One of the things you learn when you’re studying the latest social media strategy and best practices is how important it is to be searchable, says Shilpi Agarwal, founder of Social Strategi, a social media consulting agency in San Jose, and our social media instructor.
Shilpi teaches all three courses in our Social Media Marketing Professional Award, a focused series of courses in our Marketing Management certificate program that gives people the skills they need to effectively use social media for business.
Our social media students include marketing professionals, people who are small business owners themselves, and others who may be quite active online but haven’t yet learned to implement successful social media marketing strategies. The social media marketing focus helps them define their online brand, launch effective social media campaigns that align with business goals, and manage, monitor and analyze their social media presence.
“Initially students learn to redefine their brand strategy in social media and create a social media strategy blueprint, but soon they understand how to leverage their data, identify an effective Facebook strategy and create an all-star LinkedIn profile to attract recruiters. Students also learn to use social media for effective B2B marketing on LinkedIn.
One of the key things she tells her students about managing their LinkedIn presence is: be searchable! Here are some other LinkedIn tips from Shilpi:
- Use keywords in all of your online content that reflect your skills and experience.
- Make a good presentation. Go ahead and update that stodgy photo, but don’t use a blurry selfie that reflects a lack of care about professionalism. Be serious but be you.
- Create your personality. Don’t be bland.
- Be generous. Post professional recommendations. Offer up helpful tips. Don’t reshare boring items that do not help your audience or customers. Tell other people you like what they posted.
- Make people want to come to your page!
- Connect with people and with groups. Recruiters are looking for how socially connected you are. Have you established your online community?
Want to learn more? Shilpi’s next six-week course—Advanced Social Media Marketing: A Practical Approach for Business—starts March 28. Application of Social Media for Business Growth, which meets three Fridays, runs May 4 – 18. The first course in the series, Social Media Marketing Fundamentals is taught in the fall and winter only.