Maximizing Your LinkedIn Profile

500 million professionals are using LinkedIn all around the world. Are you reaching the broadest audience with your profile? Professionals are consuming more information from social networks and in turn are sharing more information with their own networks.

LinkedIn is the Gold Standard for Professional Social Media networking and can be optimized to increase the potential for sales, career advancement and crowd sourcing of new ideas.

So why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is more than just a social media site. LinkedIn is known as a source of news, knowledge and opportunity for professionals world wide. Cogent Research, LinkedIn, U.S., and Canada found that LinkedIn is preferred by a wide margin for professional social media activities.

Where to start - Optimizing Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is a representation of your professional story and brand - use your profile as the place to differentiate yourself from your peers and millions of professionals who use LinkedIn. Each user on LinkedIn starts off with the same profile, so how do you differentiate yourself?

Profile Photo and Background Photo

Did you know that having a professional profile photo and background photo allows you to receive on average 14 times more profile views? As simple as that right? Think again, your background photo should match your brand and story.

What do you mean my brand and story, I am not a company? That's right, you don't have to be a corporate company or small business to have your own brand. As a professional on LinkedIn think of your brand as your particular identity or image. For example, if you are a sales professional in a specific industry, you will want to align your profile and image to reflect the knowledge and experience in that industry.

Profile Summaries

An effective LinkedIn Summary does three things:

• Shows relevance.

• It differentiates you from your peers.

• A place people know more about you.

Your LinkedIn Summary is more likely to be read than any other version of your biography. This added element of exposure gives you the opportunity to capture and retain the attention of your desired audience. Use your LinkedIn Summary to summarize who you are, your accomplishments, values and passions and highlight the things that differentiate you from your peers and make you the best candidate.

LinkedIn limits your Summary to only 2,00 characters (including spaces), so make every word count.

Experience Section

The experience section is made for LinkedIn users to showcase their roles and responsibilities at each of their current and former positions. Choosing 5-7 bullet points that highlight your skill set within a certain position.

Your profile should be about you and your experiences. The experience section of your profile should not describe the company you work for - they have their own page!

Adding Your Education

Always list your academic level on LinkedIn. Whether or not your education level is relevant to your brand of story, it shows your academic level of thinking capabilities. Adding your education also makes you easier to find on LinkedIn. When adding education, to your profile you connect yourself to the College or Universities page that you attended. This allows for your profile to be found through the learning institutions page and gives your profile more visibility.

Additional Sections

There are several additional profile sections that you can add to your profile to help differentiate yourself.

• Licenses & Certifications

• Volunteer Experience

• Skills & Endorsements

Each section on LinkedIn is designed for you to showcase your abilities and differentiate yourself as a professional.

To become a skilled LinkedIn user start by evaluating and updating your LinkedIn profile.