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Ute Gass has embraced online technologies and digital tools in her recruitment business since the early 80's. Her passion is to help recruiters and HR professionals cross the digital divide and think about doing old things in new ways.
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What is LINKED IN?
Start by watching this video.We will work through each section of the profile. Our aim is that you can be found and find strategic network connections. Quality profiles attract quality people, never mind the search engines. An often overlooked element of profile building is search engine optimisation (SEO). We will spend some time to help you understand how search engines and keywords impact on being found and finding people.
Here are 15 things to make you look more Amazing on LinkedIn:
Posted by Greg Fy on Bloggertone
1. Make sure your profile is 100% complete. (Good photo and well written bio). Spend time writing your summary. Make sure it clearly explains what you do and highlights your experience. Ensure that it will attract the attention of your prospective customers and make you as an individual stand out above your competition. Invest in a professional photo that represents the “business” you. (No Facebook style photos!)
2. Make sure you have a unique LinkedIn URL and add it to your business cards and email signature.
3. Why not rename “My Company” to the name of your company eg. “Careers Coach Website” and add your Twitter, Blog or even a link to your Facebook Business page (if appropriate) to your profile.
4. Rearrange your Linkedin profile to stand out. You may want your “Amazing” blog to be towards the top of the page and not at the bottom. Here is a link to show you how to move you sections around – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6nJ_SVg
5. Update your status once or twice per day. Every time you update your status on LinkedIn it shows up on your connections feed. So regular relevant updates can ensure that you will not be forgotten by your connections. NB. Warning -Too many updates can have a negative effect and may annoy the very people you are hoping to impress. I would suggest that you never link your Twitter account to update automatically with LinkedIn. I recently “disconnected” with an individual whose status was updated 20 + times a day via Twitter and discussed irrelevant info such as what he was having for dinner.
6. Always personalise your LinkedIn invitations. If you want to connect with someone show them the courtesy of writing a personalised invitation telling them why you want to connect and what value you can offer them.
7. Convert as many business contacts on your offline database online to LinkedIn. Every relevant business card you receive, take the time out to connect with them on LinkedIn.
8. Build up a number of quality recommendations. Ask every happy customer or client to recommend you. Many people’s recommendations are limited to work colleagues and friends. These recommendations are far less impressive than ones from your customers.
9. Join and participate in relevant Groups. Eg. If you are an expert in Environmental Engineering find groups in that sector. You will never get noticed unless you participate in the group. Start discussions, share your blog posts, ask questions and comment on other people’s posts. Be Amazing and showcase your expertise.
10. Demonstrate your capability by answering questions.
11. Add slides or even video to your LinkedIn profile using Slide Share. (www.slideshare.net) or Google Docs. You could really stand out by adding a professional Video showcasing your talent to your profile.
12. Use the Events section to find relevant offline events. LinkedIn may be an online social media site, but it is one of the best resources for finding local industry specific business and networking events. Tip - If you have good connections a great way to find events is to click on the “See Events Your Connections Are Attending” link.
13. Demonstrate knowledge by recommending books. What are the “Amazing” books about business or your industry that you have read? Why not be associated with them by endorsing them on your LinkedIn profile?
14. Drive traffic to your website by adding a Blog feed to your profile.
15. Nothing in business will every beat face to face interaction. Make a conscious effort to meet influential connections off line. Our online relationships are often strengthened by off line meet ups.
Why should you worry about keywords?
Answer this question. How do you search for something on your favorite search engines? What do you key in? Words, numbers perhaps or a phrase. These are nothing but keywords. Words that are repeatedly keyed in by users that are searching for something. This is how your pages get discovered and despite having quality content, what good is it if you are not found?
Search engines aka bots, spiders or botspiders, trawl the pages looking for things that will help them rank your pages on the SERP's( Search Engine Results Page).They read the pages and look for keywords that help index your pages.They also look for fresh content.Therefore the combination of good content and keyword optimised writing will provide your profile with a powerful means to be found.
The 3 Step process:
1 – I am assuming that you already have a detailed CV, listing all your duties, responsibilities,achievements etc., so get rolling on the Summary section. Just write like crazy. Say everything that comes into your mind and don’t worry about anything else. Forget keywords, tags, related keywords, and all that mambo jumbo. Just do your thing and let the idea flow.Present "YOU", who YOU are, your goals, dreams. passions etc. You will have time to edit your article later. If you do your writing this way, you are actually writing for your readers.
2 – Now it is time to edit your article by including primary keywords and related, to optimize your profile for SEO. There are a lot of free keyword tools out there that you can use to perform your research but this can be time consuming and the idea here is to use the KISS principle.
Here is my favourite tool I use to research keywords: Google Adwords Keyword Tool
3- Start weaving your chosen keywords into your content. Be careful not to "stuff" too many keywords into one sentence. These botspiders aren't fools and will pick up if you are manipulating your ranking. Keyword stuffing will get you kicked right off any page ranking.
