Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Six Ways to Power Up Your LinkedIn Profile

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Fourth in a series.

linkedin-Forbes.comYour LinkedIn profile is one of the most powerful ways to present yourself to other professionals using social media. How “powerful” is your profile? Here are six tips to attract people to you.

  1. Complete your profile. A completed profile includes thorough information about your background and career history. In fact, profiles that are 100% completed are 40 times more likely to receive job opportunities through LinkedIn.
  2. Include a current professional photo. A professional photo is not one of you taken at a cocktail event, standing next to a phantom person (whose shoulder and arm remain in the frame). Invest the time to have a studio photo taken with professional lighting. If anything about you has changed, it’s time to have a new photo taken. A current photo gives you a better chance of your profile being viewed (11 times better).
  3. Write a compelling Summary. The Summary provides a quick snapshot of who you are and what you do. Keep your Summary language direct and expressive, not confusing or vague. As the word Summary suggests, don’t write a book. Keep it simple.
  4. Include your skills. Like any good resume, a profile enhances your skills. Once you include your skills, colleagues can endorse you in those areas. Your profile has a better chance of being viewed when skills are included and endorsed.
  5. Update your status regularly. Every time you update your status, your network is informed. This action keeps you top of mind with other professionals.
  6. Update/add information frequently. Over time, your professional life changes and your profile needs to reflect that. Have you changed jobs? Are you serving on a new nonprofit Board? Did you recently receive an achievement award? Have you become certified in a specific skill? When change happens, update your LinkedIn profile.

Here’s a quick task for you: Review your LinkedIn profile with a keen eye. Imagine that you are reading it for the first time. What could you do to “power up” your profile? If you need inspiration, look at the LinkedIn profiles of professionals you admire. You may discover more ways to position yourself as an industry leader.

Seven Ways to Elevate Your Visibility Through LinkedIn

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Part Three in a series.

new-linkedinIf you think LinkedIn is a static social media platform, think again. It is your most current resume, business card, and promotional campaign all rolled into one. Its power lies in how frequently you use it. Use LinkedIn to elevate your visibility within your network. Here are seven simple ways to do it:

  1. Publish a post. Each time you open your LinkedIn home page, you are given three options: Update status, Upload a photo, or Publish a post. When you publish a post, you are sharing your knowledge with the world. Make sure the content of your post is relevant, offers helpful information, and includes links to more information on the topic from other sources, if you can.
  2. Add posts often. Rather than publish a post once or twice a year, become known as a thought leader in your area of expertise. The more often you publish valuable content, the more people will read it and follow you. In my case, I post weekly. When you visit my profile page, you will see my three latest posts.
  3. Share industry news and information. The internet is a vast wonderland of information. You just have to know where to look. Professionals turn to proven sources like Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, or The New York Times, to name a few. When you share breaking news, trends and helpful information, you position yourself as an industry leader.
  4. Join LinkedIn groups and participate in discussions. The groups you join are comprised of your industry colleagues. Consider it your brain trust…like-minded professionals who come together to share thoughts, ideas, and opinions.
  5. Recommend others. For people you know and trust, you can provide a written recommendation. When recommending others, your recommendation appears on that person’s LinkedIn page. They may recommend you in return.
  6. Endorse others. Endorsing others is easy to do…it’s a simple click and you’re done. Simply visit your contact’s LinkedIn page, scroll down to Endorsements and click on the skill(s) that you would like to endorse. Also, LinkedIn randomly creates several “auto requests” on your LinkedIn page that allows you to quickly endorse people within your network. Just like recommendations, people whom you endorse may endorse you in return.
  7. Be an active, not passive, LinkedIn user. In conversations with other professionals about LinkedIn, I am surprised by those who don’t use LinkedIn often or don’t know how it works (which is why I am writing this series of brief articles about how to work your LinkedIn network). When you are active within LinkedIn, you can choose to publish, comment, like, update, visit, share, recommend, endorse, or simply drop a line. The more active you are, the more visible you become within your network. People will think of you more often (which is a good thing if you are a perfect candidate for a position, or a good fit for a client who needs your services, or your interests match those of an organization seeking qualified volunteers).

Here’s a quick task for you: Of the seven ideas above, dip your toe in the LinkedIn water. Pick three ideas that you want to complete in the next week. Then do other tasks in the weeks and months ahead. Before you know it, you will become much more visible within your network.

Strategically Connect on LinkedIn

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Part Two in a series on LinkedIn.

linkedin_1940x900_34055You are one click away from expanding your network.

There’s an old adage, “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.” That morphed into “It’s not just who you know. It’s who knows you.” With social media, it’s morphed into “It’s not just who knows you. It’s who you know and who they know and who they know.” And so it goes.

When you meet someone for the first time, you are not just meeting that person; you are potentially gaining access to their entire network. Through social media, like LinkedIn, the possibilities for connection are infinite. Here are four considerations in expanding your base of contacts:

Who are your contacts connected to? Through LinkedIn, you can quickly assess the composition and reach of your contacts’ networks. Invest some time to see how people are connected to each other. It will surprise you to see how many connections you share, and how many you don’t.

Who would you like to meet? Be strategic in identifying who you would like to meet. See if there are people in other people’s networks that you would like to meet.

Ask for introductions. LinkedIn makes it easy to ask your contacts for introductions to specific people in their networks. Let’s say that as an independent contractor, you have decided to look for business prospects in your geographic area. You notice that one of your contacts has several excellent industry contacts within a five-mile radius of your home. Request an introduction from one of your contacts by directly using LinkedIn. You can also introduce connections to each other.

View LinkedIn profiles before meeting people. I know this seems elementary yet so many people still don’t do this. It’s so simple. It takes just a few minutes to search for a person through LinkedIn. Be sure to include the person’s city or company if you know it, especially if the name is a common one. Guaranteed, there are hundreds of people named Bill Smith. Before I meet people for the first time, especially potential clients, I will view their LinkedIn profiles.

Here’s a quick task for you: Ask one contact to introduce you to one person in their network. When you feel more comfortable doing this, ask for more introductions from more of your contacts, and watch your base of contacts grow.

How to Work Your LinkedIn Network

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linkedin-logoPart One in a series.

LinkedIn remains the preferred social network of business professionals around the globe, with more than 400 million users worldwide, and more than 110 million users in the U.S. To get the most out of LinkedIn as a professional, you have to work it.

I remember when I received my first LinkedIn invitation from a longtime friend and colleague more than a decade ago. I was skeptical. I asked, “What is this?” “How does it work?” What I didn’t know or understand at the time when I joined LinkedIn was that it would become the power source for networking with other professionals. Once I got started, I set my goal to connect with 500+ professionals. It was easier than I thought. With focus, the goal became a reality.

The first way to work your LinkedIn network is to: Invest time in reviewing “Who’s Who” in your network by asking four important questions:

  1. What skills do your contacts possess? One of the greatest advantages of LinkedIn is that it allows you to examine the people you are connected to and the types of skills they possess. It helps you to understand if your network is well rounded (diverse skills represented) or lopsided (too many connections in one skill area only).
  2. How well do you know your contacts? It helps to know the people you are connected to. This may sound trite. It’s important to know your LinkedIn connections because they occupy a valuable spot within your network. Occasionally invitations will come from people who you don’t know. Qualify the connection if you need to by sending an email. It’s perfectly fine to vet a request from someone you don’t know. Look to see if you have any connections in common. That will help you to decide whether or not to connect with them.
  3. What’s new with your contacts? Because LinkedIn messaging arrives in your email inbox, it’s easy to track when contacts have changed jobs, added new skills or made an announcement. Visit people’s profiles occasionally to see what’s new.
  4. How are you keeping in touch? Every time you open your LinkedIn account, you will see a series of “congratulations” boxes appear, announcing contacts who are celebrating work anniversaries. You have the option to send a message. It’s a great way to keep in touch. When you review your LinkedIn contacts list, ask yourself how you can keep in touch outside of LinkedIn communication. How often do you see that person face-to-face? Are you sending them your articles or blog posts? Is it time to chat by phone or grab a cup of coffee?

What’s the point of being connected with fellow professionals if you are not truly connected?

Announced this week, LinkedIn now offers a LinkedIn Students app that is compatible with iOS and Android. The app helps new graduates find job matches based on their major, locate companies that usually hire from their college, and learn about career choices of recent graduates with similar degrees. If you have college students in your family, suggest the LinkedIn Students app to them. It could help their job search.

Here’s a quick task for you to complete in the next week: Take just 20 minutes this week to visit two LinkedIn profiles within your network. Continue doing this for the next four weeks. At the end of this brief exercise, ask yourself what you have learned about those contacts in your network. It may provide you with some fresh insights on how you are working your LinkedIn network.

Next week: Part Two.

LinkedIn Contacts Require a Closer Look

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imagesThere I was, minding my own business on LinkedIn last week, and I got distracted by a pop-up window asking me if I wanted to connect with several people who I knew. One of them, a woman I have known for decades yet haven’t seen for years, was included in the list. I thought how nice it would be to reconnect, so I sent the LinkedIn request. She accepted my invitation within a day. What happened next caught me by surprise.

You see, I sent her a follow-up LinkedIn private message, telling her how glad I was that we were reconnected through LinkedIn and how “easy” it would be for us to get together for coffee or lunch. (I remembered that she and I lived on the same side of town.) Now comes the kicker. Her response was simply how she would love to get together but I may have to wait a while…a few years…because she and her husband were living on their sailboat in Belize. Wow.

I learned a very important lesson: Sometimes we may think we know the people in our LinkedIn network and then we discover we don’t know them at all. It got me thinking. How often do you review your LinkedIn network of contacts? I mean really review who is in your network, where they are, what they are doing, their background, their interests?

When I began my career several decades ago, people often measured your level of influence based on the size of your Rolodex*. Power came with volume. The more contacts, the bigger the Rolodex. The bigger the Rolodex, the greater the influence. Today, that level of influence is measured by the number of LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers or Facebook friends you have. The landscape has changed.

So when I received this message from my colleague in Belize, I smiled and said to myself, “How cool is this? Here I am, sitting in my home office in Ohio and she’s sitting on her boat halfway around the world and we are connecting through technology.” It just goes to show you, you can connect and reconnect with people in your network at any time, anywhere in the world.

How often do you review your LinkedIn network? Who needs to be included? Who can you reconnect with through a simple email, phone call or text? What’s your plan? Your network awaits you.

*Rolodex (definition): For those of you who are too young to remember, the Rolodex system is a unique way of alphabetically “filing” business contact information (name, title, company, etc.) on individual physical cards placed within a metal holder for easy retrieval. Created in 1956, the word Rolodex comes from combining the words “rolling” and “index.” I’m sure you can still find them in some people’s offices today.