As a counselor and life coach, I’m all about setting goals and achieving those. I want to help people move past the dark places in their lives and forward to a bright, happy future. Like most people, you have to be employed to survive and have financial stability which minimizes feelings of depression and anxiety. It is very important to market yourself and nowadays with social media most employers look to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a really pretty AWESOME social media site. You can find others in your industry, learn more about your industry through those thought leaders as well as promote your own business. That’s right there are many ways with LinkedIn to promote yourself and your business to your community and beyond.
So with that, let’s get into specifics about how to make that profile of yours SMOKIN’ HOT & considered an ALL-STAR profile so that you stand out in the crowd.
1) Fill It Out Completely
When you are completing your LinkedIn profile for yourself. Fill it out completely. People and potential customers are looking to you and your experience. Be creative with your headline. Use keywords in that. Add all of your accomplishments. You may think they are not important but realistically to a potential customer they will be important. Add training classes, publications, website links, blogs, social media links, etc… You get the picture….be thorough!!!
2) Current Picture Please
Crucial….really…put an updated head shot & preferably not from your cell phone. An updated head shot by a professional photographer is great. One reason is you will eventually meet face to face with this potential customer and it would be wonderful if they can recognize you.
Many times connections are made ahead of time, emails exchanged and then a meet up occurs to discuss businesses. When this networking occurs, it is best to place a face with the name. It is really important and totally worth the cost of the head shots. You know what, the investment in a great head shot is worth its weight in gold when it comes to branding, your professionalism and being taken seriously in business.
3) Recommendations
Anyone who is serious about being taken seriously in your industry will look for endorsements or recommendations from people you have worked with. To start out, it may boil down to emailing the former client/customer and asking for them. Chances are they were happy with your services and will be fine with adding a few lines of a recommendation for your profile. Recommendations will just build your credibility as a leader in your industry in your location. Seek these out. They are important.
4) Endorsements
Along the same lines as recommendations, endorsements are crucial to your success and being taken seriously as a business that can provide superior service or products in whatever specialty you are in. When you log into LinkedIn, it will ask you to endorse others that you are connected with. Ok, so here’s where statistics factor in. Chances are better than not, if you endorse them for their skills they will reciprocate. Yep, so why not give it a try. It increases your credibility. Sweet!!!
5) Post….Post….Post…..
The more active you are on LinkedIn like on any other social media platform, the more attention your profile will get which leads to more connections. By posting superior content in your industry or just interesting material will build your credibility and you will see shortly connection requests coming to your inbox. I recommend posting in the morning before the work day gets started. No less than once or twice per day.
Now no anxiety attacks please, you can find great content and pre-schedule these posts through free platforms such as Hootsuite which make it extremely convenient if you are not near a computer and out doing some relaxing things on the weekend. No need to stress really.
Ok, so now I have given you the top 5 tips to how I ended up with an All-Star LinkedIn Profile. You can do this too and it’s really not very difficult at all.
If you do have difficulties with it, please reach out to me below, by email or phone. Also if anyone reading this has anymore suggestions on how to improve a profile, please comment below.