Tips for Creating Business Profile
As a business professional you really must have a LinkedIn profile. This is a place for headhunters and potential employers to find you but more than that it is also a great place for networking and raising your online profile. So here are 11 tips to make your profile work for you:
As a business professional you really must have a LinkedIn profile. This is a place for headhunters and potential employers to find you but more than that it is also a great place for networking and raising your online profile. So here are 11 tips to make your profile work for you:
1) Start by making sure you have a decent head and shoulders photo of yourself. This should either be a professional shot or a well taken close up – not a holiday picture of you at the beach.
2) Include a paragraph in the summary area describing your key skills and experience, so that viewers of your profile can skim this rather than reading the whole profile if they are short of time.
3) Make sure you then fill in all your experience and past achievements, focusing on any key skills you want to use going forward.
4) If you have your own website put your url in the websites area but also edit this title so it doesn’t just say ‘my company’ or ‘my website’ if you specialise in something edit this title to your website name or specialism for example Social media marketing. This helps search engines find you.
5) Edit the public profile url as well to your name for example mine is : http://in.linkedin.com/pub/
6) Upload all of your contacts – but make sure they are people you know and trust and then ask them to connect with you. It doesn’t matter if your network starts off small, you can grow it each time you work with or meet someone who you want to connect with. Personally I keep my LinkedIn profile for people that I actually know or have worked with, I use my Twitter account for networking with people who I may not have met but want to connect with.
7) Ask for recommendations – and return the favour and provide some for your connections as well. If someone wants a recommendation about your work you can direct them to your LinkedIn profile.
8) Join groups that are relevant to your market place – this is a great way to network and meet new people. Once you have joined a group participate in the discussions.
9) You can personalise your profile further by adding a reading list and recommending books.
10) If you have a WordPress blog or website you can create a feed so that your blog posts are updated on your LinkedIn profile – this is a great way to keep your connections up to date with what your are doing and direct them to your blog, especially if you want them to opt in to a newsletter or mailing list.
11) If you have a twitter profile you can link that as well – just a word of caution here though only update ‘business’ tweets to your profile not the ‘just having a coffee’ type.
With a little work you will end up with a very professional profile which represents your Personal Brand and allows people to research you and find the information that you want them to see. Using the searches in LinkedIn is also a really good way of finding people in your market place, you can join discussions with them in relevant groups, and advertise any events you may be running.
If you have found this post useful please share with your friends by clicking th buttons below. If I have missed an essential tip leave me a comment and let me know how you use LinkedIn.
