LinkedIn was co-founded in May 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillant and Konstantin Guericke. The site was the brainchild of Hoffman and Guericke, Stanford graduates who began planning their online professional network in the late 1990s.
LinkedIn is an online social network for business professionals. It’s different than other social networking sites like Instagram and Facebook because it’s designed specifically for professional networking — finding a job, discovering sales leads, connecting with potential business partners — rather than simply making friends or sharing media like photos, videos, and music.
A complete LinkedIn profile can help you connect with opportunities by highlighting your unique professional story through experience, skills, and education.
Here are a few steps to get started on LinkedIn:
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Create your profile: Signing up and creating your profile is the best way to begin using LinkedIn. A complete LinkedIn profile will summarize your professional experience to your connections, current and future employers, and recruiters. Through your profile, you can highlight your professional life, milestones, skills, and interests.
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Build your network: Your network plays a crucial part in unlocking the power of LinkedIn. It’ll help you understand what is happening in your industry and professional circle. You can begin by adding your family, friends, past or current classmates, and coworkers to your network. You can also follow people, companies, or topics by navigating directly to the Follow fresh perspectives page, which displays recommended sources to follow. You can use the LinkedIn Events feature to create and join professional Events such as online workshops, seminars, sales and marketing Events, networking Events and more.
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Find a job: If you are looking for a new professional opportunity, you can get started on your job search on LinkedIn. You can use LinkedIn to research companies and reach out to the hiring community. You can also apply directly for roles, save job searches, and notify your connections and recruiters that you are open for job opportunities.
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Participate in conversations: You can easily participate in conversations on LinkedIn. Participating in conversations can allow you to share your perspective on relevant issues and topics with others. You can like and comment on posts and articles on LinkedIn. You can create or join LinkedIn Groups to connect and grow with members who share your interests, experiences, or aspirations. You can also use a set of lightweight expressions called LinkedIn reactions, to easily communicate with your network.
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Post content: Millions of members come to LinkedIn every day to connect, learn, and share. You can empower and educate your professional circle with the content you post on LinkedIn. You can also share your thoughts and ideas with LinkedIn members using the share box.
I have included a video below on how to set up a LinkedIn account and how to understand the whole dashboard.
I have attached a document in subsequent lessons on how to optimize your account theoretically.