Social Media 101 discussion

Linked-In is gaining ground on the biggies in the social media world because it offers similar services as they do, but it also is a way for people looking for work to get discovered. However, what I’ll include here will be a short synopsis of what Linked-In offers authors for promoting their work. The platform communicates with all of the major social media sites, which means you can link most of your other social media sites to your Linked-In account. Currently, there are fewer restraints on Linked-In than on Facebook or Twitter, but I suspect the engineers will start cracking down on spamming, bots, and other nefarious activity soon.

First, you need to create an account. Explore Linked-In by going to www.linkedin.com and consider creating an account. Once this is done, you can play with the settings for your Linked-In profile. Most of this is done through the “Profile” button with the drop down selection of “edit profile.” This is where you can link other social media sites and add information about you, including your website, blog, places to see your work, maybe even feature an excerpt of your latest project.

Once you get the account set up, I have a few pointers:

A) Linked-In has an easy function to search for friends and family. Once you find someone you want to be friends with, send them a request. When they accept, you will be notified. You will most likely find more co-workers than friends or family on Linked-In. That’s okay, because they are all potential buyers or people who will spread the word about your current project.

B) Consider adding everything you have ever done work wise to your profile. The reason for this is that Linked-In will filter the information and try to connect you to people with similar histories or job classifications.

C) Add PHOTOS just like you would on other social media sites. To do this, you will see a little camera icon. Click on it and upload your photos. No matter where you are on the internet, people love photos. You can add #hash tags to these photos, which will alert the internet search engines to pull up your site when someone enters the same #hashtag or words.

D) Jobs- This is where you can look for job offerings or post what your skills are to see if others who are employing could use you. This is a great function of Linked-In that isn’t necessarily a tool for promoting.
E) Interests- This tab will take you to an area to search for people with similar interests OR WHO YOU MAY BE TARGETING FOR YOUR BOOK/WRITING. You can join groups from a wide array of interests. Once you join the groups, you can get into great discussions with people who share similar interests or have similar questions.


Linked-In VOCABULARY:

The cool thing about Liked-In is the information/tabs are self explanatory and easy to understand. There are no “Code” words or secrets here.

There’s more on Linked-In, but I’ve highlighted the stuff I think worth mentioning. If you have questions or more to add to this discussion, PLEASE DO!!

Thanks,

Chris http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?...

Excellent Phillip! Thanks for spreading the word. I hope you have a great day :-)

Hadn't thought to add photos to my LinkedIn account. Thanks for the tips.

Hello all,

Thanks for the information about Linkedin. I opened an account and have joined groups. There are so many groups for authors. Thanks and I will keep you all posted.

Would it be OK to put our Linkedin accounts online so we can follow each other? I would be happy to follow fellow Goodreads fans :)

I think it would be fine! That way we could all connect.

One of the best places you can be! If you are spending time online there then its time well spent.

Thanks for all this information, Chris. I've been on LinkedIn for a while now but I didn't know about using hash-tags on the site. Great tip!

I'm with you Book Master! Tons of resources and fewer adds. Hard to beat that.

Hey Patricia! Yup that little hashtag can really get things out there and help stuff explode. I think linked-in is an untapped resource.

I am on Linked In and have a profile with all the features you discuss. I'm also connected to a number of others on Linked-In. Do you know how to connect and announce to each of my linked-in friends that I have published my first novel?Elaine Faber

Elaine you can feature your novel under accomplishments in your linked in profile and include a link as an update to your profile. You can also send a message through the linked in messaging feature to advise all of your friends about your release! Hope this helps ;-)