{Here’s what goes through the mind of anyone looking for you on LinkedIn:}
I get your name as someone to look up on LinkedIn, as a referral, or the result of an impression you made with something you have posted.
Perhaps yours is a relatively common name. Perhaps it’s not.
I search for your name on LinkedIn and there are multiple people with your name to choose from. {Shakespearean aside: BTW there are 8 Marc/Mark Halperts on LinkedIn!}
Arggh, I am not liking this matching game, pecking at names in hopes I can find you.
So back to the search bar and I key your name and a comma and your field of work or comma and location.
Less matches than before, still a few to choose from.
Again, I am not enthusiastic about playing this game–I am getting annoyed as time marches on, and luckily waits for you–in my search that has made you harder than needed to find.
I google you and hope I can find the right LinkedIn URL to your profile among the topmost search results.
Perhaps I find it.
By this time I have expended more energy finding you than the psychic rewards I may perceive from following, or a long shot at this point: engaging with you, to determine if I should connect to you.
{OK, cue scene change and back to reality, dear reader.}
I can tell you how to solve a searching mystery for you like this in 2 steps:
- make your LinkedIn URL end with your name (as in linkedin.com/in/marchalpert)
- make your headline tell why you do what you do, interspersed with keywords that identify your field(s) of work, tersely and smartly presented in 220 characters, including spaces.
Eureka, now we can more easily find you. Not a failsafe but a lot more efficient.
Now we can determine how much remaining energy to place in reading your cogent profile and deciding to get to know you, not wasting more just in having to sleuth you out to find you.
Now we can examine how we can help you, and you can help us.
The game of detective exists in murder-mystery-who-done-it films, but it is not played out well in LinkedIn searches for you.
