I have already received a message from one of my groups that they will no longer accept “news” posts. The reason, and it is a valid one, is that they muck up the discussions with all kinds of non relevant stuff.

If the groups allow these posts they will significantly dilute the discussion board. I believe this is not a good decision on LinkedIn’s part as it will put the group owners and managers in the position of either allowing the discussions to be polluted or doing as my group did simply refusing news posts.

If LinkedIn holds to this policy your profile is going to become a lot more important.

Why?

Because attracting customers clients and opportunities will be much more difficult without the availability of the news sections.

Not that you shouldn’t constantly review your profile and tune it to be more effective but now it may be necessary.

To help out here I have put together a collection of 7 great articles on empowering your profile.  The final PDF file is still being formatted but should be available in the next couple of days.

If you’d like a copy of this free collection of articles please add your name and email below. You will be notified by email as soon as the report is ready:

Searches

The first number you can look at is how many times you are coming up in the searches. You need not compare this number to others, but you can watch it carefully based on your activities to see how many times you’re appearing.

Then you can try different things to see how you can improve your search results. If you are able to put yourself in more searches you will obviously have more opportunities to get business.

This number is a reflection of the “keywords” you have used to describe yourself in your profile. Consider not only using those terms specific to your profession but terms that will capture other viewers as well.

Profile Views

Another number you can look at for great information about your profile’s effectiveness is how many people are viewing your profile. Obviously, as above the more people that read your profile the better off you are.

Besides the searches your profile is probably getting viewed by people who’ve been referred to you and more often based on your Mini Header which shows up next to your posts in the question and answer forums, discussions or news posts in the groups.

Your mini header is literally an advertisement for you or your company and there are many things you can do with it to improve your results. Don’t limit your thinking, this is just as important, if not more so, for the job seeker.

That’s Not All

Taking this to the next level occurs when you use your profile to effectively move readers to your website. This requires the website have the proper components to leverage this traffic.

With these things in place you can now see an additional level of results from your profile – how effective it is at driving people to your site.

Summary

Don’t underestimate what can be done with just the simplest data discussed here. You have the ability using these numbers to increase both the amount and quality of visibility you’re getting on LinkedIn.

From Flyn

If you haven’t gotten my FREE “LinkedIn Power Networking Mini Course,” you should seriously consider doing so. The information you’ll get will help you to immediately improve your results on LinkedIn. Click Here

With the link feature you have more room in the status field for copy and the link feature allows you additional copy as well.

To start you must have some sort of a value offer on your site. This could be an educational or informative video, an article, white paper, or even a useful resource such as an educational quiz.

Once you have created or picked the resource (make sure it’s NOT sales oriented) simply put some information about its value and the link in the “Activity Status” section of your header. This can be edited from your Home page.

Since the link has its own text you could potentially change your “Activity Status” message and leave the link to stand on its own. The fact that the status is posted to the updates means you will get continual visibility from this activity and for your value offer.

From Flyn

One of the things that will make all of this more successful is to have a powerful profile. I invite you to register and and attend my free webinar “LinkedIn Profile Strategies” coming Wednesday 4/27 at 1PM PST 3PM EST. Click here to register.

Your “Network Status Update” in your profile now contains the ability to add a link. This saves you characters for a better message and delivers all kinds of possibilities to point people at your content.

This is something you can use regularly to stay visible and now it has the extra power of having a link and connection to Twitter — great stuff.

See my profile for an example and get the scoop on my newest LinkedIn seminar.

Myth #2: That the function of your profile is as a brochure, website or information piece.

If you answered “Yes” to one or both questions, this is the most important LinkedIn article you will ever read and here’s why.

If you believe your LinkedIn profile should be about you, you probably included things like where you’ve worked, studied.

If you believe the function of your profile is a brochure, website or information piece, you likely filled it with facts about what you did.

Unfortunately both of these myths couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ll explain why.

If you are a regular reader of my blog or other materials you know I make a diligent effort to publish truly useful and workable content. I don’t state platitudes, or give the obvious I provide real strategies and tactics to facilitate your success. That said I consider this one of the very most important videos I have done. It addresses the essence of your success on LinkedIn; your profile.

You probably never heard what I am about to tell you. Many of you may disagree. But the fact is that what follows is in fact correct and it works when you get it right.

Do you really know what your LinkedIn profile is? Do you understand the real function of your profile and what it should do?

These are critical questions to your LinkedIn success here’s why.

The key to answering the riddle of your profile is to go back to the root and understand the LinkedIn environment. Where is it? It’s on a “networking” site. I put quotation marks around networking because it is critically important to everything you do on LinkedIn and that includes how you construct your profile.

The first thing you must agree on here is in networking the key to success is developing “valued relationships.” A valued relationship is one where people are connected to you because you provide or provided a value.

If you believe that prospecting approaches will get you better results, you will not agree with what follows. I personally don’t believe prospecting is the most effective way or method to use on LinkedIn. I won’t make the case here but you can certainly find it by reading my previous posts.

So now I pose to you the logical question: “What value to anyone is a profile about yourself?” Does it help them better their current situation in any way? Does it differentiate you from your competition that has the same background, work experience, capabilities, and expertise you do?

I would say that it does not.

The question you should ask here is “Do you believe that the reader of your profile can look at a competitor’s profile and truly tell the difference between you? I don’t.

This brings us to the next question: What is your profile?

The answer to that question is: Your profile is a “marketing piece” and that its total function in life should be to get readers to engage you (that’s what marketing does – create a demand for goods and/or services).

I further submit to you that engagement is the only valid profile objective when it comes to receiving business on LinkedIn. Why? Because if others don’t engage you, you’ll never get to tell your story and without your story you’ll never conduct business.

To be successful on LinkedIn you MUST design your profile so it brings immediate and real value to the reader (building a valued relationship). If you succeed in this task, you will have earned the right to ask the reader to take on more baby step and engage you (the goal). And they will. This engagement may simply be getting connected or any of a number of things but getting the engagement is critical to success.

When you do the above you put your profile in alignment with the LinkedIn environment. When you make your profile a resume or a website you fight the nature of LinkedIn and impede your success. Resumes and websites are not what networkers are looking for – they’re looking for valued relationships, so provide VALUE.

From Flyn

The new revised and updated version of my “Success Kit” called: The LinkedIn Power Networking Mini Course is now available.

The other day, one of my connections sent me a note re the updating of his profile. I’d like to share with you my comments and some additional annotations as they are very relevant to most of the profiles on LinkedIn.

Your profile is a very nice and clean version of the typical business profile. My recommendation would be a different approach.

First: Re write your profile with the visitor in mind as opposed to writing it about yourself. Others are not interested in you UNTIL they see what value you can provide. Your profile discusses what you do and have done and doesn’t answer the reader’s question — “What’s in it for me?”

The majority of LinkedIn profiles are written about the writer, instead of what the writer can produce.

Second: Your profile doesn’t ask or even encourage the reader to engage you; it simply states facts about who you believe yourself to be. You don’t even ask the reader to connect up with you on LinkedIn.

Remember the old saying “You don’t get what you don’t ask for.” If you doubt this ask anyone who has spent some time selling for a living.

As an aside to this, you don’t offer the reader any value — you don’t improve his/her current condition by providing something that would be useful to them. This is obviously a way to engage those who read your profile as well.

Third: You have no offer or reason for the reader to visit your website other than what you say about yourself — which I may suggest is not taken very seriously by the reader UNTIL they see the value you’ll provide them

Your profile is an advertisement or marketing piece. Consider the following job of a headline as described by Eugene M. Schwartz in his remarkable book “Breakthrough Advertising:” I quote “Your headline has only one job–to stop your prospect and compel him to read the second sentence of your ad.”

Do you find the first sentences in your profile compelling?

From Flyn

I am running my very popular and loved free seminar: Power Networking Secrets for LinkedIn. Over 200 people have attended this class and they loved it. You’ll learn six key things that will help you succeed on LinkedIn. For information go to: Power Networking Secrets for LinkedIn

]]> http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/03/read-your-linkedin-profile-again/feed/ 1 http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/03/linkedin-profile-synergy-the-power-to-create-opportunities/ http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/03/linkedin-profile-synergy-the-power-to-create-opportunities/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:57:56 +0000 Flyn http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/?p=562 One of the things that will make your profile much more powerful and impactful is if there is synergy between what you claim you can produce for others and what others say about you in your recommendations.

Of course the first thing one must do is have content in their profile that is directed at what one can produce. Most resumes and profiles are heavily directed at what the person does or can do. There’s a huge difference.

The postcard version is that what one can produce answers the prospect’s questions about “What’s in it for me?” Where what you can do or have done will be likely the same as those who compete with you.

How do you achieve synergy?

You start with something you can produce that you feel is important to those that might engage you. You clearly state the end results you produce for the customer.

Next, you must make sure that your recommendations explore and reveal that you produced for that person exactly what you say in your profile.

Short Example

In the profile it says…
I am able to produce significant increases in sales revenues using specific techniques that increase the key factors within a sales team: The manager’s ability to coach and train, the quality of the sales process, and the sales-call quality of the team members.

Recommendation says…
XYZ Company produced an increase in the sales revenues of our team of over 100% in the first 30 days of their program. The have increased our manager’s ability to coach and guide the team and this has resulted in direct increases in the quality of our sales process and quality of the sales calls made by team members.

How powerful is the fist statement after reading the second? It’s a lot more powerful because the writer didn’t say it, someone else did! People are far more likely to give credit to a third party than to what you say about yourself.

This kind of synergy is only achieves by purposeful pro active action to make it happen. However, you can see how powerful and compelling those two items become when synergy exists.

From Flyn

Did you know this strategy? Have you seen this anywhere else? This site is filled with information on how to make your LinkedIn networking efforts far more profitable. Please participate by commenting and sharing this post with others. Take the time to explore this site and learn even more about using LinkedIn.

Consider our power networking course (while it’s cheap) and if nothing else take our free LinkedIn networking mini course. It will get you started in the right direction.

As in any sales presentation you need to ask the reader for the order. Those that don’t ask, don’t get. This is true of your LinkedIn profile as well.

If you don’t give the reader a clear next step or path to follow they will likely leave and move on to their next activity. Your profile must tell or give the reader some specific choices if you want to maximize your success.

I find, because of the features allowed in a LinkedIn Profile, that it is typically more powerful than a resume. However, in business you need to get them to your website. Your profile is no substitute for the information you can offer on your site.

Make sure that you tell readers to visit your website, or connect with you on other social media sites, or send you a note telling how you can help. Obviously, you can make this request far stronger if you have some value item for them when they arrive at whatever destination you send them to.

If your LinkedIn profile isn’t a bread crumb that brings readers closer, you are losing tons of opportunity. One of the most important keys to succeeding on LinkedIn is connecting your marketing efforts to your profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your “olive branch” inviting others into your marketing effort which will then hopefully engage the reader in a conversation.

Get off to the right start in 2010 and make your profile more attractive to readers. The advantage to doing this is that if you do the right things, you will improve the readability and thus readership of your profile.

Here are some things you can do to improve the look and feel of your profile.

Short paragraphs – this is a principle of good copywriting. If you keep your paragraphs short the visual effect to the reader is less intimidating. Big paragraphs intimidate readers and may cause them to just move on. (This by the way is also applicable to answering questions as well.).

Use Headlines

Using headlines helps to bread things up and also gives the reader a quick summary of the subject at hand. The headlines also add white space to your content thus making more appealing.

Use widgets (| *) to highlight your titles and other key items. Since LinkedIn doesn’t offer any real formatting tools you can use widgets to give your content a bit more zip. Don’t forget that you can also use them in your header headline to break up multiple points or items.

Always have a carriage return between paragraphs. If you had multiple line spacing you could probably get away with indents, but they don’t work in single spacing. They make the content look very intimidating. And consider setting titles out with returns above and below. This adds white space and makes your profile more appealing to the eye. It will help get more people who stop by to read what you’ve written.

Go through your profile and do these things and you can make a difference in the readership of your profile. If you have a good call  to action to bring them to your website, you will also increase the number of prospects you get from LinkedIn.

Many of these tips can be successfully applied to any type of content.

From Flyn

If you really want to get your LinkedIn networking rolling you should come to my “Empower Your Profile webinar” In this webinar I will give you a wealth of ideas you can implement to improve the impact readers get when they read your profile. See the events page above.

News, this blog is getting a face lift, new membership software (as you may have already read) and will be moving hosts. We may have a day or so of downtime but I am working to make it as short as possible.

If you have been reading this blog and have not yet availed yourself of my other free and paid materials you are missing some great information. You can get my free LinkedIn Power Networking Mini Course by clicking the link under my picture. This little course has a check sheet and 4 reports and 7 videos to help you get closer to ringing the LinkedIn cash register.

Then there’s my Power Networking Profit System for LinkedIn course which contains hundreds of pages of content, audios, and videos showing the strategies and tactics that will allow you to have far more opportunities to gain business on LinkedIn. Currently, for just $1 you can get the first 4 weeks of material including the introduction and 5 chapters. Get in now before the official release and you will save money.

Finally, if you find real value in my posts, I ask that you share this website in whatever ways you can, Tweet or DIGG it, or whatever methods you see fit. LinkedIn is a very powerful resource and I want to help as many people as possible succeed in their efforts. You may use the social media icons below to share this site.

It’s my belief that your profile has the potential to be quite a bit more powerful than your resume. This is because of all the attachments and add-ons incorporated into the LinkedIn profile.

From a marketing standpoint this makes your LinkedIn profile a great “first contact” device. I will always send people to my profile before my resume simply because is has more depth and width.

As I have said many times in this blog, the key is to get people interested in you enough so they take the next step in investigating you. That step in most cases would be visiting your website to learn more about you and your business or job skills.

This is why I recommend that your profile is written for the reader in terms of what you can produce or have produced avoiding discussions of what you did which have far less interest to and impact on the reader.

You can then use your resume for the more detailed description of your abilities and specific skills. This slightly different approach to your resume gives you a link of interest for the reader. You can now promise the reader a more detail view of who you are and what you can do.

One other very valuable point here is that your fellow LinkedIners are the perfect crowd to help you improve both of these documents. Don’t hesitate to post a question in the Question and Answer forum asking for opinions on either of these documents. (As a side benefit to this type of question you innocently get people on your website to look at your resume!)

My suggestion is that you take a small piece what is on your resume or profile and write a different version (obviously trying to improve). The ask very specific questions in the detail of your question about what you are trying to accomplish.

Example: You might write a employment listing that tells what you produced and then take a slightly different angle (still focusing on what is produced) and ask the readers: Which of the two is more impressive? Which is more interesting or compelling? What suggestions do you have for how I should state this?

The key to this exercise is to be very specific as to what you what to know. If you don’t do this you are likely to get a lot of very vague comments that don’t really help you tune what you’ve done.

From Flyn

If you’d really like to power up your profile and learn a number of things you can apply to your resume as well, you should attend my upcoming webinar “Empowering Your Profile: Strategies for Job and Business Seekers.” You can find the information on this webinar workshop in the events page link above my picture.