Summer is over, kids are heading back to school, and vacation is becoming a fading memory. But that’s no reason to frown. It’s time to get back to work in a big way, but you’re also in the right frame of mind for a refresh, or even an entire reset. One area that demands your attention is LinkedIn. Although 48.5% of users in the US visit LinkedIn at least once a month, they may have taken a break during the summer months (Is that you?).
Allocate some time to take a new look at your profile and take actions to ensure it’s current and compelling. Also, take advantage of new LinkedIn features that will help you build your personal brand and stay on top of what’s happening in your field.
Here’s why and what to do—not only in September:
It’s That Time Of Year
There are several points in your career when you should give your LinkedIn profile a once-over:
- At the end of the calendar year, when everyone has a mindset of ringing in opportunities.
- Whenever you experience a change in your career, such as a promotion, company shift, or completing a certificate or degree.
- At the end of summer to prepare for the unofficial return to work (and, in many industries, the beginning of an important fiscal crunch time).
Keeping track of these cycles will keep you from missing out and help you form a habit of engaging in LinkedIn regularly.
Your Performance Review Is Approaching
The process of working on your profile by updating it with your accomplishments and accolades is the perfect prep for your upcoming performance review. It will prompt you to review the last 8+ months and identify your significant wins—the ones you’ll want to highlight before and during your review.
There Are New Features You May Have Missed
LinkedIn is continually updating, refining and adding new features to its platform. If you aren’t fully engaged, it’s easy to miss them. Now is the time to explore what’s new and use it to better express your personal brand. Two newish features that are powerful personal brand builders are:
- The ability to add five skills to the bottom of your About section. This feature differs from the Skills section, which highlights the skills for which you have been endorsed. Now you can use the About to put your top five strongest skills front and center.
- If you’ve struggled to maintain consistency in posting valuable content for your followers, LinkedIn has made it easier to achieve that. You can now schedule posts, making it simpler to remain visible to your audience (while saving time!).
You Met People Over The Summer, So It’s Time To Update Your Connections
When you have all your contacts in one place—LinkedIn—it makes staying in touch throughout your career a breeze. In many ways, having your connections on LinkedIn is more valuable than having their office email addresses in your contacts. That’s because when someone changes jobs, you still have a connection with them on LinkedIn, unlike those bounced email addresses lingering in your data fields. Use this upcoming fall season as a trigger to add all the people you met over the summer (and for the entire year if you haven’t been keeping up!).
Stay Informed About What’s Happening
Now is the time to fill up your knowledge tank with insights that will help you make your mark for the rest of the year. Over the summer, you might have taken a break from reading your favorite media or searching for best practices online. Maybe People magazine took priority over The Journal of Applied Economics. It’s time to update your sources of inspirational business content. One great place to start is with LinkedIn newsletters. There are approximately 63,000 newsletters on LinkedIn, many of which you might not even know about even though they’re a perfect match for your interests. Observing which newsletters your colleagues are reading will help you identify some of the most relevant content in your area of expertise.
It’s time to devote some time to LinkedIn. Block out some time in your calendar so you can make LinkedIn work for you during this new professional semester—and throughout the year.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and creator of the 360Reach Personal Brand Survey that helps you get candid, meaningful feedback from people who know you.
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