Make the most of your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn is a powerful personal branding tool - but you have to use it effectively to get results. Here’s how...
|||Johannesburg - Are you getting results from LinkedIn?
Your picture is up, you have 200 connections and you’ve updated your profile. And yet there’s a deafening silence in the results department – nothing is happening.
No interesting connections, no job offers and no business deals are forthcoming.
LinkedIn is one of the most powerful peer-to-peer professional social networking sites and is showing 40 percent plus growth every year. If you’re not using it effectively, you may be missing out on one of the most valuable personal branding tools in the business world today.
Your LinkedIn profile needs to read like a New York Times best-seller - it needs to capture your reader’s attention in the same way that a book is going to jump off the shelf and encourage a buyer to make a purchase.
Just like a book has a picture of the author on the cover, so too does your LinkedIn profile need a professional head and shoulders picture. Not one of you in your wedding outfit – this isn’t Facebook. It needs to convey your brand professionally. I don’t connect with anyone who doesn’t have a photo, as to me it looks like you haven’t taken your profile seriously.
Your LinkedIn profile isn’t your CV. It’s about what can you do to help other people. “What can I give?” not “What can I get?” is a key networking reciprocity principle both in face-to-face networking and social interactions.
Your profile is about clarifying your uniqueness. It should convey the value you offer, not your skill set and job description.
The questions you need to consider in crafting your opening statement are: What are your key achievements?
What makes me unique? Where can I add value?
The reason you need to get to 500+ connections as quickly as possible is that LinkedIn ranks you based on 500 connections.
If I’m looking for a private banker in Mpumalanga and you are a private banker with 400 connections, and your competitor has 600 connections, they will immediately go to the top of the ranking list.
You want to be found by potential clients, so you need to get connecting.
THE STAR