How to write a LinkedIn profile that will work for you – Part 3

In Part 1 of How to create a LinkedIn profile that will work for you we covered:

• Key Level Strategy used to define your headline
• Profile photo
• Headline
• Twitter
• Public Profile URL
• Summary
• Specialities

In Part 2 of How to create a LinkedIn profile that will work for you we covered:

• Experience (Jobs)
• Sections (Vital details!)
• Education

Part 3 will cover Additional Information, Personal Information, Applications and finally Recommendations.

Additional Information – it is important!

It would be easy to fail to complete this section, as its description seems like it is unimportant.This is untrue; it is an important section so we will look at each part in turn.

In each section there are some important tactics to use.

Website Links

In this section we can create links back to our company website, blog, or other social media websites.

You can enter up to three websites only but always choose “Other” and write your own description, this helps your Search Engine Optimisation if you’re a business that uses this in your strategy.

If you are using a link here to your business, you could make this a better experience by using a link that goes to a specific landing page for visitors coming from LinkedIn,

You will get far more attention that way, and if every time someone uses this link, you have an opportunity to engage them; then make that opportunity as friendly and tailored as possible.

This is also useful for tracking how many people visit your website from your profile, so you can refine your actions. You could also utilise the Google Analytics campaign tracking to identify how many hits actually come from your LinkedIn profile.

Integrating your LinkedIn and business website strategy is important so it could be a good idea to start using a landing page to offer an immediate gift or download of value to your visitors and encourage them to sign up to your newsletter.

All this is equally valid as a professional employee of a business, and also as a professional employee and blogger in your own right.

You can forget your Twitter URL here as it’s unnecessary, there is a different place for that link and only enter your Facebook account if you are interested in using Facebook for business networking, remember you will need the complete url. You could enter the url of a group you are running, if you do this try and use some text that calls for people to join up, such as ‘Join Johns Tax Group’.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Websites

Interests

The first thing to notice about the interests section of your profile is that the words need to be separated by commas and that all the words are hyperlinked direct to a search that finds people with similar interests.

This opens up a huge opportunity for you if you complete your searchable interests in the right way. The interests section is an opportunity to expand your visibility to others by incorporating your personal interests as well as your business ones. It is also a way of doing research on finding people that have similar interests as you, and then seeing what groups they are members of. We will see this strategy in action in later modules.

Remember that capital letters will make this section look neater, but using commas between words and short phrases will make this section function. You will also see that we avoid using any graphics and as these words appear in other peoples search criteria, the closer you can get to using all your 1000 characters the more that LinkedIn™ will work for you.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Additional Information

Groups and Associations

The groups and associations section works in the same way as the interests section. Separate each group name by a comma, and use Capital letters without any graphics. The more groups you can put in here the better, and this can help you get found in searches by other people. The group names are the ones you use, you make them up, so where possible stick to official names, but remember you can use any name you want to.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Additional Information

Honours and Awards

The Honours and Awards box works slightly differently, you are unable to search directly by a hyperlink on people with similar awards, but the words you enter here will appear in search results, so use up as much of your 1000 character limit that you can.

To make a difference to how your profile looks you can use some simple graphics and also use line breaks. Remember that you will not see the affect of this until you click on View My Profile, they fail to show up when you click save after editing your profile; that’s just one of the odd things about LinkedIn that you just get used too.

This section is in addition to the Honours and Awards section that you can add from your experience, so it could just be duplication for your profile.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Additional Information

Personal Information

LinkedIn gives you the control over what you share with the general public and your connections, so it is up to you.

The level of detail here will depend on your strategy, so be strategic in your decision making. You could use your work telephone number and your Instant messaging details, and restrict your birth date information to showing just your year, for instance.

Remember that the more you share, the more LinkedIn can help you, but balance this with your personal security.

Your contact details will only be visible to direct connections.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Personal Information.

Contact Settings and Interested In

The ‘Contact Settings and Interested In’ section is what tells your reader how to contact you and what you’re interested in.

The Interested In section, the tick boxes, will appear on your public profile. The text you can enter will be invisible on your public profile.

So once again we use our Key Level Strategy to ensure we get contacts from people who fit in our target market.

It is important to get the display right in this section, so use your simple graphics again, and space your writing out using line breaks and paragraphs.

There is probably a theoretical limit to the amount of data you can put here, but I have failed to find it as yet.

Use Home>Profile>Edit profile and then click on “edit” by where you see Contact Settings.

Applications

You can add up to 12 applications onto your profile. It is easy to add them, just use the Add Sections link and then use ‘Application’ and then choose the application you want to add. You can also view these from the More>Your Applications menu>Get more applications.

Amazon Reading List

An easy application to add is the Amazon reading list. You can use this to do quick reviews of the books you have read, and once again, keep these books to your Key Level words, and your Interests, so that they appear relevant to anyone looking at your profile.

Slideshare for LinkedIn

For instance if you regularly share ‘slide share’ presentations as part of your online strategy, then add this application to your LinkedIn profile, which will update automatically every time you add another Slide Show presentation.

This integration is powerful, you are then networking on two platforms simultaneously and SlideShare feeds LinkedIn and vice versa.

To add a video that plays every time a reader visits upload the video on Slideshare and then add it to your profile from the Slideshare dashboard. Whilst this does appear to be a  ”cool thing” to do, it can be very annoying for someone who visit your profile more than once!

Creative Portfolio

For anyone with a creative portfolio to share this application by Behance provides a simple way to show your work.

Google Presentation

Google lets you share presentations done in Google docs or from powerpoint straight from your google account, it is really a very useful way of sharing documents, however if you or your company use Google Applications the paid for versions of Google Docs then this application will fail to work, it only works on the Google free accounts. Its probably best to choose either this or Slideshare as there is duplication.

Huddle and Box.net

Huddle and Box.net are also great for the same type of application, these are more for sharing documents and files so this can be useful for you to share the free valuable gift when connecting with people. Both Huddle and Box have free accounts.

Both these applications work well for sharing documents in groups and for receiving documents from your connections.

WordPress

If you have a wordpress blog then you can link the the blog address onto your public profile in a couple of simple steps and this will refresh periodically. This is a useful extension to your networking as it brings your blog and LinkedIn together, if you do this make sure your blog links back to your LinkedIn profile so it works both ways.

Blog Link

Blog Link is useful if you have a blog on another platform as it support many different types of blog.

SAP

The SAP application is for SAP professionals, and if that is you then you are unlikely to want to miss out on this one, but it is just for SAP people.

MyTravel by Tripit

My Travel is a great way to let your network know when your travelling. it helps people get to know you a bit better and also arouses their curiosity, so share your travel details and it will help you get more connections and build relationships.

Manymoon Projects and Teamspaces

You get unlimited team spaces, documents and connections according to the application, but I am unable to comment further having never tried it! But it is free:)

Tweets

Tweets is a useful application. It is a fairly recent addition to the LinkedIn application suite and takes LinkedIn and Twitter that one step further to integration.

About one third of my connections are using twitter at the time of making this course, so this is a whole new way for me to connect with at least one third of my network on a different platform by using the Tweets tab called connections I can see who I am following and who I have missed, this is limited to 500 people for the free account.

Twitter is a choice that you could make, it has the potential of bringing in people from outside LinkedIn to your network if used efficiently, but it takes time and effort to get involved.

The tweets application on LinkedIn enables you to update your twitter and LinkedIn status at the same time, so that efficient, and it also enables you to follow every direct connection on LinkedIn that you are missing out on following. This is the real bonus of this application if your a twitter user.

Recommendations

Recommendation is in part 3 of thiese articles because all of the work you ahve done before on your LinkedIn profile needs doing before you receive any valuable recommendations. However the recommendations are a very powerful way of differenciating yourself when your profile appears in a listing.

You can see that having more recommendations and connections will add credibility to your profile when your details appear in a search as the image shows on a search for “LinkedIn” (for which I have no targeting currently).

Personal Recommendations

The number of recommendations you have received on LinkedIn is shown on your profile. The more you have the more you will seem like an interesting, reliable and trustworthy connection.

To be really effective on LinkedIn have a strategy to build your credibility and reputation by building the number of recommendations you have on your profile, and build them steadily week after week.

More reputations mean more social proof that you are a real expert in your niche; it is part of the social capital you create, the value in your profile.

Gaining recommendations is done by taking actions strategically. You can ask for them and you may wish to do this to close friends and colleagues, if you do this, ask them to use one or more of your Key Level words.

On the other hand the best way to get unsolicited recommendations is just to give them freely. So if you regularly write an unrequested recommendation for someone you know or have interacted with on LinkedIn, and it’s an honest and sincere effort to help someone else; you will find that people do the same.

In fact LinkedIn helps you with this as when you write a recommendation for someone LinkedIn  asks the person if they want to accept it and make it visible, and then will prompt them to return the favour.

So give plenty of recommendations and keep doing it regularly. One word though, if you give out 10 recommendations then be pleased if you get just one back, life’s like that !

Advanced recommendations

Currently video is making huge inroads into our behaviours and sharing on the internet.

One technique I have seen used is the video recommendation, this can enhance a persons normal written recommendation if you can request they can do it. Once you have received your video recommendation then upload it using an application such as Slidehshare and you have a visible recommendation and a back up recording too.

You will benefit more from this if you record video recommendations for others and host them on your slideshare account. What can be useful about this is that if you ensure that your profile links are in the video, or a way of telling people how to find you, for instance what to search on or using a bit.ly short url then you can make sure these videos are shared on video sharing websites, this brings people back to you on LinkedIn.

Service Providers

As a business and as a professional you will benefit from asking your clients to give you recommendations for your business. These appear as Service Provider Recommendations and are listed separately on LinkedIn enabling people to find suppliers that are recommended by their network.

This is valuable to your supplier credibility so you can see who your network recommends as a Business Consultant, for example and then order this either by date, to see the newest recommendations or by the amount of recommendations these suppliers receive.

Remember to make sure your profile is included in the Service Provider Directory, you can check your settings for this by looking for the settings menu in the top right hand corner of the LinkedIn home page. Look under Privacy Settings and you will see the menu for Service Provider Directory.

Now onto Part Four of How to create a LinkedIn profile that works for you; in Part 4 there is a full check list for you to help you make the most of your LinkedIn profile, some advanced profile techniques to help you in the search rankings, and some vital settings for your account to ensure your LinkedIn profile is effective.

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