LinkedIn Guidelines

LinkedIn overview

LinkedIn is a great medium to consider using if your university unit has career-related information to share with Missouri State University alumni. If you’re interested in starting a LinkedIn presence, you can create a group or contact web strategy and development to create a showcase page under the university’s company page.

Strengths

• LinkedIn has a specific focus on professional growth and career advancement. If your university unit has content to share that matches that focus, LinkedIn is a great fit.
• Being successful on LinkedIn requires less of a time commitment than other social platforms. Active engagement could be considered once per week.
• LinkedIn enables users to expand their networks by linking them with the second and third degree connections of their existing connections.

Challenges

• LinkedIn users visit the platform less frequently than other social media, generally every other week or less.
• Largely due to the lower frequency in platform visits, building engagement with followers can be difficult, especially in groups.
• Most interactions on LinkedIn are tied to personal profiles, so using LinkedIn to represent your university unit will likely require you to leverage your personal account. An exception to this is company and showcase page administrators who can post as the page.

Audience

Due to its specific professional focus, LinkedIn has developed a unique audience. Here are a few demographic highlights of LinkedIn users:

• Approximately 30 percent of adults ages 30-64 use LinkedIn; it is the only social platform that has higher usage among adults than young adults and teens.
• LinkedIn users are more highly educated than general social media users; 50 percent of college graduates have accounts.
• In general, LinkedIn users have higher incomes than general social media users; 44 percent of adults who make $75,000 or more and 31 percent of adults who make $50,000 or more are on LinkedIn.

Discover more about LinkedIn demographics

Checklist

• If you will be managing a LinkedIn group, optimize your personal profile before you begin posting as a representative of your university unit.
• Share content that directly ties to professional growth, career advancement or a specific industry.
• Ensure the group or page has a description, contact information and imagery that is up-to-date and consistent with the university and your unit’s brand.
• Monitor your LinkedIn group or page at least once per week.
• Use the LinkedIn Alumni Tool to find and connect with graduates working in a specific industry, company or geographic area.