6 Reasons Women Need to Become LinkedIn Experts

LinkedIn has evolved over the past few years from your online resume to your comprehensive career management tool – making it essential for all career minded professionals. And for women, who comprise only 23 of the S&P 500’s CEOs (Catalyst), LinkedIn can be the resource that will have a major impact in building businesses that are more gender diverse at the top – when women actively engage in it.

Before I tell you all about how great LinkedIn can be for your career, let’s dispel a few myths:

That may have been the case when LinkedIn launched, but the latest suite of features allows you to do your job better. You can nurture your network, benchmark processes, source staff, keep the saw sharp, build relationships, etc.

Companies used to prohibit their people from using LinkedIn and other social media at work. Today, they’re encouraging it. Why?

• 90% of customers trust product recommendations from people they know. (Source: Nielsen)
• When a brand message is shared by employees, it goes 561% further than when it is shared on the brand’s channel. (Source: MSL Group)
• Brand messages from employees are re-shared 24 times more frequently than the same brand messages from the brand’s channel.

Who’s got time to spend on LinkedIn with a full schedule of meetings and a do-list that's a mile long?

Actually, you can master LinkedIn and stand out from the crowd if you’re willing to commit to just 9 minutes a day (You just have to get in the habit of doing it every day!).

Here’s why LinkedIn is critical to your success.

1. It’s your first impression. When people want to learn about you in a professional capacity, they log onto LinkedIn. This gives you an unprecedented level of control over how your first impression is created virtually. Your LinkedIn profile is YOU when you aren’t there. Even if people skip LinkedIn and go straight for Google to do their digi-sleuthing, it’s likely they’ll end up at your LinkedIn page. That’s because when someone googles your name, your LinkedIn profile will usually show up at the top of the search – making it the first thing they will see. Research tells us that 66% of Google result clicks go to the top three results.

2. It connects you with people – people who count! A Harvard Business Review study titled “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers” explores one of the reasons why this is so important: “Informal networks are a precious resource for would-be leaders, yet differences in men’s and women’s organizational roles and career prospects, along with their proclivity to interact with others of the same gender, result in weaker networks for women.” Perhaps their networks with senior executives are not as deep and broad because fewer women have access to these executives. That’s where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn research and connection strategies are typically gender agnostic and that can help you engage with senior leaders, pursuing opportunities you would otherwise not be privy to. According to Sheila Ronning, CEO of Women in the Boardroom, "If you want the opportunity to sit at the table as a board member, you have to be willing to do more to get there! Did you know having a profile photo can get you 21x more profile views and 9x more connection requests? Or that adding your current position can lead to 8x the profile views. These are not just numbers, they’re chances and opportunities!"

3. It lays a foundation. Women are entering universities at a significantly higher rate than their male counterparts. According to the National Center for Education Statistics more women are attending college than men. Women can make the most of this by joining LinkedIn well before they look for that first job out of college; from on-campus networks to securing internships, LinkedIn is essential to establishing the right start for your professional success. With women enrolling in college at a higher rate than men, you’d expect them to comprise at least half of LinkedIn’s membership. But it’s not the case.

4. It’s a minimum eligibility requirement. More and more, companies are asking to see your LinkedIn profile in the application process. We have also worked with clients in professional services and law firms who tell us they have been required to include hyperlinks to the LinkedIn profiles of the people they feature in proposals instead of written bios. The public nature of LinkedIn means it lends credibility to what you say. People don’t typically lie on their LinkedIn profile because it is visible to so many more people than their resume – and recruiters and hiring managers know this. In The Effect of LinkedIn On Deception In Resumes, Jamie Guillory, M.S., and Jeffrey T. Hancock, Ph.D. showcase their study of deception in resumes vs. in LinkedIn profiles. Their results debunk the myth that web-based communication is more deceptive than traditional formats.

5. It’s the key to planned serendipity. Planned serendipity – in this case – means that you may not know who may need what you have to offer, but you want to be sure that you’re visible to them. When you focus on building a stellar profile and using LinkedIn regularly, you help attract opportunities. The passive job market is exploding. That’s because hiring managers and recruiters favor the employed over those who are seeking employment. The world’s largest accessible database of employed professionals – with over half a billion members - is LinkedIn.

6. It helps you do your job better. Even at companies with robust intranets, employees are using LinkedIn to learn about their colleagues. You can stand out internally when you have a polished profile, and it also helps you amp up your performance. LinkedIn offers great ways to source staff, learn and grow, benchmark your department processes and be a visible brand ambassador for your organization by sharing company content with your connections.

So how do you make LinkedIn your tool for standing out and advancing your career?

1.    Establish a baseline. Complete this quiz to see where you are and where to focus your attention so you can make the most of this powerful tool. Pay close attention to questions 1-12 - they help you assess your profile.

2.    Focus on the big 3 – your headline, headshot and summary (especially the first two lines of your summary). This is what people will see when they are evaluating you. So even if you think these elements of your profile are OK, refine and perfect them. Here’s an article that will help you write a compelling summary

3.    Commit to 9 minutes a day. Build a habit of interacting with LinkedIn daily. When you commit to just nine minutes a day on LinkedIn, you make yourself visible, valuable and available to people who count.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that LinkedIn is a powerful career advancer. But women are just less visible and engaged in LinkedIn than men. The gap is surprising because women lead the way in all other major social platforms. According to Catherine Ford at Entrepreneur, a greater percentage of adult U.S. women use Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter than their male counterparts. The only social network that boasts more men than women is LinkedIn.

Buck the trend... and watch your career soar!

William Arruda's Website ... William Arruda's LinkedIn Profile William Arruda's Forbes Column CareerBlast.TV

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