LinkedIn Article Review (#J360)

I’m back with another article review for my J360 Online Public Relations class. This time, I’ll be review an article over the 22 LinkedIn Secrets LinkedIn Won’t Tell You.

The article itself is more of an aggregate of information from several other articles written by Forbes Contributor, William Arruba, as well as other tips and tricks from other professional in the field. Many of these tips caught me off guard and seem unconventional, but who am I to argue with these professionals? I won’t bother listing out all 22 tips in the articles, but I will highlight the ones I found to be interesting or outlandish.

Right off the bat we have the first tip; “Be Secretive.” This seems to makes sense after reading into it. It can be annoying to see every little change someone makes to their profile appearing in your timeline. Arruba suggests that you should switch your settings to broadcast to “only you,” opposed to everyone seeing every little change you make to your profile.

Two of the tips that I think contradict one another are “be opportunistic” and “be invisible.” It’s hard to seek out opportunities and yet, remain under the radar. The opportunity side encourages users to join groups that will connect you to people in your network (being a “groupie” is another tip; don’t be afraid to join several groups and don’t put a limit on the amount of groups to join.), but the secretive side requires users to keep their agenda hidden from potential connections and employers. I feel as though that people may try to connect the dots as you add these people and join several groups, unless you have your privacy settings set to completely shut others out from your activities.

One of my favorite tips is to “be a thief.” No, you don’t need to add “stealing” to your list of skills or past experience, but to repurpose content from other social media handles (much like we are doing in our class now). This aims to increase your impact to your network and demonstrates your ability to analyze acceptable content best suited for their connections.

I could babble on more about these tips, but you can follow the link above to read the tips for yourself. What are some of your favorite tips? Do you agree with my stance on the ones I’ve discussed?

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