Listen carefully to the experts, even if you are one yourself. They not only have the knowledge that can help you, but they have the life experiences to back it up. A number of Colorado’s leading LinkedIn Experts and Social Media Experts gathered in Denver on Sat. June 6 at a special National Speakers Association (NSA) training session featuring on-line marketing.
The Denver Athletic Club played host to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert Heather Lutze, founder of The Findability Group. She started the day off with a roar! Being an authority on LinkedIn Expert myself (We have trained 7,000 people in 400 LinkedIn training sessions), I wasn’t sure that I would learn much. Boy was I wrong. I came home with 5 pages of notes. Being an expert and being a great speaker often do NOT go hand in hand.
Viveka von Rosen, a fellow LinkedIn Expert (@LinkedInExpert), and I (@MikeOneilDenver) are taking a new approach to our LinkedIn names as a result. Viveka is now “Viveka von Rosen: LinkedIn Expert & Speaker“. Her LAST NAME is entered as “von Rosen: LinkedIn Expert & Speaker”. It is still searchable in LinkedIn, and Google supposedly likes it a whole lot more. See how it looks on Viveka’s LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn Expert and Professional Speaker Mike O’Neil
LinkedIn Expert and Social Media Expert Viveka von Rosen
I am trying a slightly different approach. I put “the LinkedIn Expert” as my former or maiden name so I am now “Mike (the LinkedIn Expert) O’Neil”. See how it looks on my profile.
We will both be independently reporting on how this LinkedIn search and Google search works out and will pray that the forces of the mighty LinkedIn do not come down upon us. See Viveka’s blog post on this topic. She has a wealth of other great information on her www.LinkedIntoBusiness.com blog site.
After 5+ years of LinkedIn telling users not to put personal information like phone numbers in our profiles, they gently slipped in this very capability the past few days. It is almost a secret it seems so I am out telling the world.
It isn’t all we want, but it helps. Here is what mine looks like now:
Mike O'Neil's LinkedIn Personal Information Screen
This capability appears at the botton of a profile, above the Contact Settings. The data must be entered by the user. It includes Phone, Address, IM, Birthday and Marital Status (engaged is not an option, sorry).
Pray and maybe they will add a field for E-Mail in another 5 years! I will take 5 to 1 odds on that never happening. Please pass the word so we can better start communicating with one another.
LinkedIn modified its Groups function recently and it has created quite a stir from those that are paying attention. Did you notice?
So, what’s the big deal one might ask? I will cover the changes and what they mean for you in a series of posts so that you can absorb them one at a time.
This round we will deal with member data.
LinkedIn Group Managers have for a long time had the ability to expert their group member data into a CVS (Excel) file for use outside of LinkedIn. Group Managers can no longer do this in the latest LinkedIn release.
LinkedIn added a group send capability for Group Managers and it looks like a great thing at first glance. We have been asking for this for a long, loing time.
Initially, it had everyone jumping up and down for joy when LinkedIn added the Group Send capability (for Group Managers). Look a little deeper and it isn’t so rosy. A Group Manager can only send ONE communication per week and it is only through LinkedIn. Furthermore, Group Managers can no longer see the E-Mail addresses of their members (unless they are direct tier 1 connections of course).
I am teaching a class (Webinar) on April 2 covering LinkedIn Groups and will be sharing parts of what I know here on the blog. It is for people that want to create and/or manage a LinkedIn Group.
So, just how much “Real Estate” do I have to work with on my LinkedIn Profile?
I had a project recently to find out just how much space we have to work with in each field on LinkedIn. It lets you know where the lines are drawn and that can help a lot in making you most visible. We always suggest that you create and maintain your master LinkedIn profile text in MS Word and then cut and past the text into LinkedIn.
So, just how much space does LinkedIn give you in a profile anyway? I did a little testing and here is what I found:
Picture - 85 pixels by 85 pixels (after cropping) using a professional photo Headline/Header - 120 Characters Summary – 2,000 Characters (about 2/3 of a printed page) Specialties – 500 Character Company Name - 90 Characters Job Title – 100 Characters Job Description – 1,000 Characters Education Activities and Societies – 500 Characters Education Additional Notes – 1,000 Characters Custom Web site URL Tag (Other) – 30 Characters Interests – 1,000 Characters Groups and Associations – 1,000 Characters Honors and Awards – 1,000 Characters Contact Settings – Lots, but no way to effectively tell how many – really
A fully optimized Profile is one of the keys to being found and helps you find new opportunities using LinkedIn. So, we’ve developed the IA LinkedIn® Workshops and Webinars to teach you how to craft an extremely effective LinkedIn profile, how to begin building your network, how to avoid the numerous LinkedIn pitfalls, how to search for people and resources and how to BEHAVE on LinkedIn so you don’t get in trouble.
The LinkedIn profile is simple right? Just copy and paste a resume and maybe a cover letter in and there you have it. Doing it RIGHT, without mistakes and making sure you don’t step in any quicksand, is not. Here is something to get you going and something to keep you out of trouble.
Profile Do’s
Treat your LinkedIn profile like a Web site. Make sure it is well-formatted, clean, and, most importantly, of interest to others. Ask friends to read it and ask them to be very critical in their assessments. This is not an atta’ boy moment.
Populate your LinkedIn Profile with keywords for your background and your industry and for the industries of your CLIENTS.
With keywords, be sure to include the variants of the words (teach, teacher, taught, teaching), the synonyms of those words (Speaker, Educator) and the variants of THOSE words (Speaking, Education).
Create a LI Profile template using MS Word and have it be your original/master text. It is used to copy/paste the text into your profile. Even minor changes are made in MS Word and copy/pasted into your profile.
Look at using special symbols (│ ▌ ◊ ■ ↔ ♦) to break up your text and ► add emphasis ◄ to key elements.
Profile Don’ts
Don’t use anything in your name field that doesn’t belong as part of your name or LinkedIn users will not be able to find you when searching for you by name – Paul A. (Pablo_paul@yahoo.com), PABLO A. vs. Pablo Paul. This is also a violation of the LinkedIn End User License Agreement and you don’t want to be upsetting LinkedIn.
Don’t put anything in the picture area but a headshot picture of yourself. No group pictures, no kids, no spouse, no logo. A professional photo is not required, just a simple headshot picture from any standard digital camera. LinkedIn will help you crop it to the required 85×85 pixels.
Don’t use the defaults for web sites – My Company, My Web site, etc. Put a custom label in place of this text by selecting the “Other” option from the same pull down menu used to select My Company, My Web site, etc. It pops up a new field for you to put in a custom label. It is OK to point to specific sub-pages on a Web site.
Don’t just include recent jobs as you may be tempted to do. Put in all of your work history back to college days. This gives you more inroads to create more relationships with others.
Don’t use paragraphs larger than 5 lines as they are show in the View Profile option. Break up paragraphs with 6 or more lines into multiple paragraphs.
Posted by Mike O'Neil 
Posted by Mike O'Neil 
Posted by Lori Ruff 
