Don’t read this if you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on completing your LinkedIn profile or ways to use LinkedIn to find a job. There are thousands of great articles and videos on the web with that kind of advice (here are a few).
This article, and the two that will follow, give you advice that no one talks about – the shortcuts and workarounds that can help you make LinkedIn a powerful personal branding tool. The tips I share in this series are among dozens of tricks I developed through my work with executives over the past several years. At first glance, this advice may seem counterintuitive, but these tips take advantage of the way LinkedIn works so you can build your brand and expand your success.
- Part 1 – Brand Yourself: We’ll start the series by focusing on branding your profile, making sure it’s relevant and compelling to the people who are making decisions about you.
- Part 2 – Find and Be Found: How much attention have you paid to making sure the right people can find you? We’ll focus on not only how to be found but also how to keep your own research top secret.
- Part 3 – Stand Out and Promote: In this final piece in the series we’ll look at differentiating your profile from the masses and the tools that enable you to maximize the value of your profile by promoting it and syndicating it.
Before getting into any of the tips in this series, there is one seemingly misguided piece of advice that you need to implement before you start mucking around with your profile: Keep Secrets.
When you’re updating your LinkedIn profile you don’t want your contacts to be made aware of every little change. Of course, when you make a big change – like announcing your promotion or appointment to a board, you want your contacts to know. Alerting your contacts to every bit of wordsmithing you do while attempting to make your profile more compelling and more searchable, is not something I would recommend. When you’re in edit mode, turn off activity broadcasts and adjust the setting option for ‘select who can see your activity feed’ to be ‘only you’.
Remember to change the settings back when you have completed your edits. This way, when you do make a change that you want all your contacts to see, your scream won’t be ignored as just another rewording or spelling correction.
Part 1- Brand Yourself
Be Redundant
Arrogance is an unsavory trait…except on LinkedIn. Know the top five strengths for which you want to be recognized and use them in your profile – repeatedly.
If your top skill is project management, describe your project management proficiency in your summary as well as in multiple experience descriptions. Personal branding requires steadfast focus and redundancy will bolster your brand around your critical skill.
In addition to influencing others, repeating keywords throughout your profile will help boost your ranking in searches of those keywords. Be sure to use all the different variations for how that skill is described to make sure people who are looking for what you have to offer will be able to find you, regardless of what terms they use in the search box.
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