LinkedIn Profile: To attract business connections, employers, leads and sales
LinkedIn, with over 500 million users, is one of the fastest growing social media applications available today. It’s main focus is helping you to maintain your professional network. Similar to Facebook in the way you add a picture and a little information about yourself, connect with others and even share and like content but that’s where the similarity ends. Your LinkedIn profile is an online resume, idea sharing, lead generating, discussion invoking, and knowledge base tool. I’ve been on Linked for a few years but really started focusing on it this year as I wanted to expand my audience for my blog as well as look for potential business opportunities. After accumulating just under 200 connections over the past few years, my research and recent efforts have moved my business connections to over 1000 and counting. Have I met all of the people? Not even close but we all have at least one thing in common, we are looking to network with like minded people. In this article, I’ll share some of the highlights of how I optimized my profile so that eyes are on it it everyday, I get constantly get requests to connect, and recruiters find me very easily.
Before I get into my top tips, just a note that to save you time and give you more value for free, I’ve summarized these tips and more in a free PDF so you don’t scramble have to take notes or cut and paste. Just fill in your name and email and I’ll send you the link to this valuable information. So let’s get started!
1. Complete your LinkedIn Profile! – Though it sounds pretty obvious, I see so many profiles that are not completed. This is probably the most important way of optimizing your profile. It may take a while, and you may get to the point where you think you have nothing else to add but everyone does. Some of the information you may not think is relevant but use this areas to just leave a comment that you are working on the area of your life that may not be ready for prime time. To help, LinkedIn will track your completeness and guide you with simple interview-like questions to stir up those hidden skills, accomplishments, education and more. Just remember that each section is another opportunity to leave the keywords that will get your profile found in searches. I cover this more in the next point. Your really want to spend the most time on your Summary. After the key header information on your profile, this is what people see when they come across your profile. It’s really a summary of your skills, your resume summary or it’s what your company does if you are looking to attract new customers.
2. Add keywords everywhere in your LinkedIn Profile – I know this sounds odd for a professional profile but at the end of the day, you want to be found by a prospective employer, current customers or new customers. If you they don’t know your name or what you do, they are going be hunting for certain skills, experience, products etc. So take two minutes and with your goal of your profile in mind, write down every word that comes to mind. That’s your keywords. Now narrow down to about 10 and naturally (don’t list them out) sprinkle them into your profile sections. Like any search engine optimization strategy, this is how you attract your desired audience.
3. Get Your Connections over 500 – Why 500? It’s sort of a baseline now of an active and serious user. Even if you don’t know 500 people, you’ll find them and after you put in your keywords, they’ll find you. Use LinkedIn’s extensive search feature to look for people that you would want to connect with. You may just start looking in your city and for people with your same job title or the next job title you want. If you are selling services or products, search for people that are you ideal customers. There are tons of ways you can search for potential contacts. If you don’t know them, it may be tough to connect, you need to have some outside connection such as working together or doing business together or knowing their email. This is where your growing connections come in handy. Don’t know someone but one of your connections (1st level connection) is connected to someone you want to connect to (2nd level connection), you can ask the 1st level connection for an introduction. It’s very easy. Then they can connect that way with you. It’s like 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon, we’re all just a few connections away from that important recruiter, new client or more but i digress. I’ve done this several times to meet some important people in my industry locally. Keep in mind, just because someone has a LinkedIn profile, like any other social media, it does not mean they are active in LinkedIn so don’t be discouraged if they don’t respond. Especially if their profile looks very incomplete. It takes time and interest to create a good profile. Keep working at those connections and they will come.
4. Join Groups – LinkedIn Groups are great sources of information and new connections. Some are open and some require approval. I’d say join as many as you can (50 is max as of today). There are many professional organizations and if you can’t find one that should be there, start your own. This is your chance to become an authority or at least a facilitator for a subject matter that interests you and bring like-minded (think new connections) together. Getting to 50 may require you to consider some groups that are only on the fringe of what interests you but that’s OK. Groups are free and coming and going from groups is easy. Groups give you access to more people, some great content and also strengthens your profile. Yes, the group names are part of your keywords and this is how you would look for them.
5. Follow Other People or Channels – So there are some people you can’t connect to unless you personally know them but you can follow them and enjoy and engage in their content. Think of celebrity business people like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss and so on. You can follow discussion Channels as well such Ted Talks, Technology, Entrepreneurship, etc.
6. Be active in the community – To get noticed by others add to the discussion. Comment and share posts from others, write your own posts, like posts you really like. The community will notince and appreciate you. As you come across new people that you may be interested in connecting with, check out their LinkedIn profile.
I could go on and on about LinkedIn profile improvements but this will be enough to get you started or take that shell of a profile to the next level. As I mentioned above, I’ve summarized these LinkedIn profile tips and more in a free PDF file that you can access here.
The way I look at LinkedIn now that I made my improvements, if I only have a minute to connect with a new business contact after giving them my elevator intro, I will refer them to my LinkedIn profile to learn more and get in touch with me. So it’s got to be something I can be proud of. You can check me out here: 
I hope you find value in this information are able to leverage this free tool to help your career, connect with colleagues or improve your business. Please leave your tips in the comments and if you enjoyed this content, please share with it with others.
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