Benefits of a LinkedIn Account as a

Business Professional

There are many benefits of having a LinkedIn account as it provides great opportunities for people to promote and showcase themselves, to make their online digital presence known. With LinkedIn being popular, and one of the biggest social media platforms to date, practicing Artists should have a LinkedIn profile to maintain their business relationships and connections.

LinkedIn offers interactions and connections with online networks of businesses, professionals, communities and groups, as well as fellow Artists 24/7 (Zimmerman, J & Ng, D 2015).

Zimmerman & Ng (Zimmerman, J & Ng, D 2015) suggest several reasons why you need to be on LinkedIn:

1. To “reach out to the people who are viewing your profile” (Zimmerman, J & Ng, D 2015).
2. To promote and showcase your areas of expertise.
3. It provides easy online details for people to contact and connect with you.
4. Recruiters and Human Resources professionals look on LinkedIn when they are hiring staff
5. When job hunting or searching for new job opportunities there are lots of job listings, and they are available through their search engine, exclusive only to LinkedIn.
6. Ability for written skill endorsements and testimonials to be given and received for LinkedIn users.
7. Your resume is professionally presented and easy to update with LinkedIn’s formatted resume document.
8. To make important connections with other business professionals, employers, and groups.
9. To read and send news between your connections and find out current trends within your industry.
10. The opportunity to research business using LinkedIn.
11. The opportunity to introduce your other talents such as books or blogs that you have written, which can help promote traffic and sales.

Hemant (Hemant, B 2017), on the other hand comments on the disadvantages of a LinkedIn account, such as:

1. You will receive lots of spam messages.
2. The valuable time it takes to initially set up your account efficiently, along with time in building connections.
3. When compared to other social network platforms interactions are limited.
4. Many businesses on LinkedIn are there only to make sales, rather than network connections with you. Time needed to filter them out.
5. Connections with others can often be very slow, like months sometimes, as users are not on LinkedIn as much as the other social networking platforms.
6. Premium account costs and breaking up this account are more expensive, especially if paying monthly.
7. Information contained in the profiles cannot always be guaranteed accurate.
8. It takes time to receive skill endorsements from connections, therefore other users will be cautious of your profile.
9. Sometimes negative comments left on Facebook could be possible seen on LinkedIn because it sits high in domain searching.

In Austin’s (Austin, H 2018) online tutorial ‘How to use LinkedIn for beginners – 7 profile tips 2018’, it is worth mentioning the top seven profile tips for creating your LinkedIn account. These are:

1. Use a high quality professional looking profile image.
2. Customize your headline with keywords and include your specialty.
3. Customize your background photo and URL.
4. Include a well written summary which lists your accomplishments, awards and any volunteer job roles and positions.
5. Include your professional resume with work and education details, adding in your GPA grade.
6. To use specialty keywords when listing your expertise specific skills.
7. Ensure your contact details of mobile phone and email are included.

References

Austin, H 2018, How to use LinkedIn for beginners – 7 LinkedIn profile tips 2018, viewed 1 September 2018,  https://youtu.be/_kwqqtpprrE

Hemant, B 2017, Quora: What are the pros and cons of having a LinkedIn account?, viewed 1 September 2018, https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-having-a-LinkedIn-account

Loyd, T 2014, Pixabay.com 2018, viewed 6 September 2018, https://pixabay.com/en/linkedin-online-success-business-400850/

Zimmerman, J & Ng, D 2015, Dummies: Social media marketing, the benefits of using LinkedIn, viewed 1 September 2018, https://www.dummies.com/business/marketing/social-media-marketing/the-benefits-of-using-linkedin/