6 Reasons to Go Public with Your LinkedIn Profile–Part 1
LinkedIn Gives You the Option to Hide, but Why Would You?
6 Reasons to Go Public with Your LinkedIn Profile–Part 1
LinkedIn is, essentially, a networking tool that is designed to create relationships online that you can translate into offline connections. A private profile prevents people from getting to know you. Read on for three good reasons to turn make your profile public on LinkedIn. The first three privacy features you need to manage in your LinkedIn profile all relate to what people see about your profile and activity themselves. Check back tomorrow to learn the remaining three, which relate to factors more external to your profile but equally about your LinkedIn presence.
Primarily, your LinkedIn profile functions as your calling card to the world, particularly if you are an executive job seeker who needs to build connections now for a job search down the road. Your future connections will want to know that you are a real person operating in a virtual medium and that your profile, too, is authentic. You can create this sense of confidence in your profile viewers through turning off your privacy settings and enabling your visitors to read more about you.
1. “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts”
With this option, you allow your connections to see when you change your profile, recommend someone, or follow companies. Although you might want to turn this function off temporarily if you’re making wholesale changes to your profile, you should keep this option on. Your network wants to know whom you respect, what companies you like, and when you increase the value of your own profile with new information.
2. “Select who can see your activity feed”
Although you can tighten down your activity feed to the point where only you can see what you have posted or how you have participated, you need to set this one to “Everyone.” The point of LinkedIn is to engage with the activity of others, so your network cannot engage with you if you do not let them know what you are thinking and doing.
3. “Change your profile photo & visibility”
First, always, always include a recent, professional photo of yourself. This one addition to your profile can increase your profile views significantly, as it becomes a measure of your transparency and authenticity. Second, the rules that prevent you from including a photo on your executive resume do not apply to social media, in which you are expected to demonstrate your consistency of presentation across various social media outlets. In other words, the value of including a photo and enabling everyone on the social media platform to see it far outweigh the old-school reasons for never showing a photo.
LinkedIn Gives You the Option to Hide, but Why Would You?
6 Reasons to Go Public with Your LinkedIn Profile–Part 2 Publishing Tomorrow!
Part 2 now published–check back here to learn how to manage the LinkedIn profile settings that enable your visitors to learn more about the professional community within which you work.
