Many professionals are still not convinced of the power of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a large professional social network that provides a way to connect with your professionals and help you stay in touch with the millions of users using this platform.
LinkedIn is used to share your ideas, exchanging knowledge, and many opportunities that are offered. This could help you find groups of interest as well as finding a job in your field.
The first step to drawing people to your LinkedIn profile is by creating a powerful one. Start by adding your professional headline, this is the area right underneath your name, 120 characters that describe who you are and what you do. Many people have their “Title” at “Company” but this is a great area to add a tagline and a couple keywords.
The next step that people notice first is your picture, name and professional headline. Whether you are responding to a message or inviting someone to connect with you; you are using that information to invest the time to make it engaging.
Many people skip over the description field of their experience section, this is the place for you to talk about what you have experience in. You will have 1,000 characters in that area to talk about your keywords. As you describe what you do and what your company does, using these keywords they are going to naturally settle right in.
Now on to your background section of your profile, be sure to use most of 2,000 characters that are offered to you to expand on who you are and what you do. With the interest’s section that is found at the very bottom of the profile, right under additional information, is the only section on LinkedIn where you can put your keywords. Limited to 1,000 characters to add both personal interests as well as a list of keywords you use for SEO.
When using the right keywords in these sections, you have a better chance of your profile showing up when anyone does a search on them. LinkedIn is actually one of the networks that can drive more traffic than Google+ and Bing. You need to make sure that you, not your competition, are being found by your prospects.
For more information about how to utilize your LinkedIn profile contact, Windy City Strategies!