LinkedIn is a social network rapidly growing in magnitude and importance to professionals around the world. It has become the “go to” site for professionals looking to develop business relationships with other professionals and for companies looking to hire high quality candidates.

In order to utilise LinkedIn as efficiently as possible it is important to make a good impression by clearly stating individual objectives and skills.

Here are 10 top profile tips to consider in order to successfully position yourself as a working professional on the LinkedIn network:

1) Name – Use your full name and try to avoid using abbreviations or nick names.

2) Education – List your educational history.

3) Work experience – List your work experience with details of your duties. The more details you add the more likely you are to appear in search results.

4) Photo – Uploading a picture of yourself helps give your potential employer an idea of who you are. Be careful to maintain an image of professionalism at all times. That means uploading a professional business like photograph not a picture of yourself leaving a night club.

5) Branding – add a concise summary of who you are, what your skills are, what your career goals are and add some information about your other interests.

6) Updates – timely updates on topics relevant to your audience, to your connections, that will add value and be informative. They can be about you attending conferences, seminars or if you read anything that introduces you to a new theme that might be of interest to you and your audience.

7) Connections – acquire connections that you feel might add value to your network, choose wisely as it lends credibility to you as a professional. The motto here is; quality not quantity.

8) Recommendations – obtaining a recommendation from a manager, colleague or customer adds completeness to your profile. If you do not have any work experience try to have your mentor/professor/tutor/adviser give a recommendation and/or endorse your skills.

9) Public versus Private – be mindful of the information you share on LinkedIn and make sure that you differentiate between your public and private LinkedIn profile.

10) Business versus Pleasure – LinkedIn has a feature that enables you to provide links to your website or to your Twitter account. Try to keep the focus on business. If you are making critical comments make sure they are constructive in nature. Try to project a positive outlook at all times.

Aida Tefera