There have been several financial recessions in the last century or so. Some of these were localized to specific countries or areas of the world. Or others, like the current one, were far more global in nature. The one difference between this global recession and the last one is that anyone who has been downsized now has the Internet to use as a tool for finding a new job. And one of the most job-hunting specific Internet tools is the social network for business people – LinkedIn.LinkedIn is a wonderful way of connecting with potential employers and also for highlighting your skills in a way that any employer can easily digest. But your LinkedIn profile needs to be optimized to make that happen so we’re giving you a set of 10 tips to help you make the most of your LinkedIn presence.
1. Completeness
Simply make sure that every section of your profile has been completed and that there are no blank spaces or obvious gaps. Your LinkedIn profile is your online résumé so treat it with the same level of seriousness you would your normal résumé.
2. Show Your Skills
You’ve taken the time to complete your profile but now it’s time to showcase your skills. Why not include your Slideshare presentations, integrate your WordPress blog and even include your Twitter tweets as part of your LinkedIn profile? You should already be generating content for each of these so now it’s only a matter of integrating it with your LinkedIn page.
3. Demonstrate Expertise
LinkedIn Answers is an ideal way for you to showcase your business knowledge by answering questions for other LinkedIn users. As other members start choosing your answers as “Best” you’ll start building points which can eventually lead to a position for you on “This Week’s Top Experts” – this is an instant profile raiser.
4. Vanity URLs
When you create your LinkedIn profile you get a default URL that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. What you should do is claim your LinkedIn vanity URL that can be edited to just include your name and is far more friendly from an SEO point of view.
5. Connect
You’ve met a lot of different and interesting people during your career and this is especially true if you’ve worked for several different companies in that time. Connecting with current and former co-workers and colleagues is a great way to create powerful connections and opportunities for you.
6. Share Your Profile
You can hide information on your LinkedIn profile from being viewed by non-LinkedIn members surfing the web. The problem with this is that you might also be blocking the search engines from doing the same. You want your LinkedIn profile to be found for your own name, your business name and ideally some keywords related to your industry.
7. Join Groups
If there are groups related to your industry or niche then make sure that you join them and if at all possible be an active participant in them. This raises your profile to get it noticed by other industry contacts and you’re also adding value to LinkedIn which in turn adds value to your own profile.
8. Spruce Up Your Job Title
When it comes to describing yourself through your job title be as specific as possible. For example listing yourself as “IT Trainer” isn’t going to attract a lot of attention from human visitors or the search engines. If, however, you changed this to “Outsourcing IT Training Specialist” then you’re going to raise a few more eyebrows.
9. Use Your 3 URLs
LinkedIn, as of right now, allows you to place 3 DoFollow links in your profile to your website, blog or Twitter account. Because of the authority of the LinkedIn domain you can get of link juice from these 3 links so please, please use them.
10. Recommendations
When it comes to selling yourself it can be pretty easy to make your skills and abilities sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Recruiters and HR people have seen and heard it all before though. So instead of having 20 people leave pretty general recommendations on your profile look for people who can leave 4 or 5 white hot recommendations for you which are based on work related specifics.
If you follow through with working on each of these LinkedIn tips you should see a pretty dramatic increase in activity on your LinkedIn profile and all going well increased contact from recruiters too!
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