LinkedIn Lift in 7 days: Day 1 Your Profile

Good morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Day 1 of a 7 part blog series to Lift Your LinkedIn Profile… Beware this is not for the faint hearted!

Today is it ALL about YOU and getting your profile filled in, most people tell me that they have their profile filled in, but usually they don’t have it done in a way that helps with SEO….  Below is a screen shot of my profile, I have numbered different parts on the profile and will go through each part telling you what you should be doing in each section…

STEP 1 – Your name

It sounds blindingly obvious, but make sure it’s spelt properly and is using capital letters in the right place.  In my case because I am divorced I also include my married name because some people I know still remember that one.

STEP 2 – Your description

This is REALLY REALLY important.  When you do anything on LinkedIn, eg comment in a group, answer a question, post a status update it is this bit of text and your name that people are going to see.  First impressions count!  You do NOT want to have CEO or director in here, you want it to be a description of how you or your business can help people, what you have got to offer, what are your specialities/expertise.  Get the picture?  Really try to make this work for you.  Plus make sure that you include some of the keywords that people would use to look for you in here, eg for me it’s social media.  This will help rank you higher in LinkedIn search results.

STEP 3 – The Industry you work in

This is important for search terms, so when people are looking for people if they are searching under industry it is these categories that they use.  Make sure it’s as accurate as it can be – that’s all I am saying.

STEP 4 – Your photo

Remember this is NOT Facebook, you want to look professional.  I got professional photos taken two years ago and I still get commented on how wonderful they are, it is worth paying for some decent shots that you can use on places like LinkedIn.

STEP 5 – Your current roles

First up you can have as many current roles as you choose.  You can see on my profile I’ve got two, I decided to split the two businesses I own into 2 for the purpose of LinkedIn, this is because it makes it MUCH easier for people to understand what I do.  You need to not only fill in the job and the name of the company, but also a description of what you do there.  You want to try and add as much info about your roles as you can, and use the keywords that you want to be known for in the descriptions – this will help you get ranked higher when people search for that people in that area.

STEP 6 – Your past roles

This is the same as the current roles, you want to include the title, the company and some information about what you actually did there.  All of this information goes towards increasing your reputation and the first impression of WOW factor when people see your profile.

STEP 7 – Your education

Again another step that will increase your credibility and professionalism, so make sure that they are filled in and add as much info as you can.

STEP 8 – Your websites

This is a step where A LOT of people fall down….

This is set as a default to say “my website” but when you have more than one website it gets very confusing for people reading your profile, and also there is no reason for them to click on a link that is called “my website” or “my blog”.  Instead you want to (as per the image on the left) choose “other” for your website, you can then put in the name of the website and eg I have Social Rabbit and then the link for it to click through to.  This makes it much easier for people to find the information they want, particularly if like me you have a few brands.

STEP 9 – Your Twitter account

You can link up your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account, so every time you post a status update you have the choice of also sending it as a tweet.  It is good in terms of time saving, but it does depend on how you are using your Twitter account, eg professional or personal.

STEP 10 – Your Public Profile

You need to set your personal URL, eg this is mine:  the advantage of this is a) it is easy to give the link to people so that they can find you, particularly if you have a common name, b) it helps with the Google ranking of your name for search, because your name is in the URL instead of having chsdhfjksdhfk34523985 or whatever!

STEP 11 – Your Summary

This is when you get to show a bit of insight into who the real you is, from a professional viewpoint.  What excites you about what you do, what do you love doing, what have you done that you are proud of, showcase yourself, give a fabulous first impression.

Other bits to fill in:

• Honours and awards – this is not the time to be a shy retiring wallflower, tell everyone what fabulous things you have achieved in your career
• Personal information – you decide how much you want to share, eg phone number, address etc.
• Contact settings – this is all about people getting in touch with you, what do you want them to contact you about?  What can you do to help them?

So that is day 1′s work for you!  You need to spend the time getting this set up right from the start so that when you get active (tomorrow) you give the right first impression to people.  If you can’t think of what to write for any of the sections have a look and see what other people have written for ideas, but remember you can change it as often as you like.

On day 7 (or earlier) I will put up a link to an ebook which will contain all the blog info and worksheets in a booklet that you can buy and download…