Wayne State Graduate School Director of Marketing Nick Mattar shares an overview of LinkedIn and why it is a powerful networking and career development tool. Nick talks about setting up a strong LinkedIn profile, the importance of engaging with others, and developing your own content strategy.

Speaker

Presentation

Transcript

hello everybody and welcome to getting started with LinkedIn this is uh Nick
matar I'm the director of marketing and Communications at The Graduate School here at Wayne State University and
thanks for checking out uh this first video here in the professional development
series uh you know LinkedIn has always been probably my social network of
choice at least since starting at the graduate school and also as a part-time faculty member at the ill School of
Business um you know my thing has been utilizing social media for a
professional gain and also a place to show uh multi-dimensional elements of my
professional personality and today we're going to talk a little bit about how you can get started on LinkedIn um this is
really something that is applicable for people of all um levels of familiarity
on LinkedIn whether this is you starting a a new profile or if you have one and you're just looking to brush up a little
bit on your skills so to begin let's talk a little
bit about LinkedIn usage first we're approaching a billion users on the platform with 200 million of them in the
US that ranks it about fourth or fifth um in the in in the in terms of social
networks I would say if you look at traditional social networks especially those that are
commonly used by Americans probably ranks after Instagram Tik Tok Facebook
and after that here we are the number one professional platform for networking
and connections this is really the a big hub for people between the ages of 25
and 34 so we're looking at Millennials gen Z people that have um been in the
workforce for a little bit but also people that are are looking to grow
within their careers but then also grow in terms of the skill set that they have
in whatever the uh work work it is that they do it's also the number one social
network among Executives and when I say number one this is uh based off of a
survey from last year that looked at people that are actually active it's not
just having a profile because you think about a lot of people that have profiles don't really utilize them um if you look
at a platform like X or Twitter um more than half of people on Twitter don't post they don't tweet they don't X
whatever it is that you call it these days they're just there to look at the other content uh but Executives like
they are on LinkedIn and a lot of them they're actively posting material which
um is pretty interesting if we look at it um from a networking and professional
point of view if we look at the demographic data it's not just people in
the 25 to 34 year old age group you know you do have people that are younger and
people that are older and this has remained pretty fluid I would say over
the last um decade or so I would say 10 years ago it was a little bit more
evenly distributed across the groups um but you know as as more users get on the
platform in general you're going to see some changes and some different Trends in terms of the generations that have
been a little bit more active on a platform if you saw this for any other for any social network you'd see
something similar although you might see some different spikes um for different age groups now you why are people using
it I look at it really there's five main reasons one networking two finding a job
but then you get into some some new things um there's a whole learning
learning World on LinkedIn so if you're looking to learn something new whether that's a skill uh maybe it's something
um that you're able to do online even if it's something as simple as Excel you know that's something where you can
access a lot of free courses on LinkedIn um but also if you have your own business it's a great place to Prospect
and find new customers but this is also where you can connect with colleagues and classmates so um I know for myself
when I was a graduate student the number one thing that I did when I was connecting um with people in my classes is we got
together on LinkedIn and I still see what they're up to today I see a lot of really good content that everybody is
sharing and it's a great way um just to see you know where people are in their lives professionally and you could also
utilize that to your advantage and capitalize on it later on if you realize you know if you're applying for a job
there you're looking for um you from a research perspective if you're looking for any sort of funding and and the
organizations that you're working with you can see hey who do I know there you might know somebody from back in the day
you know this is more of a long-term play or at least I see it that way when it comes to connecting with
colleagues so how about setting up your profile if this is your first time on
LinkedIn or maybe you have a profile that you just set up once in five minutes never looked back uh let's take
a look at what a profile looks like you have a lot of basic elements you have a
header image you have your profile picture your name you have a headline
your location and your connections you also have your company and your school um and
for me you know I um I have my own business as well as uh The Graduate School here so I have that there um and
I went to the University of Michigan for undergrad so that's what I have there now when I am you know looking at a
profile you want to make sure that your profile picture is professional it doesn't have to be a fancy head shot but
it you also don't want it to be something that you might put as your profile picture on Instagram for example
and your header image is also a good opportunity to say something more about you this is just a graphic of downtown
Detroit a in har Plaza from a couple years back you can have it be whatever I don't recommend text Heavy images here
but also remember that this Banner image is only seen when people are on your profile your profile photo is seen
everywhere if you leave a comment um if people search and you know you pop up in the search results that's what
people see they just see this and your name everything else here is
largely uh just on your profile but you want to make sure that your profile is optimized so that whenever anybody
stumbles upon it or searches for it that you are putting your best proverbial
foot forward now there's a lot of other sections in the profile that I'm not going to have time to go through today
but there's an about section if you think about your profile as a resume uh which a lot of people do the about
section is that first introductory sentence or two sentences um I used to
have just a couple words now I have more of a paragraph um the about section is also where whatever you're using
LinkedIn for this is where you really want to hone in on that so for me I'm
really just looking to connect with colleagues and see what what other people are doing doing um in the
marketing world and so my about Fe section is pretty straightforward however um if you are
there looking to say find a job you know and you're clearly open to work as they
like to say you should say that in your about uh section say what your top skills are what you're um what you're
looking for and what your qualifications are on the flip side if you do have your
own business you're looking for funding or something put the put the Salient points that are
going to make people want to keep reading something that will make people a little bit more interested in what you
have to offer as a professional uh now you also have a featured section that's for Content that
you've posted on LinkedIn which we'll talk about later activity which are the is the content that you're posting or if
you like something or you share something your experience so that's work um and education of course and then have
your skills which are self listed so you can put what those skills are and people
can endorse you for skills those don't the endorsing doesn't happen quite as often now as it used to about 10 years
ago was kind of the peak endorsement time when people would go in and oh I'm going to endorse somebody for a skill
that they have for data analysis but we've kind of hit a point where there
are so many different skills and so many different ways that people talk about skills that it's kind of it's kind kind
of faded into the background of LinkedIn uh you can still do that and you can still leave a recommendation those are always going to be important um but
linkedin's become more of a Content platform um more so than just a resume
you know it can be a resume if you want it to be that but you can make it so much
more now I've gotten questions in the past about why I would use get LinkedIn
premium anytime that you get on LinkedIn you're going to be offered a free month of Premium to get started and if you've been on link did before you're
constantly going to be peppered with the oh you should try sales Navigator you should try whatever premium for job
Seekers they have a couple different types of premium and I will say um
unless you are really really really trying to get something out of this like
you're really trying to get some sales or you're really trying to find a job like immediately I don't know if premium
is worth it um the big Advantage though to premium is you see everybody who visits your profile normally you
somebody who's not premium you only see other people that aren't premium who see your profile which is still a good
amount of people however having premium does help when you see like oh a CEO
from X company looked at your profile that is where you get that fear of missing out and you're like oh who was
looking at my profile that is something that doesn't usually happen but it is something that
is possible and so I did want to put that out there you know why it would be worth it but also it's I mean it's it's
a sales it's an upsell um if you're a jobseeker it just puts you at the top of
the pile which can help if you're looking at really really popular jobs but it doesn't really help you grow your
network I'm going to just be really honest about that um you know it's not like your profile doesn't show up um the
premium profiles will probably show up first if someone's searching but if someone's searching for your name
chances are your name's going to you're going to show up towards the top you can also there's no data that's not
available to the to the rest of us you know it's all there it's just really about how LinkedIn packages it and how
that material is disseminated to the appropriate parties and so for sales Navigator you can just do more data
analysis you still get all the same stuff it just isn't put into nice pretty
filters um as you know if um if you actually had
it but let's talk about making connections so you have your profile you have um you're probably not on premium
but how do you now go about making connections there's two types one there
are connections these are people you know that you connect with you go to their profile and you click
connect um that's it it's people that maybe you know professionally you know
personally all sorts of different um um ways you could know them you can also add a little note like hey it was great
meeting you at XYZ event or maybe you know you're at um perhaps you're at The
Graduate research Symposium and you are presenting your research and somebody comes up and you talk to them for a
little bit um and you decide to add them on LinkedIn afterwards you could then say hey it was great to meet you at the
GRS yesterday that way it's a nice reminder to these people who you are
where you saw them and why they should accept your request I can say with
confidence I probably get about five to six requests a day and most of them are salespeople so I have to deny them
unfortunately when this happens sometimes I do accidentally deny and or they call it ignore um people that I do
know because they don't put a note or they put a note that's so Bland and you know boring and generic that I think
that it's a salesperson and so for me it definitely helps if you specify how you
know me from a certain time or instance or whatever it is that you want to call
it then you also have followers followers are the people who probably don't know you but they follow you
because they love your stuff it's similar to following somebody on Instagram on Tik Tok on um Twitter on
anything else they are fundamentally different but at the same time if you connect with somebody you are also by
default following them so an interesting little um two for one there
now when you look at a profile you're going to see followers here with a number and then you're going to see a
500 plus connections if they have that many for some reason connections will never has never changed from this so if
you have under 500 connections it'll say but if you have more than 500 even if it's like 850 um it's just going to say
right there fun fact if you scroll down on somebody's profile you can see how many um people that you are actually
connected to so interesting now there 's also Pages now
if you just created a page or created a profile and you're engaging go and
follow some of your favorite Pages here's the Wayne State University proper page um you we we look at this there's
22,000 followers 167,000 alumni you have your about section by default in now I
work for Wayne State so it says my employer but also you'll see um a little
horizontal row here the little submenu you have home my employer about posts so
companies can post content just like people but then you see jobs if you were to apply for a job on LinkedIn this is
where you could go you could also just go to the jobs tab but if you want to look at a company specifically to see what open jobs they have this is where
you could go to see them a company like Wayne State major
university with thousands of employees probably all always has dozens if not hundreds of jobs open so I don't usually
recommend going this routee if you are looking for a job I would recommend just
going to the jobs tab from the homepage of LinkedIn and searching whatever your
title or you requirements are for the job that you want having said that say
you do apply for a job at a place like Wayne State or another institution take a look at the alumni um or take a look
and see where it says you know the people that you're connected with and how many what connections work there you
might be surprised one at how many people you are connected to that have or do work at an institution but then two
these are the people that you should connect with and get to know a little bit if you're looking for a position
there in a university setting it can be a little bit more challenging because there's so many different departments
and colleges and um a lot of different Administration but it's always worth
getting to know somebody because you never know when you could get then when that person or somebody that they know
could be the reference or recommendation that you need to get your name at the top of a pile this applies to a lot of
different roles obviously I'm in marketing so of course that's a a big piece but even if you're you know
somebody who's if you're applying for a faculty job um you know if you're you're interviewing to be a postto if you're uh
even if you're applying for you know the next level up of of graduate school if
you're a master student you know if you're going somewhere for a doctorate you want to connect with these people because no matter what it is if there's
a selection process involved if somebody recognizes your name that will almost
always benefit you um especially if they know you through something like
LinkedIn so how do we engage with others this is kind of the the age-old
question on LinkedIn because it has fundamentally shifted over the last 10 years or so 10 years ago it was all
about being professional and just saying oh I have uh I have published this this
paper or I'm starting a new job or I'm leaving my old job today it is a lot
more open there's a lot more going on and a lot more content that is
considered socially acceptable on the platform but the core tenants of social media
engagement remain one um just posting content and and updating your profile is
not going to be enough you got to put yourself out there and engage with other users engagements include comments
include liking a post they include sharing a post but hey the way to really stand up
from the noise because LinkedIn is getting really busy right there's 200 million active viewers users in the
United States that's pretty hefty that's a lot of action going on and really the
if you're looking to connect with somebody if you're looking
to meet or get to know somebody you really need to get to know them on
LinkedIn that doesn't mean liking a post that doesn't mean commenting on a post that means taking it one step further
and hey you can direct message them you can direct message them and say hey I
really liked what you said about XYZ whatever the content is um you want to
build a relationship with somebody that is not just done through the public forum it's good to comment it's good to
like stuff and and according to the algorithm if you do comment and or if you message somebody you will see each
other's content more often in the home feed than if you didn't um but I am a
big proponer of using the messaging option uh when it
comes to creating meaningful conversations it's not just saying hey I applied for your job I'd love if you
gave me an interview it's going a little step further and talking about something
that they're going to remember because if you think about it especially in the job hiring world right if I'm hiring
somebody and I get 100 applicants let's say 10 of them message me on LinkedIn like hey I
just app reply just wanted you to know um I might remember those 10 people but
they are they weren't doing anything that set them apart from the others other than they know how to use direct
messaging but if they had started a dialogue with me and talked about something that was at least tangentially
related to the job then I'm going to be a lot more likely to listen
and recognize that name when I'm going through all of the resumés and the cover letters and the same applies to a lot of
different functions that graduate students would would need um would be we
be doing on LinkedIn you know if you're applying for a job if you're looking for funding you know talk to the people that
have that have the power people that are the decision makers those are the people that you want to get to know and and it
might be a fruitless Endeavor you might not get anything out of it but there's also a good chance that you might get
something out of it I don't want to you know make any empty promises here um
I've seen successes and failures on both sides of this but when it comes to engaging with others make sure to go the
extra step and try to do what most other people don't do stand out from the
crowd now you have about 10 minutes left here I'm going to wrap up with my uh
expertise and this is content strategy so if there's one thesis statement if there's one um
hack that you can apply to be successful on LinkedIn it's this publish compelling
and valuable content that informs entertains or motivates that's what you want to
do if you're writing something if you're writing a post right I encourage you to post don't post more than once a day but
if you're putting out a post right you want it to be something exciting something interesting you want something that people will engage with if you
write a post and you go to publish you're like I don't really this is pretty boring but I'll put it out there anyways then nobody's going to like it
if you don't like it how can you expect anybody else to like it instead we have a couple different
fundamental types of posts text obviously type type type text text text
photos upload photo pretty easy especially when you're on your mobile device videos same thing uh LinkedIn has
taken a liking recently to the 9116 vertical video think Tik Tock videos think Instagram reals YouTube shorts
they have also started their own video feed and they don't put all the videos in there but if you upload a 916 video
that gets a high number high I would say engagement rate there's a good chance that it might end up there and really
take off um but I'd like to look at these other ones uh let's jump to the
bottom career updates is really interesting because that is something that will always appear in the feed
LinkedIn loves showing that stuff because you can't really flub it you can't really you know lie and if you get
to start a new job or if you're celebrating X number of years at a company those are the things that will get some really strong
engagements but then in between you have documents presentations and carousels those are all done through the add or
upload um document uh button and those do pretty well because
you can upload if you gave a presentation and you presented your research somewhere why not upload the
presentation as a PDF to LinkedIn you can share it with the people there
that's always a good way to do it um or if you have I mean I don't just like a word doc or something textual but
anything that is visually stimulating or informational that's the kind of stuff that people want to see and that's why
they are on LinkedIn more now than ever before example I put out a presentation here
where I showed how to create content um save a lot of time in creating content with AI you know that's the type of
that's that what you're seeing on the screen as a post um and you can scroll you know left to right and see all the
different slides that I presented with nothing really I mean this I had to
uh black out the name and the title so you kind of lose some of this but you might have seen I'm l in one of these
Graphics oh someone starting a new position these things always do really well highly recommend if you are ever
starting something new um or you whatever your career update is
definitely post it to LinkedIn and if the way to do that is you go in you edit your profile you add experience like a
new job for example new company starting date and then LinkedIn will ask you it'll prompt you say hey do you want to
publish this as a new post and then you do you press okay and then it's up there
and it will probably do some really nice numbers for you you'll get some good engagements get people coming out of the
woodwork that you haven't talked to in years commenting and um you know mentioning uh you in your post just
saying congrats and and it's really probably the best part about LinkedIn where uh people tend to celebrate others
accomplishments it's definitely a um positive community in that
sense um last couple of slides here you know what should you
expect so first off when you post something you write a post um only 10 to
20% of your connections are actually going to see it so if you have 200 connections
don't expect more than about 50 to see it off the bat and you can see on a published post like how many Impressions
now don't confuse Impressions with reach Impressions is total views reach is number of people unique people that saw
it but vertical videos or photos or those are the ones that are going to do
a little bit better um they want you LinkedIn similar to every other social network they want you to post more video
more content that will be inherently more interactive and engaging with an
audience um but also the more you engage with others the more engage engagement
you're going to get from others um I did a little test of this myself where I post it every day for two weeks the
first day I spent the first 30 minutes before posting anything engaging with
other posts I would like them I would comment them I wouldn't share them but I'd sent out a couple DMS um just
showing people that I exist and um putting myself out there and then I would post post something whatever a
photo text whatever did pretty well um but then the
second week I didn't do any of that I just posted I didn't engage with others
and I saw about a 50% drop in engagements on my post week to week so
that really showed me that the more I'm engaging with others beforehand the more they're going to engage back with me and
the reason being you know if you comment or DM the more people see your profile
it's not like oh I'm going to go check this person out um the algorithm is going to set into motion a little bit
higher um higher percentage of people that are going to see your stuff so if
somebody who H somebody who's connected to you who hasn't seen any of your content in years sees that you commented
on someone else's post they are more likely to see your content now in their feed than they were before um it's just
an algorithmic thing and it's something that I've been trying to to master um and really kind of corner recently but
this is about as good as I can get also when you're capitalizing on the
algorithm you can post I would recommend up to three times per week you don't have to you can just start with once um
don't post more than once a day and if you can try to actually publish your posts in the morning people don't
usually go on a LinkedIn at night and they don't usually go on um you know in the middle of the day um I mean they do
go out they not you know between like 2: and 5:00 p.m. there's not as much engagement really the time to go on
LinkedIn is from early in the morning probably 7:00 a.m. all the way until around lunchtime after that engagement
tends to slip if you can tag people that's great you tag them just like you would in any other social network um but
if there's one thing I can tell you not to do is to do not put links and posts if you put an external URL into a
LinkedIn post the algorithm is going to shut that down and um unless you get unless it's the greatest Post in the
world which I've seen a couple it's just not going to do very well you're going to be disappointed with what you
find um but what about AI you know that's the question um you can use AI uh
generative AI for to help you summarize longer articles and I have definitely seen AI generated content today on
LinkedIn um they can give you good brainstorming ideas they're good good for coming up with options however I do
not recommend using AI to write content uh today we're seeing more um AI content
Checkers out there on social platforms and so um first off you know using AI to
write a piece of content for you takes away the authenticity and the human element of it but also um there is you
know there's a there's a chance that eventually the algorithm is going to catch up with us and it's you know it's
going to stop posts that are clearly generated by artificial
intelligence you know when you're looking at this um just to kind of wrap up here um this is what your posting
page looks like you know you you pull up the little dialogue box and you can do anything here you can add an emoji you
can add an image you can add an event celebrate something all this stuff and the little plus sign is where you would
add um a document right this is this is really where the magic happens and when it
comes to content and when it comes to LinkedIn you can do all those things that I've talked about but really to
hearken back to my statement from earlier in the section you want to publish something that people are going
to get value from something that will resonate with your audience with your connections um a lot of people on a lot
of social networks have lost their way in this in in this world of noise and
trying to go viral and people just think oh I just need to post but you need to post with a purpose and you need to post
something that matters but still matters to you but also matters to the people
who are going to see it that is how you can really capitalize take advantage of
LinkedIn no matter what you use it for no matter what area of um business or
education or research that you're in LinkedIn is as something for everybody
as long as it's more professional it's becoming one of the most popular social networks in the USA
and for me it's it's certainly opened a lot of doors and opportunities I hope
that this presentation will help you get a little bit closer to that as well and I thank you today for checking out this
quick V half hour video and always feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have so thank you
very much and uh you know have a good rest of your day