The Two Key Reasons You Need an Optimized LinkedIn Profile
The Two Key Reasons You Need an Optimized LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is the world’s largest free address book. If you are not on LinkedIn, you simply do not exist to recruiters and hiring executives, not to mention networking contacts that you need to maintain throughout your executive career lifecycle. Read on to learn why maintaining an updated, optimized LinkedIn profile is essential to your executive career lifecycle success.
Reason #1: LinkedIn Is Your Personal Page in the World’s Largest Address Book
In all of social media, no single space has the professional clout of LinkedIn. Certainly, you might have a Facebook page, Twitter account, or even a Pinterest page. However, if you are not on LinkedIn in a meaningful way, you simply do not exist, professionally speaking. In fact, you diminish your credibility as an executive if you are not willing to create and maintain a LinkedIn profile that demonstrates experience and engagement in this social media network.
Reason #2: Recruiters and Hiring Executives Are Looking for an Executive like You
Studies have demonstrated that upwards of 80% of recruiters and hiring leaders use social media to research their prospective hires. Most often, LinkedIn profiles appear in Google searches above any other content about an individual.
However, unlike most of the Google results, you have 100% control over what you put into your LinkedIn profile. In other words, you control your message and brand. If you are not taking advantage of the opportunity to dictate what the world learns about you in your LinkedIn profile, you are missing a huge opportunity to manage the conversation.
How to Quickly Add Content to Your LinkedIn Profile and Optimize it for Searchability and Content
Because LinkedIn is free and simple to use, there is no excuse for every executive not to have a robust LinkedIn profile. At a minimum, you need to include every title you have held for the last 10 to 20 years, all listed separately, even if some represented promotions within one company.
A more powerful strategy is to copy your resume into your LinkedIn profile, which will populate all of these positions. I do not recommend that you do this if you have more time to put to the project, but it is an easy way to add valuable content to your LinkedIn profile.
A yet even more powerful strategy is to think about the top five keyword phrases on which you want to be found, or for which you want to be known. Then recraft your headline, your summary, and your career history to reflect this brand.
Additional key tip: If you do not have a professional photograph in your profile, add one right now. Research has demonstrated that profiles with recent, credible photos earn more profile views. Also, unlike your executive resume, there is an expectation that you will have a photo in your LinkedIn profile.
Outcomes for Your LinkedIn Presence
The result of your effort to optimize your LinkedIn presence for both searchability and for networking can be profound. On the one hand, you are controlling the message that the world learns about you even via a casual review of your online presence. On the other hand, you are more likely to have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, because you will appear more close to the top of the LinkedIn search results.
If you do not know how to transition from your resume to your LinkedIn profile, an expert executive resume writer can help. Call Five Strengths.
Image courtesy of Stock.xchng / ambrozio.
