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Chances are, you’re on LinkedIn, but if you’re defining being “on LinkedIn” as posting a variant of your résumé and occasionally seeing what your contacts are up to, you’re missing out on a powerful tool for finding your niche.
“Take a critical look at your profile and really do an assessment: What does this say about my world? What am I doing? What is this profile getting me now?” says Mary Abbajay, president of <a target="_blank" href="https://careerstonegroup.com/">Careerstone Group</a>, an organizational and leadership development consultancy and author of Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed With Any Type of Boss.
From there, it’s time for the big question: Where am I trying to go from here? Once you’ve identified your goalpost, Abbajay says, it’s time to use LinkedIn to help you get there. Here are three steps that will bring you closer to where you want to be.

<h3>Nail Your Profile</h3>
If you already have a LinkedIn profile, give it an honest assessment. Does it communicate where you’re trying to go? Seeking an outside opinion can help, whether that’s a professional who specializes in career branding or asking media-savvy friends to tell you what’s working and what isn’t.
Your profile should be uniquely yours—nobody else has your career, after all—but don’t be afraid to borrow from the people who are doing LinkedIn right. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” Abbajay says. “There are people who are really good at this, so you can use some of their strategies for yourself. How are they posting? What does their banner look like? What’s on their profile?”
As for how your profile actually looks—be sure to include a photo. It makes you look more professional, Abbajay says, and it also affects how your profile is read by the LinkedIn algorithm—meaning you won’t come up in searches as readily if you’re opting for the default gray circle instead of a custom photo.
“Your photo doesn’t have to be done by a professional, but you have to look professional,” Abbajay says. “You’re not going to want a picture of you with your cat.” She also recommends using a customized banner for the background image that shows up behind your profile photo.
Other things to include: a clear-cut title (“Don’t make people guess what you do,” Abbajay says), your contact info, and a descriptive bio.
One last pro tip: Go to your settings, then navigate to “Visibility.” Under “Visibility of your LinkedIn activity,” turn off “Share profile updates with your network.” That way, you can tinker with your profile without blasting your entire professional network every time you try out a new banner photo.
“Your profile is your calling card—it’s almost like a mini personal website for you,” Abbajay says. So treat it like one.

<h3>Find Your Audience</h3>
Remember Abbajay’s advice about figuring out where you’re trying to go? This step is where that becomes must-have intel.
“Who do you want to engage with on LinkedIn?” she says. “Who is it that you’re trying to attract? Really figure out your ‘why,’ and you’ll figure out who to connect with.”
Once you know the type of audience you’re hoping to tap into, get hashtag-savvy. Searching for hashtags that speak to the niche you hope to fill will bring you to people who are already talking about related topics; following them will curate your feed so that you continue to find more people who are working toward goals that are related to yours. (Follow them, too!)
From there, you can reverse-engineer that search to identify hashtags that are the most popular in your field and desired niche, then include those in your posts to help your audience find you.

<h3>Cultivate Your Community</h3>
“You don’t want to be that person who’s only talking about themselves,” Abbajay says. At the same time, some people—particularly women—have a hard time broadcasting their accomplishments for fear of seeming like a braggart.
To find the right balance, Abbajay recommends following the rule of thirds when posting content: One-third of your content should be promoting yourself, one-third should be promoting others, and the other third should be sharing interesting content about your field.
The sharing principle goes for your intake strategy, too. When you read posts from others, don’t just hit “like”; engage with what they’re saying. You can also find ways to bring in that rule of thirds in your commenting strategy—if someone posts about a professional quandary, you can respond with your own experience or endorse someone else in your field to spread the appreciation.
LinkedIn isn’t called YouIn, after all—it’s all about linking with others. Remembering that will help keep you on a rewarding path and lead to more opportunities for connection at your in-person meetings and events.

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Three Steps to Upping Your LinkedIn Game

Promote

You know what hashtags are, and you’ve used them before, but have you thought of them as a value-add to your events?
Abbey Hudetz, founder of social media, branding and web design agency <a target="_blank" href="https://www.oystercreativeco.com/">Oyster Creative</a>, knows to do exactly that. Prior to launching her company, Hudetz worked in hospitality, so she gets events. “If you want conversations online happening about your business, you should be using hashtags,” she says. Hashtags serve as a repository for collecting and accessing all content related to your event—before, during, and after. “User-generated content is gold,” Hudetz says. “It’s like the owned media of the internet.”
But striking gold isn’t as easy as just coming up with a clever tag—in fact, Hudetz says simpler is often better. Read on for some more of her top tips about hashtags.
 
<h3>Think of Hashtags As Keywords</h3>
Hashtags can be seen as synonymous with keywords, Hudetz says. If someone is searching for your event online, what terms are they using?
“Make your event hashtag simple, make it the name of the event, make it the year if it’s an annual event, make it the location,” she says. “The less complicated, the better. Because it’s searchable.”
While using keywords in your event’s hashtag will enable people to find it more readily, before you settle on the tag, check to see if it’s being used elsewhere for something unrelated. If it is, go back to the drawing board.
 
<h3>Contemplate Your Hashtag’s Purpose</h3>
The hashtag is a tool for you to promote your event, incentivize participation, and collect content, so you really want to own it. Hudetz recommends avoiding frequently used words, such as “expo,” because they dilute the impact of your hashtag, making it harder to own. She suggests asking yourself: “What terms can help me monopolize this space?”
You may think that a catchy phrase or pun is the answer, but Hudetz—who admits she too loves a good pun—warns that this may alienate part of your audience. In other words, not everyone may understand the pun.
“You have to think about your end goal with this hashtag, which is that you want people to post it, and have a conversation around it,” Hudetz says. “You want them to be talking about your event online. Think of it like, ‘What would make this hashtag successful?’ and then ask yourself if the pun is serving that.”
 
<h3>Engage With Your Hashtag</h3>
Start by thinking about what hashtag would make you interact with a post, Hudetz says. “I’ll post a story with a hashtag if it means I get a free coffee.” Doing so will help you generate creative ways to incentivize your audience to participate, from giveaways to submitting speaker questions. For example, using a hashtag as the channel for attendees to ask speakers or panelists questions might encourage someone who’s post-shy to use your hashtag.
Planners should also engage with the responses to their hashtag. “Be sure you’re commenting, liking …making your audience feel like it’s part of a community,” Hudetz says.
Part of building this community means engaging with your partners online too. When you start hiring your vendors, introduce them to your hashtag immediately, and lean on them to cross-promote your event. Hudetz suggests hyping each other up online. “Think of [your partners] as your built-in cheerleading squad,” she says. “You all want each other to succeed.”

People want to see what you’re capable of. They also want to see what your event looks like, and its hype, in its fullest form.

<h3>Return to Your Hashtag Post-Event</h3>
Hashtags are not only a great promotional tool, they’re also a treasure trove of user-generated content that planners can revisit to curate articles, social posts, photo galleries, reels from Instagram story highlights, and more.
“Repurposing content from your events is a rich opportunity,” Hudetz says. “Of course you will have photos from your photographer and vendors, but the event photography from the POV of an attendee is so important because social media is, at its heart, about sharing stories.”
And, after your event is over, don’t forget to tap into your hashtag for some self-promotion. Hudetz suggests repurposing content generated via your hashtag to use on your brand page. Collect assets that used your hashtag—say, a collection of speaker questions, or a roundup of tweets or Instagram posts—and use them to create a gallery of posts that show your chops.
“In event planning, galleries are everything. It’s how you sell your services,” Hudetz says. “People want to see what you’re capable of. They also want to see what your event looks like, and its hype in its fullest form.”

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