I’m sometimes asked why someone should bother with their LinkedIn profile or hear complaints that they haven’t got any business/job offers/whatever from having one. There are many things you can do with LinkedIn to grow your business, including what’s called “social selling.” But let’s just start with the basics.
Did you lose business because of your profile?
Can you tell how much business you might have lost by not having a professional and complete LinkedIn profile? Did someone look at your profile and get turned off by its poor quality or weren’t even sure it was you because there wasn’t a photo that looked like you?
Can you be found?
Can you easily be found? When I’m teaching a LinkedIn workshop I will look up the attendees in advance to look for common issues and to begin to get to know them. It’s not uncommon that I can’t find profiles for a third to half of them. It usually turns out that they do have profiles but there are problems so that they’re not even showing up in searches.
I’ve got a great profile – now what?
A client emailed the other day and asked why her profile views hadn’t increased since we’d done a makeover of her profile. I looked at her activity and saw just 7 actions in the previous month.
It’s about activity
1. Most of all it’s about activity.
- Networking activity – have you been out and about in your community? Business meetings, networking events, and volunteer activities can all provoke people to look up your LinkedIn profile
- Are you using your LinkedIn URL in your email signature line and business cards? You need to give people ample opportunity to find you on LinkedIn
- Online Activity – You used to be able to look at your “activity” in a graph form. Now all you can do is look at your “who’s viewed your profile” page. But it’s worth keeping some notes beyond just vaguely remembering what you have done lately. There should be plenty of meaningful activity. You can see your recent activity such as posts, comments/likes, and articles. Be generous on LinkedIn – liking and commenting on other people’s posts will get you a lot more visibility than just pushing out your own posts.
- You could create a spreadsheet noting all the activities you did including adding connections, congratulating people and wishing them a happy birthday and then match it weekly to the number of views you received. You could keep a simple note (maybe on your calendar?) that would probably give you a good idea of what activity resulted in increased views.
2. Your activity on LI directly impacts how many people look at your profile. In my case, when I’m speaking somewhere it impacts my viewership as much or more than my online activity. That may be true for you if you’re meeting a lot of people at something like an event.
3. Activity that involves reaching out to people/adding people as connections have the greatest impact for me, both in views I receive and people reaching out to me for my services.
4. Look at other people’s profiles (make sure you’re not in anonymous mode) and they’ll be inclined to look back at you.
5. Talk to people in LI groups you belong to – post comments, answer questions, show yourself as someone interesting and they’ll want to look up your profile. Unfortunately, LI groups are rarely utilized these days but I live in hope they’ll become a valuable resource again at some point.
If you do publish something or share someone else’s link that may be of interest to people beyond your connections, post it to selected groups with a question or comment about why they should read it.
Have a look at what you’re doing/not doing and do more of whatever gets you results and then evaluate to see if that helps. Sometimes I am lazy online (out of town and/or busy) and it shows in my results. It’s better to spend 5 minutes a day doing things on LI than an hour once a week.
Don’t leave your LinkedIn profile parked (unused) in your driveway
A LinkedIn profile is not meant to just sit there and look pretty (although that’s a start) – it’s meant to be used. I probably shouldn’t use car analogies (I am not a car gal!) but I can’t resist. It’s your choice – leave that nice car in the driveway to be noticed if people happen to drive by or drive it around town to show it off.
For other suggestions about activities you can do on LinkedIn, see Don’t Procrastinate – 5 Ways to be Active on LinkedIn Today
I would love to talk with you about the benefits to you of being more active on LinkedIn and how I could help you with your professional goals. Please schedule a free 20-minute strategy consultation to discuss how I might be able to assist you.