Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #5

Personalize your Public Profile

The Public Profile is the URL that people can use to quickly get to your profile on LinkedIn. By default, it is a long alpha-numeric soup that is hard to type or worse verbally tell someone.

In my previous post I mention the need to develop strong branding for yourself with your profile. One of the ways we can do this is to update our Public Profile or more specifically, the URL that can be used to quickly access your profile on LinkedIn.

The default, like I mentioned before is a bit tough to memorize or for that mater type. Here is an example of this:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/name-changed/1/548/6b6 (not a valid link to protect the innocent)

Once it has been edited and made a bit more personal, it is much easier to remember, here are a couple of examples:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jnosal - simply using your name.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mothernaturemarketing - or use your branding name.

Now that you have a personalized URL or Public Profile, you can use this to make it easier for people to see your profile. Add this link to your signature line in your e-mails, add it to your business cards, put it on your blog profile, or add it to the links on your web site. I would however, not put it on my resume, but that is a another post.

Once you have your personalized Public Profile have fun using the address to increase your exposure to the market with an easier to read URL and stronger branding.

Also, if you have a request for a specific blog topic, leave a comment.

NosalCentral is your central source for web solutions. Check out our site at NosalCentral.com to learn more about our services.

Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #3

Smile for the camera.

Having that great professional portrait of yourself in your LinkedIn profile is a great idea. It allows your connections at minimum to see your face and keep that mental connection between your face and your name. If nothing else it allow you to reach 100% complete for your profile (it is worth 5%).

Lets say you have a great picture of you and your spouse on your profile. This is great except, your name is Pat. If you do have this situation you will want to make use of the photo editing options in LinkedIn. After all, most don't have Photoshop around to do some serious image manipulation.

Navigate to the My Profile Photo option in the Settings. Next, click the Edit Photo link under your photo. The next window that opens, will be a copy of your photo with a yellow box around a portion of the image. This yellow box can be used to crop and define the exact area of the image you would like to use. Note the yellow square in the lower right corner allows you to change the size of the box. This will allow you to crop out your spouse, yes they will understand.

If you happen to be prematurely gray or, like me, loosing the mullet in the bad way where it is falling out. No I did not have a mullet, so get that image out of your head. There are instances that you may not want to put your mug up for your profile. How about using your alumni logo from college. Or maybe a logo associated to a certification that you have obtained. Or if you want to be real anonymous, create a simple white box that is 2" square and use that.

What ever you use as your photo, you want it to be professional. The great photo of you in the swim suit on the beach in Hawaii is a great memory, but unless you are a Pool Service Technician it will not work for a Marketing professional.

Another thing to keep in mind with regards to your photo is privacy. Some of us may be concerned about putting to much information out there. If you don't want all 50 Million LinkedIn users to see your photo you will want to adjust the settings that you have. Again take a look at the My Profile Photo settings and adjust the setting for who your photo is visible too.

The first option is My Connections, these are the people that you have a one to one connection with. The second option is My Network, there are all your connections and their connections out to the 3 degrees of separation.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to post a comment.

And if you have a website that is not performing as well as you would like, contact me and I can show you options to increase the effectiveness of your website.

NosalCentral is your central source for web solutions.

Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #2

Does your profile make you look over qualified?

While we know discrimination is illegal, we have to face the facts that it does happen. How many of you have heard the statement, "you are over qualified"?

Lets look at a number of ways that we can limit the information that makes it easy for people to figure out your age.

• You generally want to limit your experience to the last 12 to 15 years. This of course might be an issue if you were with Nortel Networks for 31 Years. If you are in that predicament, try breaking up that 31 years into some of the smaller responsibilities that you had. This "project" from 1997 to 1999. Then this project from 1999 to 2003... So again this would allow you to show your most recent activity.

• In your "summary" and other areas, don't announce that you have a bazillion years of experience in a specific field. You could soften it a bit by stating the you have "10+" or "more than ten" years experience in your field. It still allows you to have expert status but not come off like you were a member of Noah's IT department on the Arc.

• A big culprit is the education portion of your profile. Don't define the years for your college time. If you have to, go back and delete the entries and create new entries, this time don't define the years, it is not a required field any longer.

• Don't be nostalgic and list old software and hardware in your skills. For example, TI-99/4A Basic Programing. Or how about... Certified in Word Perfect. DOS 4.2 or dare I say it, Windows 3.11. It is fun to reminisce with they guys at lunch but not on your professional branding.

Remember, we want to produce interest with our profiles on LinkedIn by having a solid skill set. But we we don't want to appear too old, expensive, or dare I say; over qualified.

Check back next week when we will be talking about your Profile Photo.

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