Category Archives: Optimise your Profile

LinkedIn lets the Queen live in Windsor

May 28, 2011 by ,

LinkedIn Share Button - site updateThe location field on LinkedIn has been a bit of a bug bear for some people – in the UK, as elsewhere, it doesn’t necessarily display where you actually live or work. In fact, your displayed location has always been dictated by the postcode instead (or Zip Code, should you prefer).

This can mean, particularly outside of the main cities, that you might actually work in one location but your profile will steadfastly display somewhere totally different, simply because your town falls into a different postal area.

Let’s take an example … The Queen. One of those people that I would like to be able to do a LinkedIn Profile Makeover for – well, it would be fun wouldn’t it? Maybe I should have offered that as a Royal Wedding gift! But, I digress.

Anyway, as it used to stand, if the Queen used her Windsor Castle address on LinkedIn, then (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn News, LinkedIn Site Changes, LinkedIn Tips, Optimise your Profile
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Your LinkedIn Profile Photo – it’s important for you!

May 2, 2011 by ,

LinkedIn Profile SeriesThere are three things that accompany you around the LinkedIn site and that you must use appropriately – your name, your professional headline and your photo.

When it comes to the photo, it may be stating the obvious but, first and foremost, it’s really important to have one in there! There are still people who, for whatever reason, decide to remain anonymous, perhaps out of coyness or some private reason of their own.

However, I would really encourage you not to leave it like that for five key reasons: (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, Optimise your Profile
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How to get your past in order

April 8, 2011 by ,

LinkedIn Questions and AnswersOne of the questions which comes up with a certain regularity in LinkedIn Answers – the user Q&A section on the site – is how to make changes or updates to their past experience or their Education within their Public Profile.

The way to change your Current position is nice and obvious, as the ‘edit’ links sit clearly in the blue area at the top and, let’s be honest, editing your current roles are the most likely thing that you will be doing. Nevertheless, in optimising your profile, your past experience also comes into play both in terms of backing up your current strengths and offerings, but also in terms of the ranking within the LinkedIn search results.

The format changes when you wish to update both your past experience and education. To edit those, (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Tips, Optimise your Profile, Q & A on LinkedIn
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Customise your website links

January 15, 2011 by ,

LinkedIn Profile SeriesIt’s important to make best use of what we are given on LinkedIn, I think that you’ll agree. The links through to our websites and blogs form another key part of the information we provide as it helps us get people thinking about our sites and also encouraging them to click through and visit them. After all, LinkedIn is really just a place to initiate the connection with people but then you’ll want them on your own site to further the relationship.

Anyway, to help encourage them to come through to your website, you need to make sure that you don’t simply retain the simple “Company Website” display name that is the default text that LinkedIn gives us. (They currently provide a choice of 5 in all that, while descriptive I guess, are always going to be generic.)

Instead, how about being able to customise them and so display the name that you would like to have there. It will attract the eye (more…)

Article Categories: Businesses using LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, Optimise your Profile, Using LinkedIn
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LinkedIn Profiles: remember you have two. Use them!

December 3, 2010 by ,

LinkedIn Tips and Advice: LinkedIn Public ProfileWe all know about our main LinkedIn profile – after all it’s the cornerstone of our activity on the site. It is our key resource and the place which defines us on the site – I guess if all roads lead to Rome, then on LinkedIn, all roads lead to your profile! It’s certainly the next logical place to go after someone “bumps into” you on the site either having read one of your updates, something that you’ve written about in a Group or in the Answers section, or having received a invitation to connect etc.

Remember your other LinkedIn profile

However, all this information is only available to people who are logged into the site and particularly those within your sphere of connections. There is, however, a second profile, your “Public Profile” which is one of the sections which is accessible from outside of the site and so is indexable by Google and visible to users of the internet at large. It’s therefore equally important to get that right too in terms of the information that you put out through it.

The layout and format is slightly different (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Tips, Optimise your Profile
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Make the most of your Linkedin Recommendations

November 8, 2010 by ,

LinkedIn Questions and AnswersWhenever I run a LinkedIn Training session, no matter whether it is an Introduction to LinkedIn, or something more advanced for Sales and Marketing teams or Recruiters, we always, always, look at the Recommendations feature in LinkedIn (you might call it “testimonials”) as a great way to demonstrate a big “thumbs up” and indication of trust for you and and what you do.

It is of course also a great differentiator – a key element when we are looking to increase our sales and marketing reach. I can assure you that if you have two suppliers or partners or candidates in front of you with seemingly similar qualifications and experience, then the Recommendations of others will be a key deciding factor!

Anyway, I was recently asked if there was a way to direct people directly to the Recommendations section on someone’s LinkedIn profile. What they wanted (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Tips, Optimise your Profile
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