LinkedIn as Personal Selling Tool

LinkedIn is one of the world’s greatest “social media” platforms designed
for networking with working professionals and old high school friends.
If you haven’t created or touched up your LinkedIn profile in a while,
today will be a perfect time, so keep reading for a few of the tips and tricks
I have learned from Verdonck and his “LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success”.

Get Started With the Basics

Here is a checklist of a few crucial aspects of every professional account:

• Create a paragraph of “common misspellings” of your name,
  which will help individuals find your profile on LinkedIn regardless
  of making a spelling mistake
• Choose a professional profile picture
• Upgrade your professional LinkedIn headline by adding more than
  just a title and a company you work for
• Add your location and industry on LinkedIn

How to Stand Out

One of the best ways to stand out is to be yourself. Brand yourself.

• Showcase only relevant professional honors
• Showcase completed projects
• If desired, publish content on the profile in a form of blog article
• Build value by provision of free tips and advice

It is important to only present the skills that are relevant to your goals,
the skills that would help you build networks with professionals who can
help you achieve your future objectives. If you are attempting to find a
business partner for a retail startup, being a dog whisperer is a skill
that would be useless. Therefore, be cautious of the self-presentation.

One last cherry on top would be to add a personal touch to your account.
That might be a descriptive adjective of your personality or perhaps a
paragraph on your volunteering experiences. Something that makes you
you. However, when doing so, it would be best to keep in mind targeted
audience, and add a personal touch that would appeal to them.

Extra Strategies

The very last few tips and tricks I may provide are the very ones provided
by Verdonck and they say:

• Maximize keywords on your profile in order to boost SEO
• Engage with others using LinkedIn Groups
• Follow the leaders most influential to your career
• Control your visibility using privacy settings

These tips can help you rank up, link with individuals on the same path
as you, and place yourself in an environment that will allow opportunities
for success to reach you.

Learning Through Feedback

As demonstrated throughout my blog posts, last section of each post
always reflects on the course I’ve done at the college. For everyone who
is a new reader, here is a small summary:

• We had to write a summary on a course from Lynda, in today’s
  case, “LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success”
• We had to read three other students’ summaries, and grade them
• Other three students marked my summary, as well as provided
  feedback
• Feedback provided me with the opportunity to reflect, learn, and improve

What Have I Learned

The biggest tip I have received through the feedback this week was
to add a personal touch to my writing. Not only has this completely
changed my perspective, but it has also made me realize that I’ve
lost my creativity through scholarly article writing.

The educational systems teach us well how to be professional,
correct, and lose the personality due to not being allowed to be
subjective. However, when it comes to social media marketing,
it is quite the opposite. Personality/brand is EVERYTHING.
If there is no branding, there is no differentiation, nor competitiveness.

Just as Verdonck claims for LinkedIn Profiles, we have to develop
that branding, and personal touch to our profiles. We have to become
less of a robot, and more human. We are all different individuals,
and we should showcase ourselves as such. There is nothing fun
about being the same as everybody else in the market place.

Lastly, what I’ve learned from reading other student’s summaries is that
creative design, fun personal touch, and correct grammar, can completely
transform the post. It is so easy to ignore the images within the posts; however,
when images are engaging, related to the content, and fun to see, article can
appear shorter, easier to skim through and read through, as well as
more engaging, and less distracting.

Perhaps the same advice can be applied to your LinkedIn Profile.

• • Focus on branding yourself
  • Never forget the personal touch
  • Remain professional
  • Be playful with imagery

The design on your profile can be built from all sorts of contents.
The one Verdonck mentions is written articles in form of blog posts,
video contents, as well as your heading profile image. Play with it.
Make it work for your branding, make your profile engaging and
different, and never forget to stay true to yourself.