In this social media-driven era, it is common to hear people discuss their presence on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. But, if you do not belong to the flock of the sheep and are curious to know about LinkedIn, its uses, and its importance, you’ve stumbled upon the right page!
While the function of LinkedIn is slightly different from standard social media platforms, it works as Facebook for professionals. Access to LinkedIn allows you to connect with and learn from like-minded individuals. It’s one of the most popular network sites that ties companies, employees, and employers with a single thread.
One of the best platforms to hunt for jobs, LinkedIn allows you to upload your education, personal details, contact info, expertise, and experience. Contrary to a traditional CV or resume, the platform brings your work experience and educational information to the notice of potential employers.
Keep reading on to find out whether LinkedIn should be categorized as a social media platform.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a renowned social media platform that focuses on the overall development and growth of professionals. Whether you’re a college graduate searching for job opportunities, a small shop owner, or even a salesperson at a company, LinkedIn helps to take your career a notch up.
Typically, LinkedIn is used for two purposes:
- By job seekers who are looking who are willing to kickstart their career or people who are looking for a new job or give a boost to their career.
- By companies who are willing to promote their brand or increase their online visibility. Creating a LinkedIn page also helps them to sell their products and share news feeds.
LinkedIn or commonly referred to as the world’s renowned professional social media network, helps individuals to search for jobs or opportunities. Right from remote work, full-time jobs, freelancing projects, and white-collar jobs to blue-collar jobs, you’ll find all types of employment opportunities on this platform.
With the gaining popularity of LinkedIn, employers no longer have to invest a tremendous amount of time, money, or effort to recruit new employees through campaigns or placements. Linkedin helps companies and employers to find potential employees and provides a platform to communicate with them. Companies looking forward to hiring workers can switch to the platform and explore the applications from a pool of applicants. Brands also use LinkedIn as a platform to advertise their products or services.
What are the features of LinkedIn?
Upon logging into your account, you’ll come across the below-mentioned features as a LinkedIn user:
- Home: Your account’s homepage helps you discover news feeds and recent posts your current connections share. Your connections can include company pages and professionals you’re currently following.
- Profile: LinkedIn profile displays the user’s location, occupation, photo, and name, to name a few. It allows users to add their work experience, summary, education, etc.
- My Network: This section allows you to check who your current connections are. Browse on to find out several professionals you can include in your network.
- Follow: Apart from allowing you to connect with professionals, LinkedIn will enable you to follow pages you’re interested in. For example, you can follow groups and pages based on interest and location. LinkedIn’s Lynda platform is meant for educational purposes, while the Slideshare platform helps you to publish presentations.
- Messages: Similar to other social media networks, you can initiate a conversation with other professionals. All you’ll have to do is send them a greeting, saying, ‘Hello, it’s nice to connect with you!’ You can also share photos, videos, additional attachments, and documents through this feature.
- Notifications: LinkedIn also includes a notification panel. You can click on it to accept a connection, join something you’ve been invited to, or learn about posts you’re interested in (curated notifications).
Is LinkedIn social media?
Here comes the burning question you have been looking for the answer for!
The concept of establishing your identity is no longer limited to Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn is a growing social media site that caters to around a hundred million users, especially professionals. Yes, LinkedIn can be termed a social media platform due to quite a few reasons.
Let’s take a look at some of them:
- Facebook helps people to connect with their peers, friends, relatives, colleagues, and so on. People can share posts, photos, images, and updates related to their day-to-day lives. Similarly, LinkedIn allows professionals and corporates to come together, regardless of geographical barriers and the niches they are working in.
- Similar to any other social media platform, LinkedIn offers a seamless platform for professionals to share updates related to their recent projects.
- The connections on LinkedIn are free to disseminate information related to market services and products. Users will have an opportunity to discover new jobs, establish professional bonds, and so on. Although anyone can access the platform free of cost, users can always switch to paid or premium packages for better functionality.
- The process of joining LinkedIn is similar to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. You’ll have to create an account to sign up on LinkedIn. Your profile must consist of relevant details based on your identity.
For example, you are free to share information like education, employment history, achievements, work experience, and many more. To increase your profile’s visibility, you can link the account to blogs, websites, and other social media networks.
But, is that all? Can we simply term LinkedIn as a social networking website?
Well, maybe not!
Let us learn more about the uses of LinkedIn to answer this question!
What are the uses of LinkedIn?
- For Potential employees
People who are looking for new jobs are always in search of a platform that helps them to bring their expertise and skills to the notice of employers or recruiters. This is where LinkedIn comes into the picture!
Job seekers can send their resumes online to employers and recruiters. It improves the chances of getting hired on the basis of your skills and experiences.
- For Qualified Professionals
Commonly known as the social media network for professionals, they can use LinkedIn to expand their business. They can recruit new candidates in a hassle-free manner.
- For Marketing executives
LinkedIn is catching on in terms of marketing and advertising newly launched services and products of businesses.
- For Business owners
It is the best bet for business owners willing to promote their business via online platforms. Companies often create a business page on the platform. Next, companies use it to share current updates and news related to the company. The ‘LinkedIn business page’ is the best tool to promote one’s business.
- For Individuals
Unlike Facebook, where people get a chance to build professional connections, LinkedIn allows you to keep your connections more professional and formal.
- Connect to your colleagues
- Discover a network of professionals
- Connect to ex-colleagues
- Add your potential colleagues
Why should you join LinkedIn?
Above everything, here are the top reasons why LinkedIn is a good platform to connect with people:
- Helps to build a separate identity:
A recognizable personality and unique identity is the need of the contemporary era. An identity card issued by a government official highlights the country you belong to. Similarly, a LinkedIn account goes a long way to creating a professional identity. A LinkedIn profile allows you to display your education, expertise, and skills to recruiters worldwide.
Business owners use LinkedIn to promote their services or products free of cost. It offers the best advertising channel to all. Writers get an opportunity to promote articles, blogs, and posts written by them.
- Reach out to more people like you
LinkedIn is highly preferred by professionals over other social media platforms. It has the edge over Facebook or Twitter because the platform aims to disseminate knowledge. LinkedIn’s features are spot on if you’re looking for a platform where you can teach and learn. It’s a free platform to exchange motivational and new ideas that hold great value.
- For searching jobs
New graduates or job seekers were bound to leverage traditional methods to look for jobs that suited their skills, education, qualification, experience, etc. Even today, people unaware of LinkedIn’s easy job application procedures end up looking for job vacancies in newspapers or traditional websites. LinkedIn has solved and tackled the hassle of seeking employment opportunities. Not only this, you can find humongous opportunities for skill development, courses, volunteering, etc.
Conclusion
If you are new to LinkedIn or have not created an account yet, you should do it immediately! If not anything, this platform can surely help you to learn new skills, develop good ideas, and, in the best scenarios, seek an employment opportunity.
