Having a profile is a great first step, but if you’re like many professionals, you could probably leverage LinkedIn better to help you reach your career and job search goals.

Take a close look at your profile and how you use the network and make sure you aren’t making these mistakes on LinkedIn.

1. Your profile isn’t 100% complete.
You set up a profile, isn’t that enough? Not exactly! Check your profile and make sure LinkedIn tells you it is “100% complete.” If it’s not, take the steps needed to fill it in. Perhaps you need to reach the required 50 contacts. Have you added your education and filled in some skills? Have you included your zip code, and filled in all of the sections? Do you have a Summary and have you described your work experiences? Don’t forget to include a photo; people are much less likely to want to learn more about you if you don’t add a picture to your profile. When your profile is not complete, you will be harder to find on LinkedIn, and you don’t get the full benefit of the network

2. Your profile lacks compelling details and keywords.
When recruiters or others search LinkedIn, they see many results listed. What will inspire them to select your profile? To start out, make sure you use a friendly, but professional looking photo. Create a headline (the information right under your name) that makes it clear why someone should want to learn more about you. Don’t use your current job title as your headline; be descriptive and tell people why you’re great at what you do. When you compose your descriptive headline, or pitch, be sure to include keywords, the words people are most likely to use when they search for someone with your background. Take advantage of the opportunity to tell your story in your LinkedIn profile.

3. You never modify your profile.
Social networks don’t work as well when you “set it and forget it.” Keep an eye on how often your profile comes up in search and how many people view your profile. (You can see this information when you view your profile – scroll down and look on the right side of your screen.) If the numbers are low, update your titles and your headline and tweak your descriptions to try to capture additional search traffic.

4. You haven’t customized your LinkedIn URL.
The most obvious sign of a LinkedIn novice: a non-customized URL. When you edit your profile, look under your photo. If the URL listed is a series of random letters or numbers, be sure to edit it and select your name, or some version of your name if you aren’t able to secure your name as a URL. Once you customize your URL, it makes it a lot easier to share it on your business cards and your resume.

5. You never post updates.
There’s a reason LinkedIn is called a “social network.” The point is to share insights and information with your network. You can do this via the “update” feature. What should you say? Share ideas, links to interesting articles, and pass along links people in your network share.

6. You’re not following companies.
You can learn a lot by following a company on LinkedIn. Even if they don’t consistently update their page, you can easily see people in your network who work for the company and use the data at your fingertips to see if the company promotes from within (check “Insights”), and where they tend to recruit. Of course, you’ll also see any jobs they post, and have the opportunity to be one of the first to apply.

Check out these posts, too:
How not to look too old when you’re job hunting
Should college students use LinkedIn
10 reasons you are not getting hired

This post originally ran on AOLJobs.com

The post LinkedIn mistakes you may be making appeared first on Keppie Careers.

One way to help you demonstrate your expertise is to share your thoughts via LinkedIn’s Answers section.

If you are not familiar, LinkedIn’s Answers offers a venue for people to ask and reply to questions about all different topics. The questions run the gamut; some seem silly, but others are quite serious. A quick review shows the following as current questions:

• Is it time for the Cinema industry to rethink its business plan?
• How will the recent tax bill effect solar and renewable energy finance?
• Pick a letter in the alphabet and write a sentence using letters in the alphabet in order… Example: “A big cat does everything”…
• Looking for virtual purchasing guest lecturers in GA 400 Corridor.

To find questions to answer, follow the MORE tab along LinkedIn’s top toolbar. Select Answers. (See the figure below.) To search based on topics (For example: Administration, Business Operations, Business Travel, Career and Education, Conferences and Event Planning, etc.), select Advanced Answers Search (right next to the Answers Home tab). Select the topics of interest and click on SEARCH.

Read through the questions, choose the ones you are interested in answering and reply in the form provided. LinkedIn allows you to suggest other LinkedIn contacts to answer the question and offers the opportunity to share a link in reply to a question. If you have a blog, you may consider replying via your blog and sharing the link. Or, you may already have a post that provides a good answer; share that link.) You can even reply privately to the questioner if you do not want your answer to be public.

Answering questions and demonstrating your expertise will help alert others in your industry and those interested in your work (whether you are a job seeker or entrepreneur) that you are willing and able to serve as an expert. In fact, I connected with my very first online client after answering some career oriented questions and hired my first web developer after he answered my question

One way to keep track of questions you might want to answer is to subscribe to the RSS feed of a topic of interest. If you are not familiar, RSS stands for really simple syndication. It is a way to receive information either via a “reader” or in your email, so you don’t need to personally visit every website or blog you enjoy to see if there is new information (or a new question). Common Craft has a great video to describe RSS.

(If you don’t use a feed reader already, maybe it is time! I use iGoogle, which you can use by signing up via your Google account. The video points out how to get started.)

Here’s how to subscribe to LinkedIn’s Answers:

From LinkedIn’s top toolbar, select MORE, then select ANSWERS.

Scroll down…

On the right side of the screen, you will see a column called BROWSE.

Select any topic from the list. (For example, “LAW AND LEGAL”).

Once you selected it, scroll down again.

At the bottom of the column, it will now have a little orange RSS symbol (shown to the right) and it should say:

Subscribe to new question in:

Law and Legal

Click on it.

Select the feed reader you use, for example, I use GOOGLE.

Choose to add to your reader or your homepage.

You’re done!

Subscribe to as many as you’d like, or  just plan some time every week to review questions in LinkedIn.

Stay tuned for more ways to demonstrate your expertise and stand a head above the rest!

The post Job seekers and entrepreneurs: subscribe to LinkedIn’s Answers appeared first on Keppie Careers.