I’m sure we all know by now that LinkedIn is the Social Network to be for professionals, enterpreneurs, managers since the majority of its users come from the professional and business world.
To make your presence on LI really effective, you must optimize your profile. To this purpose, keywords that characterize your profession, specialization and expertise should appear in 5 strategic sections in your profile:
- Headline: it’s the area immediately below your name. This is what visitors to your profile see first. Use the keywords that people would use when looking for what you offer (i.e. Social Media Strategist, Creative Writer) and address directly your clients with an attention-grabbing statement specifying what you can do for them.
- Current work experience: use descriptive keywords to describe what you do. So rather than “consultant”, say “financial consultant” or “London-based financial consultant” if you are focusing on your local market”.
- Past work experience: as in point 2, use descriptive keywords that are consistent with those used in the Headline.
- Link to your site/blog: you can customized this link (“vanity url”) using the keywords that identify you and your business. So, following the example of the consultant I’ve used so far, rather than using the word blog you can specify, for example, consulting services.
- Summary: in this section you can provide a detailed description of your specialization, the types of services you provide and the solutions you offer your clients. Keywords should be used in this section too.
Also include videos (where, for example, you may describe problems your clients frequently experience and how you helped them solve such problems ), pictures (of conferences, workshops, events you participated in or where you were one of the speakers) as well as slides you used for your presentations or in your webinars. These contribute to make you an authority in your field of expertise.
“Skills and Expertise” should be chosen carefully because they are also the keywords your potential clients use when searching on LI somebody with these specializations. You want to use them so that your name ranks first in the search results for your specific skills.
Have you already optimized your profile? Have you any other tip to suggest to optimized it? I’d love to hear from you. Please leave your questions and comments in the box below.
To your successful Social Media presence
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Well-done, concise summary. Thanks!
Thank you Terea for stopping by!
Yes, my profiles are a little weak and this is a good reminder to sharpen them up. I didn’t know you could add videos on profiles. I do a lot of video, so this is something I could implement. Thank you, Paola!
Great post and a great reminder Paola. I am SO much on Facebook that I forget to update my other social media platform. I will do that and add keywords to optimize my pages. Thank you!
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Thank you Suzanne. Most social networks allow publishing videos, so this is great for you: I know you use video a lot and than’s great since video is a mega trend that is emerging more and more now and will certainly continue in the future. Make sure that you optimize your videos for mobile users: very soon most traffic to websites and blog will come from mobile devices.
This happens to mee too, so I’ve allocated some time every week (usually a couple of hours during weekends) to update and refresh other social network profiles where I don’t spend regular time
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Great tips Paola. Thank you!
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