5 Mistakes 99% of LinkedIn Profiles Contain

By Josh Steimle

A dazzling LinkedIn account is an invaluable asset for professionals and almost necessary for networking purposes. The website currently hosts nearly 740 million accounts, and all it takes is a few costly mistakes to make your professional peers roll their eyes and move on to other profiles.

To make matters worse, most people don’t even realize when they are making a misstep on the platform. It’s understandable as not everyone is experienced with the effective business card of the internet. Still, some unofficial rules and guidelines guarantee your profile promotes you in the best possible light.

By rooting out these common errors, any profile can be fine-tuned and become far more effective in finding opportunities and keeping your business network strong.

1. A lackluster headline

If your headline doesn’t have a hook, your profile isn’t likely to garner much attention. Just like a magazine headline or book title, a LinkedIn headline should be a brief advertisement of what a reader can expect to come in the profile. It’s the first thing people will see, so it’s important to make a positive first impression.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should copy and paste your job title. Instead, focus on using keywords and actions relevant to your work, as this can improve your search ranking association.

The best headlines are brief — some say under 120 characters — impactful and leave the reader with a positive impression. It’s worth tweaking and experimenting with your own until you feel this has been accomplished.

5. No personal URL

Creating a personal URL for your LinkedIn profile is an easy step that adds a layer of legitimacy to any profile. Unfortunately, those who simply go with the default setting of random numbers and letters appear less professional than those who take the time to customize.

Not having a personal URL has several negative drawbacks, the most immediate being it becomes more difficult for people to remember or find your profile. It also can show a degree of laziness or technical incompetence, neither of which are helpful labels for any professional.

When taken as a whole, a LinkedIn profile is a critical step in creating an effective digital presence for your professional self. Creating a clean and effective profile isn’t that difficult, and the positive effects of doing so can connect you with global opportunities that are truly life-changing.

Read all 5 mistakes and the complete Entrepreneur article

 

 

 

Six Tips To Help Increase Your Engagement On LinkedIn, Find A Job And Advance Your Career

Annette Richmond

LinkedIn is your face to the business world. It’s often the place recruiters looking for candidates will meet you. It’s the place recruiters and employers who are impressed with your resume will go to learn more about you. While LinkedIn is considered a business platform, it’s important to remember that it’s also a social network. Like many things, you’ll get as much out of LinkedIn as you put into it.

Creating a compelling profile is a start. However, if you want to find a new job or advance your career, you need to build engagement on LinkedIn. If you haven’t been active for a while — or ever — here’s how to make the most of available features and create an engagement plan.

Media Features

LinkedIn has audio and video features that you can use to introduce yourself to profile visitors. If you don’t already have LinkedIn’s mobile app, you’ll need to download it to use them. 

• Craft a Cover Story. LinkedIn’s Cover Story feature is a 30-second video that you can use to share information — who you are, what you do, how to contact you, etc. — that works for your current situation. To create the video, you may want to use Apple Clips; it’s a free IOS app available in the Apple store. You can record, edit and add captions all in the app. I love Clips, but there are many other options for androids and iPhones. Once you’ve uploaded your Cover Story, a few seconds of your video will pop up from behind your headshot whenever someone clicks on your profile. An orange circle around someone’s headshot indicates that they have uploaded a video.

Engagement And Strategy

It’s important to have an engagement plan and strategy that you can commit to long-term because being active every day for two weeks and then going into hibernation isn’t a good thing.

• Take baby steps. Most people think being active on LinkedIn is about sharing status updates or posting articles, but the truth is that most of the engagement happens in the comments and messages. Follow people in your industry that you’d like to know. Particularly those who you’d like to know you. Start by spending 15 minutes three times a week reading, liking and commenting on people’s posts. Work up to 15 to 20 minutes a day while you’re having morning coffee or watching the news. Leave thoughtful comments. If you think it’s a great post, let them know why. If you’ve learned something, tell them what.

• Increase your engagement. Once you’re comfortable with commenting on other people’s posts, start creating your own. Share your thoughts on a timely article or an industry trend in a status update. LinkedIn likes people to stay on the platform, so share links to articles or posts you mention in a comment rather than in your post. Post about events or conferences you’re attending. Review books you’ve read. Share your thoughts on industry trends. Subscribing to a content aggregator will help you save hours online looking for content to comment on or share. I use Feedly. They have free and paid subscriptions, but there are many others aggregates too, including All Top, Google News, etc.

See all 6 tips and the complete Forbes article

 

 

7 strategies to grow the presence of your brand on LinkedIn organically

 

by Sumeet Jindal

Growing your brand on LinkedIn might be a tough job, but it doesn’t have to be. Here, I will share a few strategies you can apply to grow your brand organically. These strategies are tried and tested, so trust me when I say that they will work.

LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for networking, marketing, and attracting business. It’s a good idea to get your business on LinkedIn if you want to grow your brand. Yet, it’s equally important to understand that it will take some time and effort to grow your brand on LinkedIn.

Here are a few strategies that you can use to grow your brand on LinkedIn organically.

7 Strategies to grow your Brand on LinkedIn Organically

1. Build a robust social media presence

LinkedIn is all about building relationships and connecting with people. It’s not just about posting content on LinkedIn but also building connections with others. So the first thing you need to do is build a solid social media presence on other platforms. Start by joining as many groups, groups of interest, etc., as possible and building strong relationships with your new contacts.

3. Promote your messages

Once you have a network and your introductions in place, it’s time to promote the content that you post on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a very powerful feature called “Promote Message” where you can promote your message to thousands of people who follow you. It only requires a small piece of your time. This will help you get more exposure for the content that you want to share with the world.

5. Be consistent

One of the hardest things to do is to be consistent with your efforts. You need to make sure that you are consistently learning, growing, and updating yourself with new strategies, so you can stay ahead of the competition.

See all 7 strategies and the complete EastMojo.com article

7 Ways You Can Use LinkedIn To Blow Up Your Brand

Julie Guest

Over the last three years, LinkedIn's active user base grew by a staggering 48 percent, from 500 million in 2018 to 740 million in 2021. Business owners and entrepreneurs can leverage the platform to grow their brand, generate new leads, establish partnerships and make connections.

The following seven ways can help you utilize LinkedIn to grow your brand and gain a competitive edge over your competition.

1. Optimize your company profile and connect with people

If you haven't worked on your LinkedIn profile, please take some time and perfect it. Make sure it provides all the essential details about your company's products and services. Put more emphasis on the headline and summary to ensure that it's compelling, engaging, interesting and professional. Furthermore, optimize it for more B2B and B2C lead generation.

Within no time, you will start seeing the "Someone has viewed your profile" notification. Don't just view their profile back. Instead, track the individuals who viewed your business's profile. If they are an ideal prospect, invite them to connect. An individual who views your company profile is most likely finding out more about your brand. There could be a chance they are also interested in your products or services.

2. Post valuable content on LinkedIn publisher

You can use LinkedIn Publisher to publish blog posts that users can engage with and share. With more shares of your blogs, the higher the impact it has on growing your brand. The post can also get prospects interested in your products, triggering an open door for more partnerships.

Make it a habit to publish content on LinkedIn consistently — but remember quality is key. It can build a community of loyal followers who admire your brand. Through them, you have ambassadors who can create a good reputation out there about your business. When users see the value and insights in your content, it gives them the conviction to check out more about your company. It's one of the most straightforward and subtle ways of promoting your brand on LinkedIn without being pushy.

5. Utilize plugins

LinkedIn can be an even more powerful lead generation tool by itself when you utilize the complementary add-ons. Tap into the following plugins:

• LinkedIn Connection Revealer: The LinkedIn Connection Revealer shows you the following that your connections have. By pinpointing the users who travel in big circles, you can engage with them to leverage their platform and promote your brand.
• LinMailPro: It's a Chrome extension that gives you the capability to automatically find and invite individuals who have recently viewed your profile. You can also send personalized messages to them about your brand or deliver marketing messages.
• Headlinr: You may have sponsored a great story, uploaded ads or put up posts, but without a great headline, your potential targets might not click on them. When you use Headlinr, a chrome paid plugin, it automatically generates multiple headline combinations with the keyword you specify depending on your industry. You will get compelling titles that lure users into clicking through your ads and stories.
• Rapportive: If you are a Gmail user browsing in Chrome or Firefox, Rapportive can be a handy tool in getting more leads. It enables you to get LinkedIn profiles that have email addresses in your contacts. You can then send them personalized invites to their inbox to help you grow your network.  

See all 7 ways and the complete Entrepreneur article

 

 

 

The Biggest Error Thousands Of Professionals Make On LinkedIn Each Day

 Kathy Caprino

As most professionals know, LinkedIn has become a massively powerful professional tool—for connecting with colleagues and mentors, building personal brands, sharing company’s stories, eliciting interest from potential customers, clients, recruiters and hiring managers, sharing thought leadership and more. And LinkedIn is growing. Some recent statistics from BusinessofApps.com reveal that LinkedIn generated $8 billion revenue in 2020, an increase of 19% year-on-year and:

• LinkedIn has 756 million members
• The U.S. has the most LinkedIn members, followed by India and China
• According to LinkedIn, over 100 million job applications are sent each month
• Over 57 million businesses and 120,000 schools have LinkedIn accounts

According to Hootsuite, LinkedIn is the most trusted social network in the U.S. And Microsoft has reported that LinkedIn topped $3 billion in ad revenue in the last year, surpassing Snap and Pinterest.

Clearly, LinkedIn’s impact is growing and for many professionals and businesses, it’s vitally important to get it right in terms of how they’re engaging with others there. A burned bridge on LinkedIn is often one that can’t be rebuilt. You have one chance to make a powerful and positive first impression, so it’s important to succeed at it. 

From my perspective as one who is very active on LinkedIn and hears from hundreds of individuals each year who are making some sort of a request or pitch, I can say that the single biggest error I see professionals make on the platform is the manner in which they are reaching out to a complete stranger.  

So often, they’re taking the wrong approach that ends up being off-putting and opportunity-crushing. For instance, people commonly now use LinkedIn as a avenue for the “cold-calling” approach, reaching out with a cold sales pitch or offer, without knowing anything relevant about the individual they’re pitching to or ascertaining in advance if what they’re selling would be of the slightest interest or value. And worse, they don’t expend any energy making their pitches engaging or helpful. The reality is that the majority of people on LinkedIn absolutely hate being pitched to, and are viewing the platform as a professional social network, not a place to be hawked and sold to. Whenever I’ve posted a comment or message on LinkedIn about this problem of being cold-pitched continually, I’ve received hundreds of comments and messages from members sharing their extreme frustration about this.

In my Forbes.com interview several years ago with Judy Robinett–startup funding expert, bestselling author and a super connector at the highest level—on her book How To Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule for Turning Your Business Networking Into Profits. she shared what she viewed were the top 5 blunders networkers of all kinds make, and they are:

1. They network in the wrong places for what they need
2. They network at the wrong level for their goals
3. They have no way to assess the relative value of the connections they make
4. They have no system for optimizing their networking efforts
5. They fail to network in the best way to create high-value, long-term connections

These 5 networking blunders sum up very well how these cold pitches and blind outreaches to strangers on LinkedIn (or to other LinkedIn members whom they barely know) are missing the mark, and also slamming doors that could have been very instrumental if they’d been opened creatively, wisely and respectfully in the first place.

Here’s what to avoid, when reaching out to a stranger on LinkedIn: ... read what to avoid and the complete Forbes article

 

 

 

5 tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile from a director of recruiting

 Anna-Louise Jackson@aljax7

If the novelty of baking bread has grown stale and you’ve binge-watched every TV show and movie of interest, add this activity to your stay-at-home list: Update your LinkedIn profile.

Whether you’re still working full time, you’ve been laid off or furloughed, or your job seems like it could be at risk, it’s a good idea to be prepared for a potential job search. That’s because the job market is likely to become more competitive in the months ahead.

More than 22 million Americans have filed for jobless benefits in recent weeks, and the unemployment rate — previously at a 50-year low of 3.5% — could rise to as high as 32%, according to projections by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Many experts are forecasting that a global recession is all but inevitable.

So now is a good time to update your LinkedIn profile and ensure you make a positive first impression to hiring managers or recruiters, says Casey Hasten, a director of recruiting at VIP, an executive search firm. Paying attention to some small details can make a big difference, agrees Kylan Nieh, who works in product management at LinkedIn Profile.

“Listing your professional industry on your profile makes you up to 38 times more likely to be discovered by recruiters,” Nieh says. “If you don’t have a lot of job experience yet, consider adding any volunteer work, internships, or extracurricular activities, which gives recruiters more insight into your background and increases profile views up to 29 times.”

Here are five tips from Nieh and Hasten for optimizing your LinkedIn profile.

1) Put ‘some meat’ on your profile

There are several sections to a LinkedIn profile, including a summary, work experience, education, skills, endorsements and recommendations, and interests. The more detail you add, the more likely you are to be discovered by recruiters who use the platform to find potential candidates.

That’s why Hasten is looking for “some meat” underneath a candidate’s title. “You want your LinkedIn profile to mimic your resume,” she says. She recently hosted a podcast on the do’s and don’ts of using the platform to support your professional goals.

Be detailed about your work experience and make sure you include relevant keywords that recruiters might be seeking in potential candidates, Hasten says. She and other recruiters are often looking for someone with a unique and particular set of skills and experience: “I always joke that I’m looking for a purple squirrel.”

Keywords are so important because people like Hasten use LinkedIn recruiting to screen for potential candidates, “and if you don’t have your keywords on your profile, then you’re not going to turn up.” Be sure to update this information as you add new expertise. “Don’t underestimate the importance of using all that information,” she adds.

Finally, don’t forget about the skills section. According to figures from LinkedIn, 87% of recruiters say the skills a candidate lists are crucial. “List your strengths on your profile and start with the top five that are most relevant for your job or the job you want,” Nieh says.

If you have some time on your hands these days, this may be a good opportunity to brush up on skills or even learn new ones. LinkedIn Learning offers more than 16,000 courses and is currently offering more than 275 of those for free to help people navigate new working environments or land a job in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Nieh adds.

4) Signal to recruiters that you’re open to job opportunities

One of the easiest ways to pop up on the radar of recruiters is by letting them know you’re open to job opportunities. This is a setting you can enable within your profile. 

“If you’re job seeking, absolutely turn that on,” Hasten says. “There are times when I’m doing a search and 100 people come up, and 20 of them are open to opportunities, so I’ll talk to them first.”

Be sure you’re offering this information to the right audience. There are two options: You can let all LinkedIn members know that you’re open to job opportunities, which can mean people at your current company, even your boss, could see, too, or you could limit that notification to recruiters.

What’s more, you can specify the type of job and location you’re interested in so that your profile appears in search results for recruiters, Nieh says. And if you’re a business owner or freelancer, you can list services on your profile that indicate to your network that you’re “open for business,” he adds.  

See all 5 tips and the complete grow.acorns.com article

 

 

 

 

Does Your LinkedIn Profile Prove Your Credibility? 5 Boxes To Check

 William Arruda

Now that your first impression is likely to be delivered online, you need to focus your attention on your LinkedIn profile. That’s because it’s the place people will go to learn about you when they’re checking you out in a professional capacity. And that’s great news. It means you don’t have to Tweet like Kim Kardashian and publish YouTube videos like Justin Bieber to influence those you seek to impress. By focusing on just one social platform—  LinkedIn—you can deliver a powerful, authentic and differentiated first impression. A compelling profile sits at the intersection of likability and credibility. In this previous post, I shared ideas for upping your likability on LinkedIn. In this article, I focus on the things you need to do to make sure your profile exudes authentic credibility. Here are the five areas to pursue:

1. Are you professional?

Nothing screams “unprofessional” like a profile that’s not complete or is riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Your credibility wanes the second people spot that first glaring typo which screams “this person does not possess the brand attribute “attention to detail.” And a profile that’s not complete or is out-of-date says that you aren’t taking your career seriously.  To make sure your profile looks professional, check it several times or have a professional copy editor look at it. You can find inexpensive copy editors on sites like Upwork. In addition, make sure your prose is properly formatted and has the right amount of white space (in your About, for example) so it makes it easy for the reader to consume. And lastly, take the time to complete all relevant sections of your profile. It’s an investment that will pay off.

3. Are you an expert?

One way to show people you are a leader in your field is to be clear about your expertise. That means not trying to touch all bases—that makes you a jack of all trades but an expert in none. Make it crystal clear in your profile what your expertise is. Make sure your top three endorsements are for the skills for which you want to be known. Also include all relevant details in the Experience section of your profile to reinforce your expertise—using all the right keywords that will reinforce your domain. Don’t just make a generic one-sentence statement. Be specific. And use the Accomplishments zone (certifications, courses, awards, projects, publications) to highlight those activities that feature your expertise. 

See all 5 areas and the complete Forbes article

 

 

6 Ways to Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile's Impact

Kevin Leyes

With 722 million members, LinkedIn is the largest social-media platform for business interactions. It's a powerful tool for both recruiters and job seekers, as well as business-to-business (B2B) interactions: 55 million companies and 61 million senior-level influencers are on LinkedIn. With so much opportunity, it's important to have a LinkedIn strategy that helps you build relationships for a high return. So what does that look like?

Why you need a LinkedIn strategy

Like any other large social-media platform, as LinkedIn grows there are more and more people who use the platform to spam users directly in an attempt to sell something. It might be tempting to go this route, but building relationships before selling is key on LinkedIn. This way, you build trust with potential clients or customers, which will make them much more likely to buy what you’re selling.

With the right LinkedIn strategy, you can easily form those relationships. LinkedIn states this itself: “LinkedIn is most effective when you use it as a relationship-building platform.” You might have hundreds of connections, but if you’re not building meaningful relationships with those connections, you won’t see much productivity or profitability from the platform.

The best LinkedIn strategies for building relationships

1) Research your prospects

Before you connect with someone, do your research on him or her. Read through his or her profile, taking note of any commonalities you might share that you can bring up in later conversations. While you’re at it, check out what LinkedIn groups the person is in. Then, take your research off LinkedIn and check out his or her company’s website and social profiles. You can even google his or her name to get a complete picture of who the person is.

2) Use LinkedIn groups

Not sure where to find prospects? If you’ve exhausted your other lists, LinkedIn groups are a great place to look. The groups are meant to help people find others in the same industry or with shared interests. Since LinkedIn only allows you to join 50 groups, be mindful about which groups you join. You can also join groups that your prospects are in if you don’t have any other acquaintances to give yourself an in.

3) Be open and honest

When you connect with your prospect, send a personalized message along with it. Include why you’d like to connect and, if possible, include what the mutual benefit would be. Perhaps you just met at a networking event — or maybe you don’t know them at all and have no acquaintances. LinkedIn is made for these types of connections, so don’t be shy.

See all 6 ways and the complete Entrepreneur article

 

 

Five Tips For Becoming A LinkedIn Thought Leader

Christina Hager

When you're an expert, you eat, sleep and breathe your subject. If someone set a timer and said, “Go!” you could probably talk their ear off about your area of expertise for an entire hour. 

But it’s not enough to just be passionate about your subject: If you want to be seen as an expert (and hired as one), you have to show the world why you're the authority on that subject.

Part of being a thought leader in 2021 means building your digital presence. Take household names like Dr. Oz, Oprah and Bill Gates: They have put in years and who knows how much money into publishing opportunities, TV appearances, commercials, media spots and multimedia channel opportunities.

You probably don't have the budget that Oprah does. I know I don't.

So what does the average business leader need to do? You have to somehow find the budget, time and energy every single week to position yourself as a thought leader, all while wearing the many hats of your business role.

Where do you start? 

Showcasing your brand on LinkedIn is the perfect way to demonstrate your thought leadership — and it doesn’t cost you anything but a few hours of your time.

Here are your first steps for building thought leadership on LinkedIn:

2. Identify your target demographic. 

Who is your ideal client or consumer? Now go further: What kind of content do they want? The C-suite will want different information than middle managers, and members of HR are going to be interested in different topics than those in marketing or finance. Learn to speak to your audience about what they are interested in, and be sure to use the terms that they would use when talking about the subject matter. 

3. Start building content and sharing updates.

If you want to be a thought leader in any field, you need to be published. Being published is a huge “proof point” that shows your audience that you really are qualified to talk about your particular areas of expertise.

If you have already been quoted in interviews, terrific: Now start dripping those URLs out across LinkedIn with an introductory sentence or two. If you haven’t been published, now is the time to start courting those opportunities.

In the meantime, you can start publishing your own articles right on the LinkedIn platform (again, for free), then sharing them as updates on your feed and in your LinkedIn groups. 

Attention: LinkedIn groups aren't there for you to hawk your product or service. This is what LinkedIn refers to as “overly promotional” and what the members of your group will call flat-out annoying. So if you're trying to sell something, then save it. If you can use your article to incite interesting conversation, then it’s okay to share it.

See all 5 tips and the complete Forbes article