two you make it to the door and step out to observe one of the most beautiful days you’ve ever experienced. The tension in your shoulders seems to disappear as you take a deep breath. Something inside you says it can be done. You return to your desk and upon returning you notice that things seem easier than before you left. All of a sudden the problem with no solution seems to have suddenly appeared. A sigh of relief comes over you and you begin to wonder what you were missing before you went on a quest to gain your sanity back.

Even Einstein took Breaks

Some of the greatest minds throughout history understood what it means to be balanced. One man in particular, Albert Einstein, was known for his ability to focus on a problem for an extended period of time. Although Einstein had this gift, he is also known for taking long walks and observing the world around him. Einstein came to value periods of reflection, his long walks served as a ritual for balance. As he would walk he would observe the world around him, feeding his intuition. It is quite possible that Einstein understood that when you are balanced there exists potential; you can go up or down because you are on a level plane.

A Simple Explanation of Balance

There are many questions that arise surrounding ones ability to optimally find a solution. I like to think that the answer to finding a solution faster has to do with our current state of mind. It’s simple, staying balanced results in a faster outcome because we see more of the problem. When we are balanced we are able to use all the “tools in the shed” not just the hammer. Your attention is fully on the problem and not the distraction.

Stuck in a rut

One of the problems with focusing on a difficult problem for an extended period of time is we tend to get stuck. We focus on a problem and tend to trap ourselves by getting stuck in patterns of thinking, which seem to only use select areas of the brain, areas that are purely logical and less imaginative. We are strongly conditioned from an early age to use one area in particular, our frontal lobes, the area responsible for logic. Using this part of the brain has its benefits, but maximizing our fullest potential lies beyond the use of pure logic. We must remember that, although the world can be described by numbers, it is also felt through sensations. There are many solutions to a problem and to see all of them we should consider other methods besides the ones we get comfort with.

Imagination is key

Imagination is the key to getting unstuck. Einstein once said that, “Logic will take you from point A to point B – Imagination will take you anywhere.” When we use our imagination we reflect, and are able to consider all angles of a problem. We free up the space cluttered by thoughts, fears, and emotions. We open to the moment, to the problem, and to the solution. Trusting our intuition, we imagine the solution and bring it into perspective by utilizing the frontal lobes as a tool. If you are having a bad day and your mind is stuck, consider tapping into your imagination through any means necessary. For some this means taking a walk outside. For others this is having a discussion, coloring a picture, or playing a video game. Since all of our minds are unique you should experiment with the world around you to find the tools that most benefit you.

And finally, take action

My experience with balance at times has led me to see things with a dualistic perspective. When I feel myself going too far to the right I shift left. When I feel that I am heavily caught in the mind I move towards the heart. I take a break and re-approach the problem from a new angle using different areas of my brain and body. The real question ends up becoming not about what you are missing in the problem but what you are lacking in yourself in order to see the solution. Remember that, although the world can be described by numbers, it is also felt through sensations. Take a break; tap into your imagination; balance your mind; and re-approach the problem you are faced with. You must search to find what balances you, hack your consciousness in order to find the solution.

What balances you? Do you use some of the above approaches or have you found other techniques to work for you? I’d love to hear your feedback below.

Useful authors that write and speak about balance: