Linkedin Recommendations for improving your profile Debra Chantry – Principal | Business Coach

Before your start – Benchmark! Before you improve your profile, you want to know how many people are currently looking at your profile… so that you can see how this improves over time. You can view this by clicking on the Profile menu item and then ‘Who’s viewed your profile?”

This will give you a number of profile views in the last 90 days and a trend graph:

You can click anywhere on the graph to see dates & numbers of views per week & you can use this to see if the spikes coincide with activity online.

If you’d like to see how you are doing against the rest of your Colliers team, then click on “How you rank for profile views”…

Editing Your Profile All changes to your profile are made through ‘Edit Profile’.

Every time you make changes to your profile, by default LinkedIn will publish it to your network – letting them know that you have changes. If you don’t want this, then look for the ‘Notify your network’ option and choose ‘No’.

Personalised URL Your URL should be customised to help people find you through Search Engines. Click on ‘Edit Profile’

Then click on the Edit next to your URL underneath your photo.

Look for the Public Profile URL box and click on ‘Customize your public profile URL’

Pick the name that you would like (recommendation is your full name) and ‘Set Custom URL’. NOTE: If your name is not available then think about adding your ‘expertise’ as well.. Ie: DebraChantryBusinessCoach. This can be changed at any time.

Photo Your photo should reflect you – is it professional? Is it relevant (ie: not 10 years out of date?) Will someone recognise you from it? Before you upload your photo, make sure that you name the image file with your name and your specialties or keywords that you want to be found for. Ie: Debra Chantry – Business Coach.jpeg Then upload this photo to your profile, using the camera button.

Title By default, when you change jobs, Linkedin will try to change this to your current job title. Your title is really important for SEO searches and should reflect your ‘Genius’ or ‘Specialties’ not your current role. It should also contain any ‘keywords’ that people are likely to search on – ie: Car Insurance not Vehicle Insurance. To edit this, click on the edit Pencil next to your title:

You have 2 lines to describe what it is that you are a specialist in. Use your own language but make sure it says what you would want people to find you for.

Summary This is your chance to showcase what you do and stuff the paragraph with lots of lovely keywords / key skills that people might want to find you for. It’s like your summary on your CV and a chance to write whatever you like, however write it in the eyes of your customer – WIIFM (What’s in if for me?)… Why would I want to work with you? You have about 300 words and you can use bullet points and highlight particular parts. Example:

This is an example of what might be written on a summary… Debra has a broad range of experience from being an owner-manager of a number of businesses, as well as holding General Management, CEO & Director roles across a broad range of industries from start-ups, SME’s Corporates and Not-for-Profit Organisations. Combined with her formal qualifications in Business Administration, Marketing, Biochemistry & Food Science, Debra has a unique mixture of experience & acumen that she shares with her clients. Her roles / clients have included TOWER, InterCity & Newmans, Auckland City Council, Warner Bros, Sony Music, Roche, GSK, Yellow, Plunket, The Icehouse, Generator & The Life Education Trust. She has also worked with many owner-managed and start-up businesses in the areas of Travel & Tourism, Food & Nutrition, Beauty & Medical Products, Pets, Online Gaming & Online Services, PR & Promotions, Media, Advertising, Recruitment, Property, Engineering & Architecture. At Ventell, The Icehouse and The Lightning Lab Debra uses her distinctive coaching skills to work with both start-ups and established businesses to help them unlock their potential and realise profitable growth whilst having fun along the way. Main specialties include: • Business Coaching / Mentoring • Strategic Planning • Marketing Strategy, including Digital / Online • Sales Strategy & Management • New Product Development & Innovation • Governance Debra is a member of the Institute of Directors, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Marketers and lectures at the marketing association on their Certificate of Marketing Management and Certificate of Digital Marketing courses. Debra is one of life’s true enthusiasts, with the rare ability to motivate and excite colleagues, customers & clients. She is passionate about working with New Zealand Businesses and Boards to ensure that they grow profitably. She is quick to recognise and seize opportunity. Specialties: Business Coaching / Mentoring, Governance, Business Planning, Start-ups & Owner-Managed Businesses

You can also upload a file or link to a file here – such as a video, image, document, presentation etc. Ideas for what you might add:

• A video testimonial • A video of you introducing yourself & what you can do for the client • Your CV • A Presentation of your work

It can be in most formats and from most providers. It should be relevant to you personally as this is a summary of you. There are plenty of other opportunities for you to upload other files throughout linkedin around work etc. For a complete list, see here - http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34327/

Position(s) Add all relevant positions that you want to be recognised for. Each Position should have a company (such as Colliers), a title, location and the time period plus a Position Description. I like to describe what the company does (including keywords that people search for) as well as website addresses in for the company.

This is a great chance to show your depth of experience.

Education Do the same for education – don’t underestimate the power of your education plus it gives people a chance to find you. Follow the same steps – Click on ‘Edit Education’

Click on ‘Add Education’ and put as much information as you can in, linking it to the educational institute on Linkedin.

Contact Info There is no point in being on Linkedin if people can’t contact you! Click on ‘Edit Contact Info’ and ensure that you have as much information as possible, basic contact information as well as links to Website etc. Don’t’ forget the Colliers site – help your company to build credibility through links…. And you can even have it linking to your personal page on Colliers – just enter the URL. Link your Twitter accounts too.

Add Skills Skills give people a chance to understand what you & others think your key skills are. Don’t let other people decide what your skills are… Take control!

Add skills that you want to be recognised for – order them in the order that you want and then people will be asked if you have these skills and can endorse you for them.

If you don’t choose the skills and order them how you want them you will find people will choose skills for you, which you may not want to be recognised for.

Get Recommended Ask for recommendations from people, particularly when you have just completed a piece of work that they are happy with. Written testimonials are ok but video testimonials are better! To ask someone to recommend you in writing, go to the ‘Privacy & Settings’ Review section.

Click on the ‘Ask for Recommendations’ tab and choose the job or school that you want a recommendation for and the person / people that you want to ask. Make sure you personalise the message (I recommend asking one person at a time and making sure that the message is really personal).

Once they give you a recommendation you can review it, ask for changes and eventually publish it under your profile. It will appear under that job. For a video recommendation then you will need to add it as a file under the experience / position section:

It will show up under the recommendations for that position:

Join Groups Look for groups that interest you and where you can engage, interact and ‘show off’ what you know about your specialties. Don’t be afraid to start conversations, join in with conversations and most of all, have an opinion!

Add Articles / Publications Articles give you credibility – if you have published work online then add it under Publications, detailing the URL where the article can be found, what publication it was in and a little bit about what it is about.