Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn. Neal Schaffer
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am always open to talking to anyone, including you, the reader of this book!
My Top Five Tips to Write a Great Profile
I often get asked for tips about how to write a “great” profile. My response is always the same: “What is your LinkedIn Objective?” If you have followed the instructions in the previous chapter, you should be well on your way to developing an excellent profile.
The only additional tips worth offering emphasize the points necessary to successfully Windmill Network:
•Your profile is real and honest, from your name and photo to all of the information you have listed. LinkedIn is a network of trusted professionals; if you are not being authentic, people will find out, trust me. You will lose any “social media credibility” that you may have once had.
•Your profile is complete. Don’t be shy! You have a lot of real estate to work with, so the more you use, the better you can brand yourself. The better you brand yourself, the easier it will be for people to find you. This includes adding a paragraph and/or at least a few bullet points listing your education and work experience.
•Your profile is heavily branded in every way possible, from the wording in your professional headline to what you write in your contact settings. Don’t let LinkedIn tell you what to write; this is your profile page, so utilize it to achieve your objective!
•Your profile is searchable. Make sure the keywords you want to be associated with are found throughout your profile.
•Your profile has Recommendations—the more the merrier! I will cover Recommendations later on in this book; for now, note that the presence of high quality Recommendations adds to your brand and validates that you are a real entity who is who you say you are.
If you have followed my instructions in the previous chapter and have implemented the above tips for writing a great profile, rest assured that you have written a strong profile and move on!
One last word of advice: After you create your stellar profile which embodies your LinkedIn Brand, make sure you revisit it on a regular basis to ensure it still makes sense. You may be working for a new company or develop a new interest; these changes warrant some slight tweaks to your LinkedIn Brand. There are many reasons why it could happen, but always remember to maintain your profile so your LinkedIn Brand is always fresh and up-to-date.
Your LinkedIn Home Page
Now you have entered your profile information. Before you begin to actually navigate LinkedIn, let’s take a look at what your “Home” page on LinkedIn will look like. It is the page you will see after going to www.linkedin.com and signing in with your username and password. While navigating LinkedIn, it can also be accessed by selecting “Home” on the left-hand navigation bar.
As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that not everyone’s Home Page will look alike. For instance, if you have indicated in your profile that you are currently unemployed, “Company Groups” will not appear in your left-hand navigation bar. I personally cannot see “Groups You Might Like” and have only been able to see the “People You May Know” module on occasion.
That aside, the Home Page is divided into a top section, a left-hand section, the main body (which is in the middle), which contains another right-hand column, and finally the bottom of the page. You have access to all of LinkedIn’s features via this screen.
The image on the next page will simplify the LinkedIn Home Page for you, as I have tried to illustrate the most essential items you will be utilizing most.
Figure 2.2. Your LinkedIn Home Page
Before tackling the main areas of your Home Page, I want to point out that I find LinkedIn is sometimes repetitive with its user interface; many paths will often lead to the same destination. You will get used to this. For instance, choosing “Advanced People Search” by pressing the downwards arrow to the right of “People” will lead you to the same page that choosing the “Search People” arrow to the left of the Search Bar and then pressing the “Advanced” button does.
In my opinion, LinkedIn is still trying to find the perfect User Interface to show off the tremendous value their site has; in the meantime, I find the user interface somewhat confusing and inefficient at times, which is why I am writing this book—to help guide you. I will not go over everything on this page and instead will concentrate only on those things that I think you need to concentrate on.
Let’s tackle each section individually. The top section, at the time of this writing, displays “People,” “Jobs,” “Answers” and “Companies” on the left, while the right side shows “Account & Settings,” “Help” and “Sign In/Out” on the top with the Search Bar on the bottom. Let’s focus on the Search Bar for a moment. By pressing the downward arrow button to the left of the text window, you will see that you can search a variety of things from this one text box, including People, Jobs, Companies, Answers, Inbox, and Groups. Within some sections, the standard search does not yield enough useable results; the option to do an advanced search on some of these can be selected by choosing the “Advanced” text on the right side of this box. This option appears when you choose to search for People, Jobs, or Answers.
On occasion you may need to access the “Accounts & Settings” button to customize your experience. More information about what you can do there will be spread throughout this book, primarily in Part II: The Windmill Networking Approach to Understanding LinkedIn sections.
The primary area for navigation will be the menu on the left side of your Home Page which I will often refer to as the left-hand navigation bar. Starting with the “Home” button, which will always bring you back to your Home Page, you can navigate to any of the following from here: Company Groups (if they exist for your Company or you are currently employed with a Company listed in the Company Directory), Groups, Profile, Contacts, Inbox, and
Applications, should you have any. Furthermore, the “+” symbol next to all of these titles, if pressed, will collapse into submenus which let you choose specifics.
I won’t go through every option here, but I will point out the more frequently used features:
•“Home” to get you to back to your Home Page.
•“Groups” to access your Groups, or specific Groups in the submenu should you wish to list them here (this can be customized in “Account & Settings”).
•“Edit My Profile” in the “Profile” menu to modify your profile and optimize it even after it has been created. You should get into a monthly habit of looking at your profile to make sure it syncs with your LinkedIn Brand and networking objectives, which may change over time.
•“Connections” in the “Contacts” menu to browse your current connections or add/remove connections.
•The “Inbox.” Most messages appearing here can also be sent directly to your registered email address. How often you use this section really depends on which information you decide to access directly through LinkedIn and which information you choose to receive via email notification. I have devoted an entire section to this topic: “Controlling Your Email Notifications” in Chapter 10: Customizing Your LinkedIn Experience.
•“Applications” should you choose to install any and modify their settings.
•The prominent green colored and self-explanatory “Add Connections” button.
The last section on the left-hand side, on the bottom of the long menu, is your current photo, Profile Headline, Status, and display of the number of total connections you have. You have the ability to easily change your Status here, so you can update it without having