Table of Contents

About the Author 4

Introduction 6

What to do on LinkedIn 9

LinkedIn Connections 12

LinkedIn Content 16

LinkedIn Profile 39

LinkedIn Messaging 63

Grow your Presence on Li 65

LinkedIn Jobs 67

LinkedIn Advertising 71

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Don’ts on LinkedIn 76

Success Story of Lewis Howes 80

LinkedIn Stories 83

Use it or Lose it! 85

3
 About the Author

I am Ishan Sharma, a 19 year old, second year student

from BITS Goa, studying Electrical Engineering. I also own
a podcast and YouTube channel where I talk about
software development, social media, and
entrepreneurship.

You might imagine, how will a 19 year old college student

tell me how to build my brand, get a job, or expand my
business.

I would think the same way, but the reason is, I have tried
most of what you’ll read in the book! I have gotten
internship and speaking opportunities through LinkedIn,
built somewhat of a “brand” in my niche, and have also
helped businesses realise how they can leverage social
media, and LinkedIn more specifically, to get more leads
and customers.

I’ve done all this in the past one year, and in this book, I’ll
share with you the tips, tools and strategies that will enable
you to achieve your career goals using the power of
LinkedIn and networking.

4
So, if you are ready to unlock the power of LinkedIn and
learn some new skills, make sure you click a photo of the
book, and tag me on the following social media:

LinkedIn: Ishan Sharma

Twitter: @Ishan739
Instagram: @ishansharma7390

Special Thanks to ​Visthruth G​ for designing the cover of

this book. And to my parents ​Pankaj Sharma​ and Bhawana
Sharma for constantly motivating me to write the book and
get it out ASAP! Without these amazing people, this book
wouldn’t have been released in July.

To the Reader​: Thanks for taking your time to read this

book. I have my birthday on 13th July and so consider this
as my birthday gift to you! You’ve taken the decision to
learn and grow yourself. You are different than most
people who crave instant gratification and dopamine hits.

Now, let’s jump right in!

5
 INTRODUCTION

Wikipedia says and I quote, “LinkedIn is a business and

employment oriented online platform that operates as a
website and as a downloadable app on iOS and android.
Launched on May 5, 2003, LinkedIn is a platform for
professionals to connect with each other and create
opportunities.”

I say LinkedIn is the biggest untapped opportunity of 2020

and this coming decade, a platform to build great
connections, find a community full of like-minded people
and expand your business.

This book is aimed at people that are in college, or people

that work for companies or people that have their own
businesses and wish to expand it by finding others that
have a similar goal.

This book is framed in 4 parts explaining you, what

LinkedIn is, what you can do with it, how other people have
leveraged LinkedIn to get jobs, build their brand and
business, and lastly, what lies ahead for LinkedIn as a
platform.

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I am Ishan Sharma, second year student from BITS Goa
studying electrical engineering, and I believe that LinkedIn
is the answer for most of you readers trying to build their
personal brand, expand your business, and off course get
a job and I hope that at the end of reading this book, you’d
be convinced with my belief.

Now you may be thinking, how out of all the people in the
world, a college student going to tell you how to get this
done. What you’re thinking is totally reasonable. Most
college students never make their LinkedIn profiles until
late into their careers.

I, however, made my LinkedIn profile the day my college

entrance exam (IIT JEE if you know what that is) got over
because I learned from people like Kalpit Veerwal the
power of networking and the thought of selling yourself
online. I was also reading books like Steve Jobs by Walter
Isaacson and How to Win Friends and Influence People by
Dale Carnegie, and so I was getting access to these
amazing ideas of how people communicate and how the
corporate sector works.

So, I started reading what people were talking about on

LinkedIn. I started connecting with people who were in
college and are into coding and software development. I
started interacting and engaging with people through
comments and direct messaging.

But, it wasn’t until 4 months later, that I started making my

own content on the platform, and started engaging with
people from all backgrounds. I was always curious about
how are these people able to get to the place where they

7
are right now and what were their challenges. That’s
probably the reason I started my podcast.

Anyways, I started my podcast and made my own

YouTube channel and used LinkedIn to leverage my
podcast and the YT channel. I started cold messaging
some very well-known personalities in my space and
learned about what sort of messages get replied back and
what my intent should be like while talking to them. I
learned what sort of content gets traction on LinkedIn and
what content is pure BS and must be avoided if you want
to properly use the platform and not get banned.

The following chapters will go in depth over what your

LinkedIn profile should look like, what are the different
types of content that you can post on LinkedIn, hacks to
grow your LinkedIn presence, how to connect with anyone
on LinkedIn, how to talk to people on LinkedIn, and lastly,
what lies ahead and how the platform will evolve going into
this new decade.

My hope by the end of reading this book is that you’ll

recognize why LinkedIn is the most underrated platform
and would be able to create content on LinkedIn that will
be engaging and basically CRUSH IT on LinkedIn!

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 What to do on LinkedIn?

What is Your WHY?

This would be important to ask yourself first before you do

just about anything in life. I really like what Simon Sinek
says in his book, “Start With WHY” about finding your
purpose first and then thinking about the “HOW” and the
“WHAT”. I would encourage you to check out his TED talk
for more context into what I mean.

But basically, it’s crucial to think and ask yourself what is it

that you really want from your life, and be specific about it.
Many people reply to this saying, “Oh, I just wanna be
happy”, no that’s too broad! I want you to write it down on a
piece of paper and stick it in your room and be focused on
that.

You want a job in a particular industry? You want to start

your own business? You Want to build a personal brand?
Write it down before you proceed further into the book.

Depending on your choice, there would be different options

for what you can do on LinkedIn.

Now let’s talk about what might be the most important step
in your journey to get where you want to be - CONTENT

MAKE! MAKE! MAKE!

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This is what a serial entrepreneur, and marketing expert
Gary Vaynerchuk replied when he was asked the question,
“How should I get new clients for my restaurant business?”

What has happened in the recent 20 years in marketing is

the democratization of marketing, anyone can get in front
of people around the world. Not too long ago, people used
to pay to get their brand in front of people on TV and radio.
I don’t say it doesn’t exist right now, but it’s just not the
most efficient way. The thought that you can post a
video/picture/text on a platform and anyone could
potentially watch it was crazy at the least for anyone 20
years ago.

Moreover, you can do this for free, and use organic reach
for your content to be discovered by anyone worldwide.
This is the power of social media.

Conventionally, you would think about Instagram and

Facebook. But unfortunately, these platforms are past their
golden days. But there is one that has the highest organic
reach for the content you post on it - LinkedIn.

Yes, I agree, it will go away like it did on Instagram and

Facebook, but that’s the reason why you must take action
NOW before it’s too long.

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On the date of writing this book, LinkedIn has over 660
Million users using the platform. That number might seem
big, but when you look at the amount of people that are
creating content on LinkedIn, you understand what I mean.

Only 3 Million out of the 660 Million are people that have
posted at least one post on LinkedIn.
Moreover, out of those 3 Million, only 130K post regular
content on LinkedIn.

That’s a mere 2% of the user base. That means there are

less creators and more consumers, leading to more
Organic reach for your content.

It’s important to note here that not all types of content will
get that reach that is mentioned above. But more on that
later.
First, let’s discuss what connections are and what are best
practices when connecting with someone.

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 Connections

Connecting is like a friend request on Facebook, but more

professional.

For you, People will be separated by 4 connection levels:

1st Degree, 2nd Degree, 3rd Degree and 3+ Connection.

The 1st Degree connections are people you have already

connected with. These are people closest to you. The 2nd
Degree people are the ones who are connected to your 1st
degree connections. This is your target audience that you
should try to connect with as much as possible.

When your posts are getting engagement within your 1st

connections, LinkedIn pushes your post out to 2nd Degree
people.

3rd Degree are the people who are connected with your
2nd degree people.

Your target should be to connect with 2nd degree

connections the most, so that the people in the 3rd degree
group become 2nd degree and so on.

The People who are in the 3rd+ range are generally people
who have no connection with your field or industry. You
can connect with them if you want to, but I would
recommend you to really focus on connecting with your
2nd degree connections first.

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When you send a connection request, you get the option to
add a personal message for that person. This increases
the likelihood of them accepting your connection. This is
something I can tell from my own personal experience.

This does not mean that you'll tell them to sign up for your
newsletter or try to be “salesy”. That never works and it’ll
only waste your time and energy.

Some people send a welcome message saying “Hey

Ishan, thanks for connecting with me, I hope we’ll benefit
from each other” or something. You can do this if you want
to.

Here are some examples:

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Some people on the other hand start selling their products
immediately once I accept the connection request. This is
another malpractice.

Like this one:

For people in your 3rd degree connection, you can send

them an In Mail Message. For a free account you can do
this only a few times per month. You can also get the
LinkedIn Premium membership to get unlimited In Mail
Messages.

Here’s an In Mail Message I’ve sent that the person

responded to:

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Once you have 500 connections, the connect button on
your profile changes to follow and if you want to connect,
you can click on More, to find that option.

Now, let’s talk about the different types of content you can
make and which ones are better.

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 LinkedIn Content

Ever wondered what’s the answer to building a brand, or

getting hired, or building your business? Assuming that
what you wanted to know the answer to when picking this
book to read, let me help you out!

It’s called Content. The single most important word to that

question is content.
Another important thing to remember is the context of the
content that you’re putting out. Posting a selfie of you on a
sunny day chilling on the beach might work for your
Instagram and Facebook, but not so much for LinkedIn.

Context means understanding who the person on the other

side looking at your post is, and how the content you are
making is related to them. LinkedIn is not the place for you
to post pictures of your cat or dog.

The community on LinkedIn is more inclined towards

learning new skills, tips, tricks, opportunities, etc that helps
them in some way.

There are multiple ways in which you can create content

on the platform, namely:
1. Long Form Posts
2. Pictures
3. PDF Documents

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 4. Video
5. Article
6. LinkedIn Live
Now, let’s discuss these in depth.

17
 Update/Post

The most basic way to make content on LinkedIn is by

writing a long form post, which acts sort of like a blogpost.
There is a limit of 1300 characters and you can find it on
the top of your home feed on the website. There are
multiple documents that you can attach to it, like pictures,
video, and PDF.

When writing a post, you should know that if it exceeds

140 characters or 3 lines, LinkedIn cuts off the sentence
with a “See More” option. Hence, if you want people to
engage with your post, make sure it’s more than 140
characters and uses empty spaces.

The trick here is to use spaces to your advantage. It’s

better to write 1-3 lines and leave a line before writing
more. It looks less cluttered and more readable. LinkedIn
will promote posts that are longer. (this may change
anytime)

Also, some of the best performing posts I’ve seen were

about people sharing their personal experiences, and the
struggles they’ve had. It was found out that posts with
pictures have a 98% more engagement rate than regular
posts.

Like email marketing and YouTube videos, creating hooks

can skyrocket your engagement. This, like many other

18
things, is a skill that you’ll only learn with experimentation.
You can also start off with a question that sparks interest in
the mind of the person while scrolling through the feed.

Another thing to remember is the use of hashtags. The

way hashtags work on LinkedIn is very different from other
platforms like Instagram wherein you would use 30
different sized hashtags in a post to get higher into the
explore feed.

Don’t do that on LinkedIn, use 5-10 very specific hashtags

and that’s it. When you release a post, the platform first
shows it to your 1st degree connections, and if a lot of
people seem to engage with it, then it pushes it to your 2nd
degree connections.

One pro tip (for those trying to build a brand on the

platform): make your own hashtag. You can basically just
come up with some short word that represents you and
use that as your very own hashtag, for example #ishan.

People can follow #ishan to see more posts by you and

you can see who else is talking about you when they use
#ishan on their own post.

Some people also tag themselves and their business at the

end of their posts. This way, when the person reading the
post reaches the end, they can quickly take a look at who
you are and what you do.

So, now you’ve published your very first post, what’s next?

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You need people to engage with it early on, and so a little
trick I use is to send the link of my post to my friends who
like and comment on it, that way LinkedIn pushes it to
more people.
If LinkedIn sees that no one has engaged with your post in
the first 1 hour, it won’t show it to a lot of people.

If you can form a group chat on LinkedIn with all your

friends, that can help your posts a lot. Once you complete
writing your post, send its link in the group. Other members
can click on that link to engage with your post early on,
leading to LinkedIn showing it to more people. ANd then
you would do the same for other people as well in the
group.

These groups are also called Engagement groups. Many

people don’t like to use it, calling it “fake” engagement,
which is true to an extent. At the end, I’ll leave it to you to
decide to use it or not.

Another metric that governs how your post performs, is the

time of the day you release it. A lot of people are active in
evenings and night time on the platform and so it makes
more sense to release it around that time.

Recipe for a VIRAL Post

When I say “viral”, it must be taken into consideration in

relatable terms. That means, if a person who has only 500
connections on LinkedIn writes a new post, and it gets
15000 views in the first week, that is a viral post for him.

20
On the other hand, a person with 10k followers writing a
post and getting 15k views, would be a “normal post”.

This is important to understand because comparing your

engagement with someone who has a different size of
audience will do you no good.

Case Study: Anshika Gupta

A CS student from a tier 3 college in India gets the
opportunity to participate in Amazon wow, an event where
she is able to get in touch with the recruiters at Amazon.
This led to her coding interview rounds at amazon and she
passed them successfully and landed a job at Amazon as
an SDE.

She then for the first time writes an emotional post talking
about how she didn’t clear the exams that “society” thinks
are important to be successful in life as an engineer and
still made it to a FAANG company, which is rare.

This was her first post on LinkedIn and it literally blew up!

21
This post got around 3 Million views, 100k likes, and 4.3k
comments. In other words: CRAZY!

Did she aim to make a viral post? Probably not. And

neither should you!

Events like these happen rarely. And so, your goal

shouldn’t be to make your posts go viral. Your goal should
be to make posts each day and try to experiment and see
what works for you.

People looking for virality on social media platforms don’t

understand that it’s a long game. There is no short term
secret to growth on any social media platform. It’s similar

22
to when people buy lottery tickets each year in search of
getting rich quickly. And the stats show that 99% of lottery
winners end up bankrupt in the next 1 year.

Basically, focus on making posts consistently and learn

from what works and what doesn’t. There is no magic
sauce!

Looking at the post itself, you can see that the post
appeals to our emotional senses, which was the main
factor that helped it go viral. And this post also had a photo
showing her offer from amazon.

Your motive should be to write a post each day, not to go

viral at some point, but to get better at your content writing
skills.

Another Case Study:

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When writing this post, I never expected it to go viral like it
did. I was sharing my thoughts after being on the platform
for a year. As you can see, you don’t need a lot of
hashtags, you only need high engagement.

The sad reality of the social platforms of the present is that

controversial pieces of content, content that puts a
question on something prevalent in the society, gets higher
engagement.

And then people start to miss interpret what the post

means and what I wanted to convey. They started a fight
on IITs vs BITS based upon what college I am in.

24
To be honest with you, I have made and shared 10s if not
hundreds of posts talking about opportunities, resources,
quotes, business related content, and still no one gave that
as much attention as they did to this post.

This would be the first post I’ve written about something

controversial and I had no motive of offending people or
attacking someone personally.

I learned from this that I could have written it in a better

way. But if I did, the post wouldn't have gone so viral. (not
that I intentionally wanted it to)

How to get a trending post?

Unlike other platforms, a viral post is not a “trending post”
on LinkedIn.

Here are a few of my own trending post notifications.

25
26
And many more times in the same hashtags!

A trending post appears at the top when you search that

hashtag for you. Another interesting thing I observed:
these posts of mine, didn’t have a lot of engagement or
views.

Some people I’ve talked to say that they look at the

percentile of people engaging with the post and not the

27
percentage itself. But it’s still a debatable topic. I don’t
really know how a post becomes trending.

I never thought of making a “viral” or “trending” post idea. I

simply create and move on. And so should you! Be in love
with the process and not the end product/results.

You can also create polls like this:

This can be a great way to do some market research on

any topic and see what the audience really thinks. As you
can see, I can understand from this poll that most people
read an actual paperback book. And I understand that
most people don’t consume audiobooks in India.

28
 LinkedIn Video

Sean Cannel, says, “LinkedIn Video might be the biggest

opportunity for you in online video going into this new
decade (2020 and beyond).”

A couple years ago, LinkedIn added the ability to upload

videos. This is HUGE because now you can build a better
connection with the person that’s viewing your video, than
a written word in a text post.

If you wanted to start your YouTube channel, but are afraid

that because YouTube is so saturated right now, your
content might not be discovered, you can use LinkedIn
instead of YouTube.

Right now, you can only upload a video up to 10 minutes

but what I’ve observed is that videos around 2-5 minutes
perform really well.

Yes, I understand LinkedIn might not be the alternative for

you if you want to make movie reviews or prank videos, but
for many people who want to talk about business,
entrepreneurship, productivity, their lessons, etc, LinkedIn
is a great platform. There are people I’ll talk about later in
the book who’ve used LinkedIn video to exponentially
increase their followers and reach.

29
Let’s take my own example. I have made many videos for
both LinkedIn and YouTube, and I noticed that the same
video uploaded on LinkedIn and YouTube had more
engagement (views, likes, comments and shares) on
LinkedIn than YouTube.

The reason behind this is simple, YouTube has millions of

content creators making regular content for years,
something LinkedIn doesn’t. It’s all about demand and
supply. YouTube has more supply, hence it’s hard for you
to compete for attention than LinkedIn, where people are
only starting to upload videos.

Now, let’s talk about the equipment you need to get

started!

Because of the mature audience of the platform, it would

be best for you to make a stable video, not a hand held
shaking one. You can get started with your phone’s back
camera.

For audio, you can find very cheap mics to get started with
on Amazon and Flipkart. It’s recommended that you sound
good on a platform like this.

And then the more general advice : make sure you are fully
and properly visible and use the golden ratio in your
videos.

Christopher Hummel, CEO of FITTEAM does a great job of

using LinkedIn video to his advantage. Here’s an example
of his video posts:

30
This is what I take away from his strategy here:
1. The video is not more than 1 min.
2. He uses a completion bar to show how much of the
video is left.
3. He uses subtitles for people who don’t use the
speakers or earphones.
4. Video has a square shape with BIG text at top and
bottom to grab attention.
5. And he is consistent with it.

There are services like Kapwing that allow you to do just

that without knowing anything about how to edit videos.

31
You don’t need to make it look that great when you are
starting. Just Start! Quantity will lead to Quality!

There are people like ​Goldie Chan ​that uploaded one

video on LinkedIn each day from 2017 and she made
videos for around 700 days straight! She built her following
upon the power of video on LinkedIn.

32
 LinkedIn Articles

LinkedIn Articles are your traditional blog - like feature,

where you can go in depth on the topic and discuss it
properly. There are no known limits to Articles, but I’ve
heard that articles that have more than 120000 characters
are not shown by LinkedIn.

Articles give you text formatting features like bold, italics,

etc and you can also attach images/gifs in the middle of
the article.

Like any other blogs on the internet, making headlines that

catch the attention of the person is crucial to its success.

Before you read on : Around October of 2020, LinkedIn’s

algorithm changed in a way that drastically reduced the
organic reach of articles. Like any other platform, LinkedIn
keeps messing with what content people see and so you
must be able to accept and adapt to these trends.

Writing articles is time consuming, and so I would

recommend you to stick to normal status updates which
have a limit of 1300 characters. That would be the best for
your growth on LinkedIn at the time of writing this book.
Although, this might change in a year from now.

Articles allow you to go into depth and establish your

authority over that specific niche.

33
 PDF Documents

You can upload Documents that people can view in a post.

It looks like an Instagram carousel. And the viewer gets to
download it as well.

I’ve seen startups from my own college like

50xInvestments use documents effectively to their
advantage. They make financial reports for various stocks
and then share it in a post.

Take a look:

34
These work great for branding yourself or your business.
Just make sure you watermark your PDF document,
because there are people who have a tendency to repost
without giving credit.

Here’s an example of a document I posted some days ago:

35
There is no limit to the number of slides you can use.

For making these types of PDFs, you can check out

Canva. It has helped me out a lot for creating content.
Look up on YouTube for how to use it and you’ll be good to
go!

36
 LinkedIn LIVE

This is a feature that’s not available to everyone, and you

need to apply to get accepted in it.

Currently, It’s used by people to do interviews and do

some company announcements. Preksha Kaparwan has
really used LinkedIn Live to her advantage. She also uses
video to talk about the products and services offered by
her company, Alphaa AI.

During her live streams, she and other people from Alphaa
AI talk about the features offered by their products and do
some QnA as well.

37
Similarly, If you have your own business and you want to
have more brand awareness, consider doing LinkedIn Live
each week and see where it takes you.

Doing LIVE interviews is also something I think is

interesting and you can try it out as well.

Whenever someone you follow goes Live, you get a

notification like this one here:

38
 LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is the virtual representation of

yourself. Therefore, you must keep it updated and well
maintained.
Here, we’ll take a look at the complete profile, it’s elements
and how to optimize it for search keywords (SEO basically
for you digital marketers out there).

Background Image

This is a banner that is present at the top of the profile.

Most people make the mistake of not putting anything
there. A blank background tells nothing about your
personality.

Websites like unsplash, pexels, pixabay, etc come in

handy when choosing a background image for your profile.

For example, if you are a developer, you can put an image

related to coding.

Tim Ruscica, 320k+ subs YouTuber Founder of Tech with

Tim

39
Rachit Jain, 100k+ subs YouTube

Or if you run a business, then you can put up an image of

your business so as to show people what you offer -
services or products.

Prudhvi P., CEO @Supervised Learning

Imraan Moh, moholla

40
Tools like Canva and PicMonkey come in handy when
creating banners and graphic design. Or, if you are a
graphic designer, feel free to use Photoshop to do this.

People also like to put up photos of their talks that they’ve

been a guest for.

Aishwarya Srinivasan, Data Scientist @IBM Research

These are just a few ideas. Feel free to mix it up and come
up with your own background.
The recommended size is 1584 X 396 pixels and you can
use a .jpg, .png, or even a GIF file.

Profile Picture

Your profile picture is one of the most important parts of

your profile. Most people who are browsing through
LinkedIn will see a tiny circle as your profile picture. Hence,
its best practice to have a headshot photo with a clear
background so that you appear properly even in a tiny
circle.

Don’t use your photos on the beach or you in a coffee shop

sipping coffee. Those might work well for instagram and

41
Facebook, but make sure you stay professional and clean
in your profile photo.

If you want to make it look perfect, there is a tool called

photofeeler.com where you can put in your photo and
people give feedback for your photo on the basis of
competency, how likeable you look and how influential it
feels.

Depending on your profession and your character, you can make

sure you find the best photo for your LinkedIn profile​.

42
Make sure your photo is well lit and is a headshot. Feel
free to hire a photographer if you can to click a great high
definition photo. It’ll all be worth it. You have no idea how
many people judge you based upon your LinkedIn profile.

Headline

The headline is a one-line statement that gives people a

brief idea of who you are.

Why do you need an effective headline? For a couple of

reasons:
1. Attract more profile views:
More profile views lead to LinkedIn suggesting your
profile to more people, and so your profile appears
more in search. This leads to massive opportunities
for you both in job and

There are two two types of Headlines I’ve seen people

make:

This is what most people prefer to use. Using “|” to

separate what all you’ve done.

43
People also write things like “Ex-Google Ex-Facebook” in
their headlines to get more eyeballs on their profiles and it
works!

A word of caution: Don’t write what you are not. Be honest.

I’ve seen so many people with 10 subscribers, 2 videos
and calling themselves a “YouTuber”, people writing things
like “Entrepreneur” and “Founder”. Just make sure you are
being true to yourself when writing your headline. It might
get you profile views in the short term, but not so much in
the long term.

The other type of headline is a sentence, like this:

These one line sentences arouse curiosity and so people

end up viewing your profile and even asking you on a DM,
what does that mean? Like this one:

44
So, feel free to think about it and come up with your own.

Here’s what you shouldn’t write in your headline:

Student at Birla Institute of

Technology and Science, Pilani - Goa
Campus

I see so many people who write just that. Student at XYZ

College. This isn’t the most effective headline because this
is common and nothing interesting.

When a person is searching for a web developer, he/she

would rather click on a profile that has Web Developer
written in the headline than your profile that has web
developer written in the summary (will be discussed later).

45
In an ocean of LinkedIn accounts, what makes you
different? Think about this and then come up with a
headline that would be best for you.

Contact info

Try your best to give them (the viewer or the recruiter) as

many ways to contact them as you. If you are a developer
or a student, make sure you make your portfolio website
and at least host it on GitHub and put its link in the contact
info.

I don’t recommend giving your phone number though, just

because it might not be safe.

If you are active on your twitter account, feel free to

mention it in the contact info. And your email should off
course be there too. That’s 2-3 ways people can contact
you.

#OPENTOWORK

The next part you’ll see in your profile is a prompt that asks
you if you want your profile to be open to get hired. This
will only be visible to recruiters looking for hiring people.

For those of you who are already in a job but are looking
for job opportunities, you can still turn on the option to
show that you are open to work and people from your
company will not be able to see that.

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In addition to this, there is also an option to add a ribbon
on your profile picture that says “OPEN TO WORK” to help
you get opportunities faster. You can do that if you do not
have a job currently.

About

About is a space to explain who you are, what you do,

what you offer, etc.
This is basically your chance to optimize your profile for
LinkedIn search.

Write all that you can about you, your previous work
experiences, your skills and your hobbies.
Use bullet points and don’t make it one giant paragraph, no
one has the energy to read it completely.

The mistake many people make here is that they write a

couple of lines in the summary and that’s it!

This is also not like the Instagram bio caption where you
write poetry or some quote. Don’t do that. Simply list down
your experiences and your skills.

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This is what my about section looks like. Detailed,
separated with spaces so that it’s easier to read and I’ve
also used certain bullet points and checks that make it
more interesting and eye grabbing.

And it also has a call to action at the end, which is a link to

my podcast. I encourage you to go look at other people
and how they have made their About section and then
make your own.

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Featured

In the featured section, you can list your major posts,

articles, photos, or media links. If you have a YouTube
Channel, this is a great place to showcase your channel. If
you are an influencer with a public Instagram account, feel
free to mention that as well.

You can only list 5 objects that will appear in the featured
section. When you add more objects, it adds it into the
“See More” option.

Your Dashboard

This section is only visible to you, and it shows statistics of

your account. This includes:
1. Profile Views
It simply shows how many people have viewed
your profile in the last 90 days. Clicking on it, opens
up another page that shows how many people
viewed your profile every week in the last 3 months.

Like this:

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Below that you’ll find who these viewers are. If you
have a premium account, you’ll get to see the
profiles of every person who saw yours. If you don’t
have it enabled, you’ll see where the viewers work.
Here’s an example of this:

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 The “Interesting Views” are views from recruiters
that are looking to hire people. You can scroll over
and it’ll show how many people from your college,
your club, or other companies viewed your profile.

(I had to censor the names and photos of the

people, because I didn’t want people messaging
me saying I don’t want to be featured in a book
publicly.)

2. Your Latest Post Views

This just shows how many people have viewed
your latest post or article.

3. Your Search Appearances

Clicking on this option, opens a page that shows
how many times your profile appeared using
LinkedIn search in the past 7 days, where do the
people work at when they found you with search
and what their job descriptions are. At the bottom, it
also shows what keywords you are ranking for in
the search.

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 This can be quite insightful when you are optimizing
your profile.
Here’s an example of what keywords my profile
ranks for:

4. Salary Insights
This opens a page that shows you how much
money is earned by people in your field. The stats
are based upon what people have reported to
LinkedIn. I would say, if you want to get to know

52
how much people are paid in different companies in
different locations, go check out glassdoor. It’s a
website where people give reviews and rating for
companies and reveal their salaries as well.
But in the LinkedIn Salary page, it shows all the
positions and how much they are paid, average
pay, median pay, and many more details that you
can look up.

You can select the country and what position you

are looking for to get more information.

Activity

The activity section shows your latest posts and

articles that you’ve liked, shared or commented on.
Clicking on that, opens up your activity dashboard,
where you can view your own posts and articles.

Experience

Here’s a place for you to list your previous job

experiences along with the time duration you
worked there for, your job title, and your
description. It’s really important for you to write
what your responsibilities were at that job and what
projects you worked on over there. This will give
the person looking at the profile a rough idea of
your skills, your ability to adapt to new situations
and technologies and how much impact you had on
the company.

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If you are a student working for college clubs, feel
free to write what all you did, who projects you
worked on, how many sponsors you contacted,
how many events you organized, etc. This will help
you all the more to get your first internship.

Here’s a PRO TIP: Try to get Letters of

Recommendation from your previous jobs and
attach those for every experience you had.

Also, if you are listing a startup that you did, make

sure its LinkedIn Page has a photo, description,
etc. That makes it look more REAL.

Education

Simply list down your College/University where you

are studying or you graduated from with details like
the year of graduation and your stream.
You can mention your 12th grade school and
CGPA if you want to, but it's important as far as I
know.

Licenses & Certifications

This is the place for you to flaunt your precious

certificates that you’ve earned from online/offline
courses or workshops. Feel free to list down what
all courses you’ve done even if it’s from sites like
Udemy or Lynda.

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Also, make sure you link your certificate, so that
people can clearly click the link to view the
certificate. That’s the most transparent way to show
that you’ve ACTUALLY done those courses.

At the end of the day, course certificates might

make your profile look legit and amazing, just know
that your practical skills and your learnings are
worth the most.

Skills & Endorsements

This is the place for you to really display your skills,

industry knowledge, tools and technologies and
other skills. People who have worked with you can
visit your profile and endorse you for those skills.
They get the option to tell LinkedIn exactly if they
worked with you directly on a project, heard about
you from someone, etc.

For example: If you are a developer, feel free to

mention all the languages you know, the
frameworks, libraries you’ve worked with, Git and
GitHub if you are into open source, etc.

If you want people to endorse you for something,

make sure you follow the 1.80$ strategy and take
the opportunity to first endorse other people.
LinkedIn shows a message to them if someone
endorsed a skill and so most of the people end up
returning the favor.

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You can add up to 44 skills here and this will also
help you in optimizing your profile for search.

Accomplishments

The accomplishments section has the following:

1. Courses
You can list all the courses you’ve attended.
If you are in college, you can mention the
course names and also basically whichever
course you’ve done that doesn’t give you a
certificate upfront can be put under this part.

2. Honors & Awards

Here, you can mention what all awards and
scholarships you’ve won during college or
elsewhere. This is what my Honors and
Awards section looks like.

3. Languages
This might be helpful if you are doing
freelance work for international clients and
they might look at it. You can choose your
proficiency level for those languages which

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 includes: Native speaker, Professional
working proficiency, Elementary, Limited, or
Full proficiency.

4. Projects
This is one of my favorite parts of the
LinkedIn profile. This shows if you are a practitioner
of what you show in your certificates you’ve
learned, or just another person on the internet with
the fake it till you make it mentality.
What projects have you worked on? What
website/apps did you make? Was this a solo
project or done in a team?
What were the challenges faced when
making this project and how did you overcome
them?
Was this a personal project, or a paid for
project?
What Software/Technologies were used in
it?
Can you show me it’s Demo version?
Can I see it’s GitHub Repo?[Only for coding
projects]

Make sure you answer each of these

questions in the description of each project.

If this was done in a group, mention the

profiles of those people as contributors.

You can also display the projects you made

during Hackathons. Some people are confused with this.

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 5. Publication
Here you can mention all the times when
you were mentioned in a blog post by blogs,
or an article you wrote for another blog as a
guest writer. Make sure you link the
blog/article and give a brief description
about it.

6. Patent
This isn’t for everyone. It’s more specific for
researchers and professors. But it’s similar
to a Publication. In this case, you’ll put the
link to your patent or research paper.

7. Organization
If you have worked for Non for Profit
Organizations, do mention exactly what you
did, and how it helped the community
overall. For example: You go to teach
Village kids a subject like Maths each
Sunday. You can mention this saying you
taught a 100 village kids Mathematics for X
weeks/months.

IMPORTANT

Your normal profile url would be something like this -

LinkedIn.com/in/ishan-sharma-12565-234sd
There is an option for you to change that to your own url,
like I did - ​LinkedIn.com/in/ishansharma7390/
This will make it easier for people to discover you by just
searching on google your name.

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Also, you can generate a CV from your LinkedIn profile
using the More option at the top of your profile. But this
doesn’t look good and you can do a better job with your
CV.

LinkedIn recently came up with a CV Builder feature right

next to the option to convert profile to PDF, and here you
can do some very elementary changes to it. But do check it
out once!

Recent Additions

LinkedIn, at the time of writing this, rolled an update that

allows you to upload a .mp3 file that would give a
pronunciation of your name. This might help when people
are looking at people internationally.

Another feature that was rolled out, was double tap to like
a photo in a post. This is similar to Instagram and other
platforms. It’s currently only available on the mobile app
though.

Also, you can now show “Support” for the post by tapping
the raised hand. Here’s what it looks like:

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If you don’t know, you hover your cursor over the like
button on posts to view and choose from these. And you
can tap and hold the like button to open this up on the
mobile app.

Also, when posting a photo, you can add stickers to it, like
these:

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And the Stories feature similar to Instagram is also rolling
out to more countries. In June, it was released to Australia
as the 4th country. People seem to have a love hate
relationship with this new feature, but only time will tell if
this will go LIVE for everyone.

Last Thoughts

The reality is that anyone on the platform can write

whatever they want to. There is no way to verify that that
person actually worked at that company. This leads to
some people writing and mentioning stuff that they don’t
know or do.

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Also, people are afraid if they put their profile photo, they
might get judged by people looking at their profile and
could miss an opportunity just because they may not look
good to the recruiter.
The only answer that I can give is this: You need to learn
to sell yourself, and for that you have to go all in and show
yourself online.

People going for software developer interviews think all

they need is coding, when in reality, they’ll be selling
themselves to the company, metaphorically speaking. A
person with decent DSA skills and amazing speaking skills
will be better than a person with extreme DSA and coding
skills who is just not able to properly express themselves.
[Just an example here]

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 LinkedIn Messaging

One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn is your

ability to message people personally.

You have to understand that these are real people and not
just a LinkedIn profile. People end up doing self-promotion
by sending links to their YouTube channel or asking
someone to sign up for some service or like their company
page, join a group, etc.

The worst part about it is that they do all this without any
context. Without knowing who the person really is.

Some people don’t know how to start a conversation and

so they never message someone.

This is an example of what I usually do:

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Be respectful when asking for help and don’t spam
someone. People get so many messages each day, it
becomes difficult to answer all of them. So, have patience,
most people do get back to you in 2-3 days.

Your goal with talking to someone on LinkedIn DMs should

be to get them to a video or voice call or even an offline
meeting.

You can also make a Group where you would share

resources or have discussions on a topic. These can also
be engagement groups where people simply put their post
links and others open their posts and engage with it early
on in order to artificially hijack the engagement rate with
your posts.

There’s a lot of potential in messaging and you can

connect and talk to virtually anyone in the world. Just make
sure you are trying to build relationships with people and
not trying to sell something to them.

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 1.80$ Strategy for Growth & Getting
Noticed

The best way to grow your LinkedIn account, get more

profile views, more connections and opportunities is the
1.80$ Strategy. This was a plan devised by Garyvee back
in 2017 and this is what it means.

Firstly, you need to find 10 hashtags that are relevant to

your niche. If you are a developer, you can target hashtags
like #coidng #developer #programming
#softwaredeveloper #softwareengineer #google #microsoft
#Facebook #computerscience, etc.

If you want to find out what are the best hashtags for your
niche, just search your niche on LinkedIn Search and see
what hashtags people are using and figure it out.

Next, everyday you need to search that hashtag on

LinkedIn search and look at the top 10 posts and study
them deliberately. Feel free to neglect hiring posts if you
find those at the top.

Once you have read it completely, comment what you think

about it below. And make it meaningful, adding your
perspective, your “2 cents”.

Do this on the top 9 posts for 10 Hashtags, each day for 3

months, and you’ll be surprised to see the response.

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This leads to more profile views which helps in search
rankings and you’ll start to build this personality of a
person that has knowledge around that subject matter.

The numbers are arbitrary. You can do more than this, you
can do less than this. The point here is to get out there and
interact with people in your community.

Now this might seem like a lot of work, and it is to be

honest. Reading someone’s post and then thinking about it
and then putting a meaningful comment is a lot of work.
But if it would be easy, everyone would do it. It’s hard
work, and that’s why I know 90% of you reading this won’t
do it. But the 10% that will, will sweep all its rewards.

Also, this method to grow works for other platforms as well

like Instagram and Twitter.

66
 LinkedIn Jobs

Hiring on LinkedIn works in two ways :

1. Either the person reaches out to companies and

applies to hiring managers or seeking out for
referrals.
2. Hiring managers reach out to you because they
found you through your posts or through LinkedIn
search.

According to a survey conducted, only 8% of hiring is done

by the second method, and most people hustle a lot,
sending their resumes with cover letters to 100s of
recruiters before hearing anything.

One way is to keep following certain hashtags each day

like #hiring #jobseekers, etc. Many recruiters create posts
saying that they have all the job openings at their
companies and they give you an email to send your CV.

Another method is to check the LinkedIn Jobs Tab where

you will find companies posting job openings. You can
simply apply to as many as possible and wait for them to
reach out to you. This applies both for a full time job and
for internships.

You can also search for a specific job role and a location
where you can work(remote is also an option) in.

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You can also make a post saying that you are looking for
work and you have experience in working for X company
and you have made these many projects. People will reach
out to you in your LinkedIn DMs.

The previous method I talked about for growth also helps

out a lot for getting noticed by recruiters.

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 How Hiring Works

It’s very unclear to most people how hiring on LinkedIn

works, but I do know that recruiters use LinkedIn heavily to
find people for positions. Every company’s recruiter gets a
premium database service from which they can look for
what skills they want to hire for and then move ahead with
that.

From what LinkedIn tells us, the LinkedIn search is not the
same for everyone. This means, when I type “software
developer” in my search, the people that are
recommended to me are completely different from what
you’ll get from your search.

LinkedIn suggests you people that are in your 1st

connection circle, then 2nd and so on, it’s subjective to
everyone of us, sort of like the YouTube homepage.

If you show up higher when someone is searching, you get

discovered by more people.

So, how should you rank higher in search results?

There are metrics that really matter in determining your
rank, these are : Profile views and Keywords.

Profile Views
Similar to any other social media, profile views are
basically the number of times people visit your profile, in a
given time frame. When a profile has more views, LinkedIn
understands that the person is more famous and so, it
pushes the profile higher in search results.

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Keywords
Your headline, the text right below your name plays a
major role in telling LinkedIn who you are and what
category you belong to. Your profile summary + skills
along with the headline affect what keywords are you
optimised for (More on optimising your profile in the later
chapters).

A survey conducted by Andrew LaCivita (who runs a

YouTube channel on career advice), shows that 8% of
people that are hired in companies said, “someone on
LinkedIn contacted them about it”.

You’ll find a section right below your headline, that asks if

you’re looking for a job. You can turn it on, and it will only
be visible to the recruiters that are looking to hire people.
Make sure you select what positions you are suitable for
and what locations, you can join the office.

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 LinkedIn Advertising

Advertisements on LinkedIn appear in multiple places.

Here are some examples:

This one is a simple ad to learn more about their services.

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This one offers a report/ebook as a lead magnet to grow
their email list and spread brand awareness. This does
take a lot of time to make but in the end, you do get a ton
of emails too if targeted properly.

72
This one is another way to grow your email list but with the
help of a live webinar on some topic. This might take less
effort initially but people might not opt in due to busy
schedules.

73
This type of ad appears on the right side of your feed and
can be to follow the page or check out their jobs listings.

This is a banner ad that you can see at the top of your

profile.

I have used the ads manager on LinkedIn with the initial

Rs. 2500 free Ad credit that I got to run an ad. The problem
here is that the CPC can be quite high when compared to
Facebook and Instagram. On the other hand, you do get a
more professional crowd on LinkedIn.

And if you’ve ever worked with Facebook’s Ad Manager,

you’ll find this to be quite similar. You can do the same
type of detailed targeting like you can do on Facebook and
select where you want your ads to appear.

If your business offers B2B solutions, LinkedIn advertising

might work out for you.

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For most other businesses, I would recommend them to
just create organic content just because of the free reach
right now.

Yes, you’ll have to make multiple pieces of content but it

will be so worth it.

I won’t go into detail talking about Detailed targeting and

making campaigns, that would be a whole another book.
You can look it up on YouTube or get some courses on
sites like Udemy and get started.

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 Don’ts on LinkedIn

Here, I share some examples of malpractices people do on

LinkedIn which are depricative for your rapport and your
profile.

Sending improper messages in DM

This is a message one of my connections got in her DMs

and it really annoyed her!

By now, I hope it’s clear to you, that LinkedIn is a

professional platform, and you really should consider other
casual platforms for conversations like these.

Use of Cursing/Slang or Hate Speech

76
Even Gary Vaynerchuk decided to beep out the cursing in
the videos he puts out on the platform. Use it to grow
yourself and others, and not to tear someone apart.
LinkedIn is far from Facebook and hate speech will not be
tolerated in this community. This might seem obvious to
many, but I just wanted to point this out.

Writing the Profile Summary in Third

Person

I see many people using third person to describe who they

are in the summary, and that’s just not correct. If you think
about it, your profile is your digital presence on the
platform and you must always describe yourself in first
person form.

Plagiarised Content

I see this happen a lot and even Imraan Moh(Founder of

Moholla, a digital marketing agency) talked about this on
my podcast. Often, it happens that a person with a large
following looks at another person’s post and they end up
copying it.

It happened to me too. I had a post with a picture talking

about my best reads of 2019, and someone else copied
that image for his own post and claiming it as his own.
If you really want to use someone else’s content, simply
give credits in your post or article, it’s great for both you,
and the person who’s content you’re using

77
Spamming People in LinkedIn DMs

Don’t do this. I see a lot of people just randomly messaging

me to join their group, to subscribe to their channel, sign
up for their events, etc.
Remember, DMs is for building a connection with a person
and trying to solve their problems, not yours. Try to strike
up a conversation first, provide some context before
pitching them your product. Try to get them on audio/video
calls to tell about yourself.

I like what Mr. Kennedy said, “Ask not what the country
can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. In
this case, the country is the person on the other side, your
‘could be’ customer.

Not Connecting to Everyone on LinkedIn

Many of my friends think that they should only connect with

people they know on the platform, not with everyone on the
platform, as a result most of their connections are from the
same college.

I say you should absolutely connect with everyone in your

‘niche’. For example, if you are a college student into
software development, connect with people like you,
studying in any college around the world that are also
interested in software development.

Especially, if you are looking for jobs, you should try as

often as possible to connect to people that are already
working in those roles, and even interact with them. You

78
will be surprised to see how many people would like to talk
to you about it. You can also leverage them by asking for
referrals once you’ve established a connection with them,
which would be beneficial for both of you.

[Many companies have a referral program, where an

employee can refer a person to be hired. And if the person
get hired, the employee get a bonus, so it becomes a win
win situation for both]

The bigger your connection circle is, the more

opportunities you’ll get.

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 Success Story of Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes is a former professional football player, world

record holding athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. He is
the podcast host of the famous School of Greatness
podcast.

But he wasn’t like this from the beginning. Infact, he had a

point in his life when he was jobless, unmotivated and had
spent his days sitting at a couch watching television in his
sister’s house. It was a career ending injury that put his life
on halt back in 2007.

Then, one day, his friend calls him telling him to join
LinkedIn [which was ancient in it’s functionality back in

80
2007]. It’s an online community of business professionals
having expertise in their subject of matter.

Lewis put all of his concentration into learning about the

technicalities of LinkedIn and spent every single hour of his
day, interacting with people on the platform.

After realising the problems people face in connecting with

other sports professionals, he went on to make a LinkedIn
group called ‘Sports Industry Network’. In only a year, the
group reached 10,000 members. He continued creating
more city specific groups on LinkedIn.

He was enabling people to get to new opportunities in the

group. People started thanking him for it and he started
growing his network this way.

He started organizing meetups for free initially to meet

people in his groups and establish a deeper connection.
Later on, he met Joel Comm, author of the best selling
book ‘The Adsense Code : What google never told you
about making money with adsense’ and made him realize
the power of LinkedIn for business owners. Joel added
Lewis to his panel of experts who use to run webinars for
business owners.

Lewis found his passion in teaching people the power of

LinkedIn and ended up making “big money” in that first
webinar alone. This gave Lewis the confidence to continue
doing these webinars.

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He then leveraged his LinkedIn network to talk to influential
people in various fields on an interview type podcast that is
now known as “School of Greatness”.

None of this could’ve been possible without LinkedIn. He

wouldn’t have met so many people without taking the first
step in learning how the platform works.

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Coming Soon : LinkedIn Stories

83
At the time of writing this book, LinkedIn just announced
that they’ll be adding a new feature called “Stories”, similar
to Instagram, Snapchat and other platforms you may be
familiar with.
This is a BIG deal, as stories will lead to people sharing
more parts or their lives with their connections on LinkedIn.
This also tells us that Microsoft is taking LinkedIn to a
platform more like Facebook, but for professionals.

The update will probably be released worldwide by the end

of this year, and it’ll be exciting to see how people use their
creativity for using stories.

Similar to Instagram, whenever LinkedIn pushes out a new

feature like stories, it promotes people that use this
feature, as an appraisal system. This I believe is another
great opportunity for you to get discovered by more people
on LinkedIn.

I have seen multiple posts on LinkedIn by people who are

using it say that it will ruin the platform which was made
especially for professionals.

But let’s not go into that before using it first.

As you can see in the images, you can write something,

add stickers and even tag people in there. You also get the
option to choose who all can view it.

The rest of the mechanism is very much the same way

Instagram and Snapchat operate on.

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 Use it Or Lose it!

So, I’ve tried to explain to you the benefits of using

LinkedIn to show people who you are and what you do.
Opportunities like these only come once in a decade, last
decade it was YouTube and now you know how difficult it
is for a person to get attention (it’s relatively hard, in case
you don’t know).

You must act NOW, and start optimising your profile with
keywords, produce content, and building relationships with
people on LinkedIn. Again, one of the most important
factors for your growth on any platform is your Frequency
and Consistency.

There are thousands of people using LinkedIn to create

their influence, or get hired or expand their businesses,
and I hope the same for you! This will only get harder as
years pass by, and so you must start utilising this
opportunity TODAY!

I saw a post recently on grabbing opportunities by Salil

Naik that really hit home for me.

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Looking at the statistics, I know that many of you were
affected due to the pandemic/lockdown, some even lost
their jobs, or their offers were canceled, or experienced
pay cuts. In these hard times, using LinkedIn can be so
helpful to find new opportunities and build new
relationships.

At last, I would like to remind you that the end goal of using
LinkedIn is to create a connection with people, and bring
them out into the world.
You’ve read it all, now GO EXECUTE!

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