LinkedIn Profile Mistakes to Avoid
With LinkedIn rising quickly to become one of the largest professional marketplaces in internet history, it is more important than ever to make sure that your presence on it lets you stand out in a positive, professional way.
You never know who is going to stumble upon your profile; and when they do, you want to make sure they leave feeling impressed and inclined to stay connected.
In order to capitalize on your LinkedIn presence, it is necessary to carefully construct your profile in order to show the best of your brand to potential customers and clients.
The 7 Most Common Profile Mistakes On LinkedIn
No Picture – On the Internet, one of the easiest ways to shoot yourself in the foot is to avoid putting up a picture of yourself or your company logo. The fact is that, in the minds of the masses, no picture means not human, i.e. a robot or fake profile.
Boring Headline – You have 120 characters you can use to describe yourself in your profile headline. Most people either go strictly by the book and use their job title only or describe themselves in superfluous, mellifluous language that nobody understands or cares about. Go for a middle ground approach that represents you not only clearly, but distinctively as well.
Not Updating – Granted, Twitter and Facebook are much more favorable to constant feeds of your activity, but LinkedIn is the perfect place to keep interested clients and customers up to date on what you are up to in a professional sense.
Updating With The Wrong Content – If you choose to update your LinkedIn profile with the same things you would put on your personal Facebook page, you should re-examine your social media strategy. Different social platforms have different purposes; and your content should mesh with the purpose of each platform for the best results.
Not Using Your Company Description Effectively – This 2000-character space might look fine with some general information about your business, but it is too important of an area to simply copy and paste some sales copy into it.
This is the area where search engine algorithms will be looking most intently for keywords, so you want to make sure you add a few, as well as key figures and statistics that reflect your success.
Not Connecting With Your Existing Relations – Your past clients are probably one of the best sources of referrals around, so searching for and connecting with your past clients is a must do!
Profile Set to Private – This could go without saying, but a private profile makes it hard for people to find it. Therefore, when you set yours up, make sure it is set to public so that new leads can easily find your business.
Next week: 5 Tips for Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page – Part 4 of a series
