saidWot's guide to using and interacting on LinkedIn, compiled to assist companies and brands in managing their online reputation.

1. LinkedIn 101
A guide to LinkedIn
April 2012
Compiled by @Etta_Howell for
@saidwotORM

2. LinkedIn: An Overview
What is LinkedIn?
• LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, used by individuals
and businesses to connect with others, share content and promote
products and services.
• It has 135 million members and two more individuals join every
second.
• Your page on LinkedIn is a reputable source that showcases your
experience and capabilities.

3. LinkedIn: An Overview
LinkedIn is used by businesses to:
• Connect and network with their target audience
• Connect locally and internationally
• Promote products and services
• Build brand awareness and expand brand reach
• Share knowledge and establish thought-leadership
• Showcase credentials
• Improve Google CVs through SEO authority
• Find potential employees and promote job opportunities

4. LinkedIn: An Overview
LinkedIn is used by individuals to:
• Find jobs
• Prepare for interviews
• Connect with future and past business acquaintances
• Ask for advice
• Build their personal brand
• Keep informed about industry news and trends

5. LinkedIn as a HR tool.
Some brands or companies rely on LinkedIn as simply an HR tool, although
LinkedIn could be used effectively to:
• Generate leads
• Take advantage of speaking opportunities
• Build business connections
• Do market and competitor research
• Improve SERPs
• Keep informed about events and trends in your industry
• Establish your brand as a thought-leader.
• Promote and sell products and services
Organisations that are using LinkedIn purely from an HR perspective are missing out
on other great opportunities and functionalities.

6. Packages
• There are 4 types of LinkedIn Packages to choose from.
• A package should be chosen according to your business needs.
• Businesses that use LinkedIn on a daily basis to connect with clients or other
businesses (such as recruiting agencies) should consider investing in a
Business plus or Pro package.

7. Setting up a profile/page
• Before setting up your profile, ensure that you
have a well thought through social media
strategy and content plan.
• Be sure to have all the relevant content ready
before setting up you business page. This
includes your business description and
information, contact details, logo, tabs you
wish to create and creative for your banners.
• Once you page is complete, ensure that your
privacy settings are set to “public” to ensure
that your page is easy to find.

8. Employees
• Employees should be motivated to join LinkedIn (If they do not already have a profile),
update their profiles with the relevant business information and follow your brand.
• Employees are custodians for the brand and their personal profiles, achievements and
interaction with the brand will also have an impact on the brand’s image on LinkedIn.
Current and past employees and their profiles are a reflection of the strengths of your
organisation.
• Social media guidelines and an overall social media policy should be provided that
will assist employees in completing and customising their profiles.
• These guidelines include updating their personal profiles with the correct business name
and their designation as well as providing links to the business page.

9. Employees and Spokespeople
The way that employees and spokespeople use LinkedIn have a direct impact on a
company’s LinkedIn success.
Employees should:
• Be motivated to actively participate on LinkedIn: This will aid in building your company’s
presence.
• Update their profiles: Employee stats are available to view publically on LinkedIn. This
includes statistics regarding employees’ education, experience, job function and skill sets
and also compares this to competitor information.
• Update accomplishments and duties: This
can be light-hearted and focussed on current
projects, speaking engagements and upcoming
events.

10. Employees and Spokespeople
Employees should:
• Use the correct company name: This should be an exact match of you company name
on LinkedIn to ensure that the person is displayed as an employee.
• List skills: This is added in the form of
hyperlinks. These show up in your company
statistics and will lead to the company being
known for a specific set of skills if a number of
employees added a specific skill to their profile.
• Customise links: Default titles for links, like
“My Company Website” should be customised
to show the company name.
• Share content: If all employees share your
company’s content, the likelihood that this
content will appear on LinkedIn Today (the
most-shared articles) increases.

11. Ex-Employees
• Employees leaving the company should also be asked to remove the company as
their current employer from LinkedIn.
• This request should be raised during the exit interview.
• Details related to profiles owned by the company but managed by individuals should also
be handed over. This includes profiles for the company’s CEO or specific spokespeople.
• Ownership of these profiles should be agreed upon in legal documentation before the
profiles are created in order to avoid disputes.

12. Protecting your staff
• LinkedIn is often used by recruiters to find future employees.
• Unfortunately, these recruiters will be able to find your employees, whether they are on
LinkedIn or not. This is mainly due to employees registering their details on career
portals.
• The only way to protect employees from any kind of headhunting is to provide the ideal
working environment for them, communicating with them on a regular basis and
address their concerns when possible.

13. Building Connections
Building connections will allow your brand to connect with like-minded people, target
a specific audience, showcase your credentials and expand brand reach and
awareness.
Be proactive about making connections: Instead of waiting for others to connect with
you, rather invite them to become a contact. However, make sure the connection
adds value to them.
Build connections by:
• Including you profile on all communication, including your website, social
media sites, business cards and email signatures
• Connect with current and potential clients
• Motivate employees to follow your brand
• Connect with industry experts and acquaintances
• Join relevant groups

14. Recommendations
Why?
• Recommendations on LinkedIn are the equivalent of references on a CV and is
an easy way to display your strengths and accomplishments.
• Potential clients expect to read recommendations as proof of the quality of your
product or service.

15. Recommendations
How?
• Most recommendations are only written when asked for.
Therefore, ask clients to write a LinkedIn recommendation
when they compliment you on a job well done elsewhere.
• It is best to ask for a recommendation in a personal
manner. Thus, rather contact the person telephonically or
via email instead of sending out the generic LinkedIn
message.
• It is important to only ask those who truly know your
work for a recommendation in order to ensure that
recommendations are true and obtained in an ethical
manner.
• Explain clearly why you are looking for a recommendation.
Businesses should also write recommendations. This will
increase findability as it exposes your business to the
person you are recommending’s network and future network.

16. Best Practice: Do’s
• Ensure that your page is up to date and complete: This will increase your
findability. Remember to also create your business description and all content
with the reader in mind and make your page public.
• Update the content and creative on a regular basis.
• Be consistent in the creative and content used across platforms.
• Change you default URL: Set up your personalised URL. This will ensure that
your page is easy to find and appear more friendly and professional.
• Promote your page: LinkedIn provides buttons, HTML code and e-mail
signatures that will help you promote your presence on this platform.
*Note: there is no Spell Check or grammar capabilities in LinkedIn. Ensure that all content is proofed
before uploading. *

17. Best Practice: Do’s
• Cross-promote: Your LinkedIn page is just a
part of your total communication strategy. Ensure
that this platform is easily found by promoting it
on your other platforms and vice versa.
• Join groups: Joining relevant industry groups
will allow you to showcase thought-leadership,
target your communications, expand your
findability and keep in touch with industry trends,
issues and updates.
• Make sure to add value to the group by posting
content on a regular basis.

18. Best Practice: Do’s
• Create Content: Add value to your network by
uploading interesting information and articles
and showcasing your thought-leadership.
• Pay attention to LinkedIn messages:
Individuals regard LinkedIn messages to be a part
of essential business correspondence and
relevant messages should thus be responded to
soonest.
• Invite people to your network on a regular basis.

19. Best Practice: Do’s
• Use keywords: Use keywords and tag
content to increase your findability.
• Install applications: Apps will help your
brand to showcase your knowledge.
Install apps such as wordpress or a blog
link (that will automatically share your
most recent blog posts), Twitter (that will
automatically post all your tweets to your
LinkedIn page as well) and SlideShare or
Googl ePresentation (to automatically
share recent documents, presentations
and videos).

20. Best Practice: Don'ts
• Spam: Do not post content on irrelevant sections and groups on LinkedIn.
• Do not automatically subscribe your connections to your newsletter or invite
individuals that you do not know.
• Do not provide people with the
same content over and over
again.
• Do not send product and
service messages to people
that have not asked for them.

21. Best Practice: Don’ts
• Do not have multiple profiles: Ensure that you only set up one page for your
brand to avoid confusion. If it fits your brand to have more than one page, for
example pages for different countries,
ensure that these are properly named
and easy to differentiate.
• If multiple profiles make sense for you
brand, ensure that creative, tone, wording
and language is used consistently across
profiles.
• The audience should be able to identify
that the profiles belong to one brand, but
have different functions or are aimed at
different audiences.

22. Best Practice: Don'ts
• Use canned messages: Personalise invitations and messages instead of
using the default messages. This displays professionalism and attention to
detail.
• Share anything that you wouldn’t want a future or current client or employee or
competitors to read. Make sure all the content is appropriate for the general
public.

23. Best Practice: Who is doing it right?
Deloitte
• Deloitte makes great use of the Product and Service Spotlight as well as tabular
layout on their page.

24. Best Practice: Who is doing it right?
Google
• Google uses a banner
that draws attention to
their page.
• They also use provide
relevant and interesting
information in the form
of articles and videos.

25. Best Practice: Who is doing it right?
Microsoft
• Microsoft motivates the audience to follow the on LinkedIn and also make use
of the product and service spotlight effectively.

26. Measure
How do we measure success?
• Do not measure your success using metrics such as number of followers or
recommendations.
• Success on LinkedIn should be measured by:
• Leads generated
• Clients won
• Qualified job candidates gained
• Speaking opportunities
• Quality relationships built
• Responses to content
• Credible connections

27. More Information
If you require further information with regards to LinkedIn or need
assistance in setting up your account, customising it and choosing the
correct package, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We are also eager to monitor and manage your online presence. Please
contact us to set up a demo account for you.
South Africa: United States:
Tel: +27 11 021 8740 Tel: +00 (1) 704 450 2403
Email: infosa@saidwot.com Email: infous@saidwot.com
Web: www.saidwot.com