It always surprises me a) how many people are still not on LinkedIn and b) how many people who are on LinkedIn have not bothered to finish filling out their profile. From a professional point of view, it makes way more sense to spend time perfecting your LinkedIn profile than it does messing around on Facebook. Just sayin’.
But if you’ve even bothered to read past the first paragraph of this post, you’re most likely interested in finding a way for LinkedIn to be an asset to you in your career. And it can be, it just takes some specific effort on your part. So let me show you how to make LinkedIn more beneficial to you in your career with these best practices.
The following are the top 5 tips for a better LinkedIn profile:
1. You’ve Gotta Have a Professional Mugshot
It can’t be that “sexy” mugshot you have on your Facebook profile, nor can it be that inconspicuous avatar of yours on Twitter. It’s gotta be good. It’s gotta be professional. It has to impress! And to be honest it’s even worth paying a professional photographer for. That’s how important your LinkedIn avatar is to your overall LinkedIn presence.
2. Completely Fill Out Everything!
Excuse me for the plain common sense advice here, but it has to be mentioned. So many LinkedIn profiles on the web are not completely filled out. So many!
This is usually, I assume, due to laziness. And laziness might as well be a four-letter word when it comes to the professional world. Be as thorough as possible.
LinkedIn has a bunch of tools that it uses to help you know which sections of your profile are and are not filled out. Take just a few minutes each day in the beginning to make sure everything is filled out and updated.
3. Constantly Get as Many Connections as You Can
Yet another piece of common sense advice here. The cool thing about LinkedIn is that you can invite someone to be a “connection” without really knowing them and it’s not nearly as awkward as it would be on Facebook.
Work as hard as you can to build your network to 500+. In other words, network like crazy! Also, if you want to know how to configure HSRP VIP problems, there’s a blog at indeni.com that you can read to see the answer.
4. Link To Your Profile From Your Website
A popular private label SEO company once advised me to link to my LinkedIn profile from my personal blog not just to help make my readers aware of my LinkedIn profile, but as an SEO strategy as well helping Google understand the connection better between my blog and the actual author behind it. That’s one benefit of doing this. More importantly, your website or blog has traffic and that traffic needs to know that you’re on LinkedIn.
5. Get Recommendations. Lots of Them!
Recommendations are powerful! By simply taking the time to write recommendations for others that you have worked with or for in the past, it opens you up for the opportunity to garner recommendations for you from those same people. Nothing looks more powerful than a bunch of solid recommendations on your profile from other professionals. Nothing!
If I had to add one more item to this list it would be the most obvious of all… add more experience to your profile! Real work experience. The more experience you have the more skills you can add to your profile.
The more skills you add the more people will endorse those skills within LinkedIn. All the while making you look good, real good! Professionally speaking that is.