There are a million ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile – But it mostly boils down to key words.With ‘Social Recruiting’ on the agenda for most businesses this year, I felt that this was maybe a good area to cover in my blog.
LinkedIn isn’t just a great place to meet new people, it’s a great place to build an ongoing network – But to do this you need to stay in their peripheral vision at all times. I’ll focus on this in part 2 of this blog, but for now let’s take a look at getting noticed in the first place…
Here are my top tips for a better LinkedIn experience (for you and your network!)
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There are a million ways to optimize your profile – But it mostly boils down to key words. Think what words basically ‘sum you up’ professionally. ‘Job Title, Industry Sector, specialisms within that industry sector’ – These are now your key words and you want to put them in as many places as possible.
Give yourself a vanity headline – you may have to move your name around as the text boxes only fit so many characters in them, but it will mean that you can give yourself an easily identifiable vanity headline. Add keywords into your summary, experience and specialities sections. Most people are doing this already so I won’t linger on it too much.
Industry Sector – This needs to be the sector that you recruit within. So for example if you recruit within the SAP marketplace then you add your sector as ‘Information Technology and Services’.
Add ‘Skills Builder’ – This is available from the ‘More’ tab at the top right of your home page. It allows you to build a wall of skills and keywords on your profile page. Ensure that you change these around every few weeks to avoid them becoming dormant.
There are other ways to optimize your profile – Why not add some interesting apps? I have lost count of the number of times that I have nodded off whilst reading people’s profile pages… Make them interesting and fun to read.
Add a Box.Net file – You can add any document to a Box.Net file so why not advertise your latest vacancies from your profile page.
Upload videos – Maybe stay away from the drunken dad videos from Christmas but why not upload talking job adverts, or an intro to your Company, or maybe talking testimonials.
Amazon reading List – This is a great way to advertise which books you are reading. Incidentally, if you are reading industry specific books this will also go a long way to optimising your profile as they contain your keywords in their titles.
Events – Give people a reason to visit your profile and become the place to go to see what’s going on in the industry.
Finally, and I will focus on this more in part 2, but it’s so important that I can’t upload this blog without adding this bit – Be Compelling! I see so many LinkedIn profiles that could be mistaken for a lonely hearts column ‘Desperately seeking XYZ candidate’…..
Make your profile interesting – Update your status with articles that your network would be interested in; results of polls; market research; great news from around the industry, great candidates (no names!) that you are working with etc etc – The list is endless.
Building an active network is like fishing – You will get more bites from using good bait, less often than throwing 100 rods in at once with bad bait – Ok, that’s my one and only fishing analogy!
