Tips to make the most of your LinkedIn Profile …
Profile: Develop your LinkedIn profile text in MS Word and keep this as your Master Document. LinkedIn has no spell check capability and its scrolling windows make entering data especially difficult. Using Firefox enables limited spell check capability.
Picture: Use a basic headshot picture from any digital camera, no professional help needed. A clean, white background is best. Do not use group photos or logos. Upload up to a 4Mb file and the system has a cropping tool. The final picture is quite small – 85 x 85 pixels.
Header/Headline: This is the most important section on your profile, all 120 characters. It defaults to Current Job Title at Current Employer. Use interesting, compelling, colorful words (dynamic, seasoned, executive) to attract interest. This is critical in attracting people to click through from search listings.
Summary: Think of it as a brochure and a business Bio. Begin with how helpful you are to others, make people want to help you in return. Only include current and relevant information as this is a high-level overview. This is not an historical area unless the history remains part of the current and future. Formatting is limited to ALL CAPS, some special keyboard characters (~ > | #). You get 2,000 characters (about 2/3 of a printed page) to work with.
Specialties: While the Summary section is like a brochure, with complete sentences and fancy formatting, the Specialties section is a place that resembles a list – a list of keywords like in a Search Engine sense. Create a list of keywords, then look at the variations of these words and then look at synonyms and variants of the synonyms (see below). You have 500 characters to work with (about 2 paragraphs).
Example – Teach, Teacher, Teaching, Taught >>> then >>> Instructor, Instruction, Instructed, Instructing
Experience (Work History): What to include? How far back? What to say? The Best Practice is to include every employer since college. This creates more opportunities for you to create relationships with others. If you had multiple positions at a company, use the highest position held. Do NOT simply copy/paste in data from a resume. Be limiting in any resume-type statistics. Use years only, no months needed.
Example – Sales Rep. >>> Sr. Sales Executive >>> Sales Manager – just list Sales Manager
What does the company do?
Who do they do it for?
Where do they operate?
What was your role?
What made you special there?
What to say? For each position state:
Education: Schools and a lot more. Remember that education is not simply college degrees. Any business or professional training should be listed. List your High School as well. Use years only, no months needed.
Web Sites: Try and list 3 web sites, even if they are simply different subpages on the same web site.
Rename the label to replace the term “My Website” with your company’s website name i.e. ours is “ActionCOACH NOW” or another. To do this, choose the option “Other” vs. “My Website” or “My Company” and fill in the new blanks.
Interests: What do you like to do when you are not at the office? Formatting is important. Use single words or short phrases separated by commas (see below). Up to 750 characters are allowed.
Example – Tennis, Golf, Reading
Groups and Associations: This is a list of industry, professional and social organizations and not LinkedIn Groups. It is basic text listing much in a keyword-list type of layout. Once again, commas play a key role here. Include both the full spelling and the abbreviations. Up to 750 characters are allowed. Example – Rockies Venture Club, RVC, Colorado Software and Internet Association, CSIA.
Contact Settings: There are 8 check boxes – check them all. People are suspicious of missing data. To make yourself easy to network with, you might consider putting in your E-Mail address, phone number, Skype ID, Blog Site, Twitter ID, etc. Up to 1,000 characters are allowed.
Note – this practice may be technically outside of the rules of LinkedIn so do so at your own risk.
LinkedIn Groups: Select at least 25 LinkedIn Groups to join. Search for LinkedIn Groups from the Left Side Menu, search on KEYWORDS as with standard LinkedIn search. Results are listed with largest groups first. Join the larger groups (nothing smaller than 500 members) in a variety of areas. Be sure to choose some local groups by including a state or city on the search. You may join up to 50 LinkedIn Groups.
Example – (Sales OR Marketing OR Coaching OR Education) AND Las Vegas
Recommendations: Ask for recommendations from 10-15 people. Pick those with important job titles or large companies (or both). Have them describe a project that you worked on together and how your role helped the project to be successful. Note that you can also request recommendations for educational experiences!
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