Jeremy Goldman is the founder of Firebrand Group and author of the book GoingSocial.
Let's be honest: it is difficult to find competitive advantages today. You have access to LinkedIn, an incredibly powerful business tool, which is great. - Until you realize that all your competitors have access to that platform
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I always identified with Columbo, the fictional TV detective who seemed a little weak, but constantly thwarted the subjects of his investigations. That's probably because I am well aware that for a given day, I'll be competing with someone smarter than me.
When I'm in a situation like this, I want the other person to underestimate me.
The best way to outsmart the other when faced with a relatively level playing field? Perform better than everyone. And the best way to do is to have a better understanding of platforms such as LinkedIn.
Here are some of my favorite LinkedIn tips underestimated that help me get an edge over the competition:
Turn Travel a networking opportunity
in the connections tab, you can filter by location, so you know exactly where your connections reside in any particular neighborhood. This is especially helpful for you road warriors :. When traveling to a new city, you can look to see who you are connected to in this area
As you have achieved, usually shortage fueling demand: I've noticed that people are very likely to want a coffee or a drink with people who are in town for a night or two.
Understanding how you stand
Most of us are semi-obsessive towards determining who check us on social media. That's why "Who's viewed your profile" has become one of the most popular features of LinkedIn.
Recently, LinkedIn improve this even more functionality with "How You Rank" which allows users to see how they compare to other connections within their networks.
top of the screen, the user interface displays your position among your connections, both in percentage and the numerical rank, and whether or not your rank or improved took a dive during the previous week. Under your rank are two additional tabs: your business and your connections. These indicate where your views profile compared to your colleagues and users to whom you are connected. You are able to quickly scroll through the lists to see which profiles are becoming less popular as yours.
"How would you" can also show you what specific keywords were used to search for you. Once you know what other professionals are research, you can strategize your brand and market yourself accordingly.
once you see how you rank compared to other professionals, you can profileadjustments do to give you a competitive advantage. If you want to know how to design your profile to attract more attention, you can use the tab "How you Rank" to browse the most viewed members in your network for ideas.
Organize contacts on your own terms
While it is always nice to find users by doing a general search word- key, sometimes you want to categorize the contacts on your own terms. To solve this problem, you can create custom labels that you can use to filter your connections. You can mark people either to the Connections tab or directly from a user's profile.
There are many uses for this feature. When I was looking for speakers for my digital network group based in New York, for example, I was looking for my entire network for "advertising" and "paid media" then marked potential speakers with my personalized "advertising speaker "tag.
If you're in sales, you can apply this principle to catalog all your prospects. The possibilities with tags are endless.
Market research
Most professionals I meet consider LinkedIn to be a place to connect with other humans, not companies. But, as my friend said Mitt :. Corporations are people, too
Go to the Entertainment tab, click societies, and see a list of companies that you are already following. If you want to add other companies, it is an easy process.
For example, if you start following Firebrand Group , you just type our name into the search bar, click the appropriate result and click the Follow button. After business is a great way to take a look at your competitors, prospects, or think tanks in the industry.
Determine the best way to reach
Try to get in touch with someone new and you do not know if you need to send a message via LinkedIn, or instead of resorting to sending a Tweet or email? No problem. You can view recent activity of most LinkedIn users to get an idea of how they are active on the platform
If you see that someone has not much or any activity in the last few weeks, it may be wise to find their e-mail address and get ahold of them that way because they do not connect on LinkedIn often.
Make your cost to repay college tuition
Just because you've finished going to school does not mean that can not continue to be useful as you build your career.
Just visit the Entertainment tab and select education in the dropdown menu. You can filter all affiliated with your college or university in different ways, depending on whether you are a prospective student, or former employer.
This is a useful tip, as I found recently when I chose the Alumni tab and entered the name of my alma mater, Emory University. Then LinkedIn suggested I "Explore Careers of 46,695+ Alumni." From there it was a breeze to find the old Emory colleagues who are adept at public speaking, in the New York area and was first or second degree connections.
Referencing you are old from the same institution as a awareness target, it is much more likely to be interested in speaking with you.
Sending a teenager to college in a few years? one feature that is invaluable is the looking to see where the old university tend to be post-college employees. a quick search allows me to see that JP Morgan, IBM, American Express, and Macy's are some of the best spots that ancient land at Emory New York.
the above are some of my favorite features LinkedIn underutilized, but these are some of the many. What are your best kept secrets on LinkedIn
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Image credit: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan