Power Points and Your Linkedin Profile
I call the next three areas Power Points on your Linkedin Profilef your profile. These are critical areas for achieving your goals on Linkedin. Spend additional time completing these three items.
Recommendations
Three months ago, I was in the process of buying online a winter coat for my wife. This is always dangerous because you need to get the size; the color and the style right or you get the product returned! I found a coat I liked and ask my 13 year old daughter, what she thought. She liked it. Good sign for dad!! Then she began reading the reviews about the coat. She told me, “Dad, you don’t want to buy this coat. Read the reviews. Most of them have bad things to say about the coat.” I did not buy the coat. This example shows the power of social media, recommendations and reviews.
You should have at least three recommendations about you on your Linkedin profile. Like customer testimonials for your products and services, these should be regularly changed.
Visitors read recommendations. You are a stranger to them. Recommendations give them insights into what you can do for them. Request recommendations from others much like you would request a reference from them for your resume. Make sure the recommendations are diverse enough to give the reader a good picture on how you can produce results for them.
Here’s another tip. Give Recommendations to others on Linkedin. You can ask each other to exchange recommendations. Every time you make a recommendation for another person, it gets noted on your profile. Users see this and see that you understand the business process of giving as much as you gain!
Recommendations are an important part of your Linkedin profile.
Your Photo
Experts say that 65% of the people on today’s internet social networking programs join a connection or become a friend because of the photo of the other person. If people like what they see, they like being connected with you.
Use a professional photo head shot for your Linkedin profile. A quick browsing of Linkedin will show you how different a professional photo stands out over the pictures of a person taken at their family more recent picnic. Who would you rather do business with? It’s a simple process to upload your photo from your computer. Let your photo help achieve your Linkedin goals.
Status
You have an opportunity to type in on a regular basis the current status on what you are doing. You know about Twitter which is the fastest growing social networking program on the internet. Twitter has made its mark from this one feature “What are you doing now”. You are allowed only 140 characters to complete this sentence. Millions are joining Twitter each month. (If you are linked to Twitter, your Twitter lines will appear on your Linkedin page).
The Status Line on Linkedin can be used much like the Twitter 140 character line. It keeps people informed. And each time you change your status word goes all the people connected to you.
This is a very useful tool to keep fostering your business efforts. In advertising they have the expression, “Top of the mind awareness” which means keeping your product in front of people. You can use the Status Line function to keep yourself in front of your connections.
Since this is a business social network, most often I use the Status function to keep my business in front of my connections. For example, I wrote recently in my status line, “Just finished a new website for a client, check it out www.dhisprinklers.com”. I will occasionally put something more personal in this status line to show people that all work and no play make Jonnie a dull boy.
You should be updating your Status line 4-5 times per week. It will take less than five minutes to do so. Think of the exposure you get with this five minutes?
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
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