I’ve been seeing many of the same problems showing up on LinkedIn profiles lately – boring headline, no summary, no call to action, etc. Often they are issues you are well aware of but for one reason or another have just not fixed. Even my clients who have just a few remaining finishing touches to take care of on their own seem to lose momentum and don’t make those changes.
► Too busy?
► Confused about the best way to do things and don’t want to make a mistake?
► Easily distracted?
I’d like to find a way to make it really easy for you to keep improving your profile by just taking on just one small thing at a time. I think a bit part of the problem may be that you have so many distractions. Does this sound like you?
- Go to your LinkedIn profile with all the best intentions of making a few changes or updates.
- Log in and see that there are some fascinating new videos showing on your home page newsfeed. You watch one (or two.)
- Notice that one of your connections has a new job so you congratulate him.
- See a few other people pop up who you’ve meant to touch base with and send them a quick note.
- Finally, you go to your edit profile view.
- Once there you decide you hate your picture and you really ought to make an appointment for a new photo to be taken but where is that contact info of the photographer you were going to use?
- Now you settle down and are ready to make that one change to your headline/summary/job, etc. but half an hour has flown by and you really have to get back to your clients/paperwork/whatever.
Meanwhile, you haven’t made any updates to your profile.
STOP!
This is what I call the squirrel syndrome. You are not alone in being constantly distracted. It was so tempting to include a video clip of the Pixar movie “Up!” which contains the classic Dugar the talking dog clip (No, no, no! – Don’t look it up now!) The distractions come in many forms – emails, text messages, people stopping by your desk, etc. but, by far the most frequent problem is your own easily distracted squirrel brain (I’ve just been distracted myself by stopping to do a search for images to use for this blog post.)
STOP!
Think of one thing you can do in 5 minutes on LinkedIn and then set a timer for 5 minutes and then just do it. If your brain does its little distracted squirrel dance, tell it just like you would someone who stops by your desk to chat – “Stop! Just give me 5 minutes and I’ll be right with you.”
Did you get something accomplished? Congratulations! If you didn’t get your goal accomplished, set a reminder in your calendar to try again – maybe the next day or you can try again right now. If you did accomplish one small thing, set that reminder to change one more small thing.
- Choose a simple thing to change/improve on your LinkedIn profile
- Set a timer for 5 minutes
- Make your change/improvement!
- Squirrel distraction? Stop!
- Try again.
If you know there’s more to do and that you’re going to keep getting distracted and never get all your LinkedIn updates completed, consider working with me to keep you on track to get your LinkedIn profile completely over-hauled and set up for success.
And as a reward for not getting distracted, here’s the link to the Disney Pixar movie clip with Dugar (but don’t blame me if this becomes another squirrel distraction moment for you!)
I would love to talk with you about the benefits to you of having a great profile on LinkedIn, how to use it without it taking up more time than you can afford, what’s appropriate for you to share on LinkedIn, and how I could help you with your professional goals. Please schedule a free 20-minute strategy consultation to see how I might be able to assist you.