Continuing on yesterday‘s theme:
Spring cleaning is a process. Some enjoy the catharsis. Others groan and begrudge the need.
As you reassess your surroundings, refresh by clearing clutter.
Clarify your message on your LinkedIn personal profile in the same way. Start now, be methodical, and keep it tidy.
The goal: effective LinkedIn profiles stimulate the reader to contact you for business opportunities once he/she has a clear view of “why you do what you do.”
Here are 7 other tips to put more “spring” in your LinkedIn personal profile.
7. Be sure your Experience section reflects the breadth of what you know and bring to the proverbial table. This section should complement the Summary section. Resist overusing any acronyms or industry-specific jargon, so as not to alienate readers outside your field. Use “I” combined with those power verbs to make an impact.
8. Further, the Experience section is not to be lifted from bullet points in your resume. Directed to a different reading audience than your backward-focused resume, this section should also highlight present day efforts coupled with your aspirations for the future. Be sure it shows the buildup of skills and values you mastered at each step in your career that you bring with you today. Again, add pertinent multimedia and complementary material.
9. Recast your Skills with laser-focus: a skill called “analysis” is vague (is that psychoanalysis? financial analysis?) and nowhere as clear as “competitive retail market analysis.” Cull out endorsers who don’t directly know each skill directly, but somehow endorsed you for it anyhow. Don’t be afraid of asking the right people to endorse you and deleting the others.
10. Incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) keywords in your Headline, Summary, and Experience sections, complementing your Skills. Even if being findable in a LinkedIn keyword search is your goal, don’t deliberately “seed” these sections with densely packed SEO keywords that would numb the human reader in hopes of feeding the electronic one.
11. Update the Publications, Organizations, Projects, Volunteer Experience, and Honors sections to be sure they convey peer appreciation, point of view, interests, roles, and other contributions. Describe them in terms of how you are unique or how you helped others by using your skillset. Be sure to list any pro bono nonprofit expertise you could offer or board position you would fill, so a nonprofit can find you and tap into your expertise.
12. Review all sections for errors in grammar, format, syntax, and (eek!) typos; a mistake is all they will notice to the exclusion of the rest of your profile and potentially dismiss you as careless.
13. Retain only the trusted connections, meaningful recommendations, and knowledgeable skill endorsers who clearly reinforce your value proposition. Delete, disengage or hide any of these, as needed. In each of these sections, quality far outweighs quantity!
Keep updating and tweaking your profile as you morph, have new work to show, change jobs, shift focus, devise a new product/service, open a new business, etc. Your LinkedIn persona is organic only if you grow it; otherwise it is freeze-dried in history.
If you work better with a recurring calendar reminder to prod you to review and update your profile, schedule that now. Sometimes spring cleaning involves minor remodeling, sometimes more severe structural renovation.
Be sure you always show your best credentials on LinkedIn, continually spruced up and polished!
