With so many social media platforms out there, it can get a little confusing about the best ways to use each to receive successful feedback. LinkedIn is growing to become one of the most professional and productive social media platforms for businesses and entrepreneurs, but it doesn’t exactly follow the same rules as platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Here are 3 tips to using your LinkedIn profile to the best of your abilities.

1.    Have a proper profile picture.

That’s really the number one rule: to have a picture. People will be turned off if they can’t put a face to the skills, so upload a picture as soon as possible. Secondly, your picture should be professional. Avoid mirror pictures, pictures from family vacations, or really obvious/badly lit “selfies.” Have a friend take a picture of you if you haven’t got a stock photo available, and try to make sure your photo is similar across all forms of social media.

2.    Be active.

Not in the sense that you’re constantly updating your status about what you’re doing (this isn’t Twitter), but you should be active so that you’re seen on your connections feed. This can be done through sharing articles using the LinkedIn Bookmarklet, the Pulse feature, or updating posts with interesting information to a direct target. You can also share articles directly to connections – so don’t be afraid to send an article you think a connection would be interested in.

3.    Monitor your Endorsements.

This feature was added to LinkedIn profiles a little over a year ago, and while it’s a good way to connect with people and support their skill sets – it tends to be over used. If you see people endorsing you for things that you didn’t originally set as an endorsement, or endorsing you for the same skills titled differently, make sure to edit them properly. Unmonitored endorsements can hurt you as much as they can help you.

© Zoe Begopoulos, DemGen Inc. 2014