10 ways to beef up your LinkedIn profile

Spending time on crafting your entry on LinkedIn will help boost your profile and will make it easier for others to find you when they are searching for freelancers. Here are a few tips that you might find useful:

1. Your photograph: make sure your photo looks businesslike and professional. This isn’t Facebook where you are hanging out with your mates. And if you haven’t quite got round to uploading a photo of yourself – make sure you do so TODAY!

2. Job title: does your current description say something like ‘Freelance writer’? Turn this into a client benefit rather than a straight description of what you do. For example: ‘Freelance copywriter who helps businesses raise the profile of their marketing communications‘. Think what people might be typing in to find freelancers like you. What kinds of key words might they use?

3. Website links: Use these as a marketing opportunity by including benefit statements, or key words, or descriptors. So, instead of ‘My website’, I have ‘My Company or Marketing Services‘. Instead of ‘My blog’, I have ‘My blog about Marketing‘. And make sure you use your third link, even if you don’t have a third site to point people to. I now have my portfolio page as my third link but, before I launched that, I pointed people to the testimonial page of my linked in. The link said: ‘Read what others say about me‘. Also you can point people to your Facebook Fan Page, Tumbler or any other social media platform. 

4. Testimonials: make sure you have some! And ask for several.

5. Your summary: don’t simply cut and paste factual stuff from your CV into your summary – make sure you really sell yourself. You have 2,000 characters to tell a compelling story about yourself. And don’t forget to include key words to increase the chances of people finding you when they do a search.

6. Status box: update this on a regular basis. I keep my contacts updated with the latest project I’m working on. This means I always show up in the digest of activity. You can also automatically tweet your status to your Twitter followers.

7. Applications: make use of the free applications to boost your profile. LinkedIn has lots, from Slide Share to Google Presentation to Portfolio Display. For instance, I upload pdfs using Box.net Files to show examples of my cases, so people can see my work without having to go to my website.

8. Link your blog to your profile. This is another useful application I use.  The title and first few lines of your blog post show up – and the title is a link that takes you straight to your blog. Try out some of the other applications and see how they might be able to enhance your profile.

9. Join lots of groups. You can belong to 50 groups on Linkedin. The more groups you join, the more people you can link to (without having to upgrade to the paid-for service).  And the more active your are on your group discussions, the more you’ll raise your profile among your target audience. Or why not start your own group?

10. Promote your profile. Cut and paste the code for a LinkedIn button and use it on your blog, website, Facebook page etc etc. The information LinkedIn provides on how to do this is as follows:Click on “Edit Profile” from the “Profile” dropdown menu found in the top navigation bar of the home page. Click “Edit Public Profile Settings” in the upper right-hand corner of the Profile page. Click on the “customized buttons” link found in the Public Profile box. Choose a logo button and copy the HTML code provided next to it. This code will include a link to your Public Profile. Paste the code on to your blog, message board or website. You can also create an email signature that contains a link to your LinkedIn profile. Here’s the link to find out how to do a LinkedIn email signature.

What tips have you found work well in boosting your profile on LinkedIn?
If you want to find out more Red Idea is always here.  

Source: Carole Seawert, FreelanceFactFile.com

Why the Retweet is such a powerful engagement tool?

                           

In a very short time “retweeting” has become one of the most powerful ways of connecting online effectively. Technically “retweeting” means taking someone else’s twitter messages and sharing them  with your followers, but why is it such a powerful engagement tool?

The most important aspect of a twitter account is the value it adds to followers. The more interesting and relevant the content the more helpful a resource your twitter account will be. You will have people coming back to check out your content, and also increase your followers too.  By retweeting great content, you are giving over quality material and building your own brand, but this reason misses a fundamental point....retweeting shows you ‘care’. 

In the online world everyone is seeking attention and wanting to get their brand as much attention as possible.  By retweeting you are paradoxically sending people away from your site to someone else’s site! But in fact the dynamic builds a deep, trusting relationship with your followers. You are showing them that it is not only about ‘you’ and ‘your’ content, but that you want them to get value from their experience of being involved with you. Retweeting sends out a message of confidence to your followers, and it highlights you are not only ‘agenda-driven’ but actually care about your sector and your followers.

 Another not so obvious benefit of retweeting is that you also build relationships with people in your sector or industry. When you retweet someone’s article or blog and give them credit, you are complimenting their work and immediately a relationship is born. They will perhaps return the compliment by retweeting your links and so on. You are also directly promoting them through their work so this isn’t simply about saying a ‘hi’ in a networking session!

With retweeting, you are building relationships with your followers who are your clients and customers who in turn will naturally spend more time and money with you. You also build relationships with fellow professionals, experts and other people who are interested in the content your followers are interested in.  And by building your powerful network your Twitter account is transformed! No longer is it simply about self promotion and trying to stand out, but moving an entire sector forward and working together in unity towards a better, wiser and more connected world. By adding this kind of value to your twitter account, greater sales will naturally follow and people will want to continue coming back.

If you want to find out more Red Idea is always here.