LinkedIn

First, visit www.linkedin.com and then fill in the required form fields with your personal details. First and last name, email and chosen password.

Make sure your email is valid as you will be sent a link to click onto as part of the set-up process.

You can change your details and password after you have registered. Once you click the ‘Join Now’ button you’ll be asked to follow a series of 6 steps which are fairly self-explanatory. However, you do have an option to ‘skip’ the various steps, which will help you reach the point of registration more quickly, then the ‘connections’ information can be added later. See next tab.

This is an example of what you’ll see as you travel through the LinkedIn sign up series of 6 ‘steps’. I’m not going to feature all the steps in this tutorial as some are fairly self-explanatory.

I suggest you click on the ‘skip this step’ at the bottom of the panel on the right hand side, unless the information requested is specifically to do with activation of your account.

Here we are now on their Step 4 of 6.

The screen asks ‘Do you know these people’. Listed will be photographs of the people and details about them (blanked out in the screenshot).

You can get rather side-tracked on this page.

I suggest you just keep pressing on and use the ‘skip this step’ at the bottom left of the page.

This slide shows their Step 5 where they’re still asking you to fill in details of people you can connect to.

I would advise you don’t start adding contacts from your address book/email account at this stage in the sign-up.

All this is better done when you understand more about how exactly LinkedIn can be used to best advantage for your particular requirements.

I’d advise, ‘skip this step’ and come back to it later.

You’re nearly there now!

You’ll see this page at some point.

The features of the Premium service are much greater than the free service. You have the option to upgrade later, so don’t feel you need to make a decision now.

For now, I would suggest you ‘skip this step’.

You are nearly there now – honestly!

Once you’ve clicked the link sent to your email address you will be asked to sign-in.

You’ll then see this page, which has a lot of options to explore. I’d advise you to follow along with me for now. If you want just take a few minutes now to familiarise yourself a bit with the layout.

Next, we’re going to visit the Profile page where you fill in your personal, work and education details which is a very important part of establishing yourself on LinkedIn.

Stop now for a cup of coffee if you need one.

Next, click on ‘Profile’ on the top navigation bar.

If you didn’t stop for the cup of coffee and you’re flagging, then I suggest you do now because this next part will take you some time, or should take you some time if you do it properly.

Upload a photo of yourself (recommended) and fill in details about yourself, education and work experience.

You can, at a later time, change any of the details you enter by returning to the Profile tab and following the links to edit individual sections

Don’t forget to save your changes when you are finished

If you didn’t get distracted by the various set-up steps then you will now find that you have ‘no connections’.

Click on the ‘Contact’ navigation link again and choose ‘add connections’ from the drop-down menu.

On this page you can now search for people you know using email addresses you have. If you can’t upload a file it suggests you can enter names and emails manually.

You can also invite people to connect to you who may not already have a LinkedIn account – they’ll send an inviitation for them to join.

It’s worth pausing at this point and asking yourself the merit of connecting to everyone you know. Is that really going to be of value to you? It will be of value to LinkedIn because it validates their service as more and more people sign-up.

At this point I think you should be thinking about the strategy of using your LinkedIn account. Just being connected to hundreds of people is not necessarily going to achieve the result you’re wanting.

It’s at this point we should touch on what LinkedIn is and isn’t designed for.

It’s a place to develop your credibility for the knowledge you have on particular subjects. It’s not for direct selling. People want to judge for themselves whether you know what you’re talking about.

To develop credibility in your field you can join groups and contribute to the discussions.

To do this, go to the ‘Groups’ navigation link on the top bar and choose ‘groups you may like’ from the drop-down menu.

There are many groups to join, some are open groups and some are closed. You can request to join a closed group, which often turns into an open group. Just try joining a few groups and see what you think of the environment. You can always unjoin a group at a later date.

LinkedIn offers a very broad range of functionalities to help you connect to the right people to reach your goal.

I’d need dozens of tabs to feature just a few of the tools you can harness. If you go to the ‘More’ navigation link on the top bar you will find ‘Learning Centre’ in the drop down menu.

Alternatively, Website Wings will be running group sessions for using LinkedIn, visit the Website Wings support page for details.

I hope this walk through setting up LinkedIn has been of help and given you a good start to getting familiar with a potentially powerful networking tool.