Log into Linkedin and explore all areas on the site – click on the various menus to explore the various options open to you. If you’ve never done this before, you’ll be amazed at the broadness of support available.
In particular, I’d suggest that you check out the following areas
The Groups that you can join – accessible from a link below your image and headline on the left hand sidebar
The Search capabilities available – accessible from the top menu – when you start a search, you have the option to filter via the ‘advanced search’ facility – this provides you with the opportunity to search for both organisations and individuals
The Jobs Portal – accessible from the top menu. Search for roles in the sectors or with the organisations that you’re interested in working. What and who are they recruiting for and what clues may this activity leave?
Your Existing Network – accessible from the top menu – find out what they are interested in by exploring their updates, engage with them by commenting on their updates and see how they are connected to the people that you’d like to be connected to.
Identify interesting #Hashtags – this is a tool that Linkedin is encouraging people to adopt more and more. The benefit to you is that you can quickly identify posts and conversations that are within your areas of interest and where you can get involved and become engaged with new potential connections.
The challenge with Linkedin is that it is so big and that is why focused communities such as #TLH complement it so well.
However, by focusing on a small number of activities and implementing these in a systematic, consistent way, you can radically transform the volume and quality of the opportunities that originate from within Linkedin.
The rest of the Linkedin Essentials series goes into more detail on what you should be doing to achieve this.