This is going to be my first article in a series of a few
that will talk about becoming the better business tech geek in the 2013. I will
try to distil some of the advices out there by aggregating and summarizing
them.
WHAT YOU WANT
First of all, if you haven’t got a LinkedIn profile, it is
certainly a good idea to have one as many recruiters use it to find talent and
many people use it to keep in touch when it comes to business relationships.
Then you should fill the profile out so that it summarizes your professional
profile. Think of it as a resume kept online.
This is a great start, now you have some online presence,
which means that people can find you online. And that’s the key of this service
really is to have that presence and a neat little point of introduction to you.
People usually come across profiles by doing searches for either name or other
key words, like particular skills or companies.
Now that you know what’s the purpose of this profile, let’s
look at how you can keep track on how well this profile is doing.
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Your search appearances and profile views, which
are on located on the right column of your home page. You can also view the
industry that these views are from.
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The incoming messages and Connect requests from
people that you may not know directly. This is a good thing, but be aware of
the mass connectors out there that may not use LinkedIn to create meaningful
relationships. I’d accept an invitation from someone that I had at least a
couple of messages long conversation usually, but I would likely deny the
request of some random person. Good article on this is here:
http://www.careerealism.com/dont-linkedin-collector-user/
HOW TO GET IT
If you want to get more views, then there are a few things
you can do:
-
Update your profile and keep it current as
things are happening. For example, got a new certification, great time to
update that field on LinkedIn. This will push out this change as an update to
your network; some may click on your profile and Voila! You got the view, or
they can click like on the update and it would be pushed out to their network
as well.
-
Sign up and participate in groups, you can join
group of interest and the ones that are relevant to your field. This can expose
you to other people in your field and not only get views but also connections
from these groups. (Hint: if you really want to network online look into LION –
LinkedIn Open Networking groups).
-
Ask for recommendations. It’s great to say all
these things about yourself but it’s a much bigger deal if someone else vouches
for you. Also you can get your skills
endorsed, I find that with these people usually reciprocate once you have
endorsed some of their skills, so take a gander at your list and see what you
can vouch for, it’s actually pretty fun.