To Continue the Conquest of LinkedIn, Let’s Look at Your Profile Page
What’s up with your profile page?
You’re doing it. And you’ve got your resume up. You’re answering questions. And you’re joining groups. You’re even meeting people offline. But you aren’t getting an enormous number of invitations to connect.
Or, perhaps, you’re blogging and tweeting. But you’re not getting a lot of readers in either medium. And you’d love to get some of your LinkedIn buddies to read some of your stuff. Maybe you want to use your writing and social media skills as a part of your overall job search strategy.
So the most obvious place to look, and to fix, is your Profile page.
Just like with a resume, a news story, or even if you were trying to sell your home, it pays to spruce up the first thing people see. Hence special care should be taken, as this is your first (and it may very well be your only) chance to make an impression.
There are any number of things you can do to assure that this impression is a positive one.
Driving Traffic
And, you can even use it to help you drive a little traffic to your own website and/or blog. Here’s how:
- Make sure that you make use of all available fields, and customize these as you are able.
- Next, list your blog.
- and I also recommend adding Twitter.
If another social media platform will fit better, then add your details there as well, such as YouTube for videographers.
More You Can Do With Your Profile Page
So assuming that your resume has been integrated in its entirety, your next task should be to update the summary and specialties sections in your profile page. First of all, the specialties section is essentially just for keywords, so load them up.
However, the summary section should be more grammatical. So don’t make it an old-fashioned and generic personal statement. Instead, highlight your main differences here.
Pix, Pictures, Images, You Get the Idea
Include a current, clear, professional image of yourself. And once that image becomes, say, about five, eight, ten or so years old, replace it with a newer one.
URL City, Baby!
LinkedIn won’t give you a nice URL unless you essentially make your own. But they offer instructions for customization. After all, it is absolutely in LinkedIn’s best interests for you to put your LinkedIn URL on, say, your resume, your business cards, etc.
And most people won’t do that if the URL is breathtakingly ugly.
It’s a very, very easy thing to do, and there is truly no excuse not to polish your URL.
Posts and Takeaways
Yes, you can add posts to your profile page (a feature which seems to come and go). But you don’t have to. This isn’t Facebook, so a continual stream of statuses (statii?) is not expected.
Finally, with a little polish, your front door (profile page) can look mighty inviting to all.