LinkedIn recently revitalized their recommendation management dashboard to make it easier to track your given or received recommendations.

For example, asking for recommendation edits, changing your recommendations public visibility, and recommending other LinkedIn users has now been improved. Check it out!

See Also: How to remove a LinkedIn connection

Video Tutorial

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Managing Received and Given Recommendations

LinkedIn’s new recommendation dashboard will help you organize and highlight the best ones you’ve received or provided for other users.

To enter LinkedIn’s new recommendation dashboard, first navigate to Linkedin.com/recs

From here, you’ll first see existing received, pending, or given recommendations.

After clicking on the received tab, LinkedIn will populate every single recommendation that has been written for you.

Now this is going to be helpful in highlighting particular recommendations over others like a clients recommendation over a co-workers, which can be done by clicking and dragging them into a new order.

You can also change the visibility of your recommendations on your profile if they’ve become obsolete by checking or unchecking the box next to the user’s profile picture.

Asking for LinkedIn Recommendations

Asking for recommendations on LinkedIn is now much easier with this new update and should be fully taken advantage of.

From the recommendation dashboard select Ask for recommendations, and follow the steps outlined to begin drafting your recommendation request.

Steps include choosing the position you’d like to be recommended for, selecting the user or users you’d like to ask, your relationship to that user, and finally the message asking them for a recommendation.

Keep in mind, if you choose more than one connection to send the message to, keep the message general, though I would highly recommend personalizing each recommendation you send.

Now if you have a pending recommendation that hasn’t been written by the person you’ve asked yet. You can also use this section of the dashboard to send them a friendly reminder.

Giving LinkedIn recommendations

Giving LinkedIn recommendations is useful for helping others professional careers and can also bring traffic back to your own profile if your recommendation is visible on their profile.

From the recommendation dashboard select Give recommendations, and follow the steps outlined to begin drafting your recommendation.

Steps include choosing the user you’d like to be recommended, defining your relationship to that user, and finally your recommendation and personalized message to the users after you submit it to them for approval.

Giving recommendations is also a good way to prompt the user to recommend you, though I’d advise not taking recommendation trading to the extreme.

Takeaway

It’s important to think of LinkedIn as your resume that’s online 24/7 and your profile should be created and updated with the same amount of attention. Whether you’re a college student looking for a job, a sales rep looking for prospects, or a budding social CEO, LinkedIn recommendations can go a long way in authenticating your abilities and building trust. Now we finally have a convenient recommendations dashboard to manage them.

How do you feel about LinkedIn recommendations? Are they legit indicator of skills or a gamed tactic for phonies. Let me know in the comments below and make sure to come back next week for more social media tutorials.

The post How to Use LinkedIn’s NEW Recommendation Dashboard appeared first on Social Media Tutorials by Jacob Curtis.

For example when I first set up my LinkedIn profile, I went through a phase of adding each and every college friend I knew and accepted connection requests from everyone and anyone who sent one my way — anything to get closer to 500+ contacts.

Well…now that I’ve accepted LinkedIn is not Facebook and realized it’s a platform for professionals to connect with other professionals to exchange services, ideas, common experiences, and even find jobs. It may be time for a little spring cleaning.

This week’s social media tutorial will cover how to delete or remove a LinkedIn connection.

SEE ALSO: How to Find a Job on LinkedIn

When you find the connections manager, you’ll be able to filter connections based on the first letter of their last name. This is tremendously helpful when looking for specific connections and you can also select numerous connections to remove at a time.

Video Tutorial

Reasons why you may remove a LinkedIn Connection

Now you may have your own reasons for removing a LinkedIn connection but here’s a few reasons I’ve experienced.

1. Mistaken Identity: I once sent a request to a person I thought was a friend from college, only to find out it wasn’t even the same person! The fact that they had no profile picture didn’t help either.
2. Bad experience: If you’ve had a falling out with a co-worker or employer it may be best to part ways.
3. Not inline with your goals: Your LinkedIn profile should focus on benefiting your career path. That way the people you connect with can refer you to relevant jobs or share information about what you’re interested in. The sooner you have career goals the better.

What about hurt feelings?

One important thing to remember is that the connections you remove will not be notified that you’ve just removed them…which is probably a good thing. However they will be added to your list of contacts in case you want to re-invite them later. Of course if they look up your profile, they’ll see you are no longer connected.

Take time to consider whether or not to remove a connection. For example, I’m still relatively young in my career having recently graduated. Some of my connections aren’t focused on the same industry as I am, however as we grow up there’s no telling where they’ll end up and what opportunities may be passed my way in the future because of a connection I made today.

In the end, the choice is yours. But I’d like to know…

What are some other reasons you’d remove a LinkedIn Connection?

The post How to Remove a LinkedIn Connection appeared first on Social Media Tutorials by Jacob Curtis.

However if you don’t know how to find a job on LinkedIn there’s no way for you to apply, and ultimately you could be missing out on the job of your dreams!

Luckily for you LinkedIn provides a robust platform for searching and finding these jobs.

So after you’ve taken the time to optimize your profile with appropriate sections, media, and keywords, head on over to the Job Search Home Screen.

SEE ALSO: Adding Media To Your LinkedIn Profile

Now I’ll highlight a few of the most important tools to find a job on LinkedIn below, however I go more in depth and explain how to find these features in the video tutorial below. So take a look!

Video Tutorial

Different Ways to Search

Jobs you may be interested in: Based on the information you’ve provided in your profile such as skills and expertise, bio, and previous jobs, LinkedIn will generate current job postings it thinks you may be interested in.

Discover Jobs in your Network: Another helpful way to find a job on LinkedIn by using your your network 1^st or 2^nd degree connections for a referral. These jobs are displayed based on connections that are current employees.

Refining Your Search

If you’re looking for a more specific job listing you can choose to refine the search even more by relationships or date posted,  and if you’re a current student or recent graduate you can even refine by experience level, such as entry level or internship.

Saving Your Searches or Jobs

Save the Job: Saving a job posting allows you to return to it at a later time and may be good idea if you’re applying to multiple companies or positions. This will also help you keep track of the progress of your application if you’ve applied using LinkedIn.

Save the Search: Another helpful feature is the ability to save the search, especially if you’ve refined the search to your specific liking. 

Email Alerts

This is probably the most important tool when it comes to finding a job on LinkedIn. By subscribing to email alerts you can always stay in-the-know of new openings or opportunities. This is especially important if you subscribe to email alerts for a specific refined search that includes a company. Though I’d also suggest following the company on LinkedIn as well.

Now its very rare that a great opportunity will come knocking at your door, however the better you are at searching and finding your next job, the better your chances of being hired are — just make sure your profile is ready for employers to view!

What are your experiences with finding a job on LinkedIn?

The post How to Find a Job on LinkedIn appeared first on Social Media Tutorials by Jacob Curtis.

Many companies use Linkedin Groups as a way to generate leads and network without having to direct people to their Company Page.

However unless you make it blatantly obvious that the group is associated with or moderated by your company, it’s hard for users to make the connection and for your business to benefit.

Now Linkedin has been rolling-out numerous updates to personal profiles as well as company pages and their most recent update lets you feature a group on the sidebar of your company page.

SEE ALSO: Understanding Linkedin Company Page Analytics

By adding a Linkedin Group to Your company page you should expect to see an increase in traffic and engagement between the two — especially if you manage the group.

Also it’s a good idea to reference your company page from within the group you manage so that both can grow in numbers.

SEE ALSO:  Adding Products or Services to your Linkedin Company Page

Types of Groups to Feature

So far I haven’t seen too many Linkedin Company Pages utilizing this new feature which means one of two things. Either they have no idea this feature exists, or they haven’t yet created their own industry related group.

Don’t know where to start? These are a few of the groups I’ve seen other companies or brands featuring on their company profiles.

• A Twitter Chat Group
• A Networking or Community Group
• A Resource or Information based Group
• An Employee or Training Group

Keep in mind you must either be a member or an admin of each group to feature it on your company page.

Video Tutorial

Now a good thing to remember here is that the groups you decide to feature don’t necessarily have to be the ones your company operates. For example I added SEMpdx and PDX Marketing Pro to my company’s Linkedin page because we are based in Portland and find those groups to be a valuable resource to our followers.

After selecting the Linkedin groups you would like to feature on your company page make sure to scroll back up to the top and hit the publish button to save the changes.

Finally take a look at your company page’s side bar to make sure your added Linkedin Groups are appearing correctly. Easy enough right?

PS: Out of 71 tutorials, this is the first episode where I jumped in front of the camera, and I expect to get much better and more personable from week to week, so let me know if you liked the change!

Have you set up a group for your company on Linkedin? What other benefits come from adding a Linkedin Group to your company page

The post Adding a Linkedin Group to Your Company Page appeared first on Social Media Tutorials by Jacob Curtis.