There was a day where networking, job seeking, was done face to face with a printed version of your resume or a business card. You of course can still have these but lets face it, it is much easier to join the growing family of professionals on LinkedIn.

Registering for an account if you don’t already have one really just takes a few minutes. It’s building your profile that will take a little more time as you need to put some thought into it. Set yourself some time and here are some ideas to get you through it, wither you are starting fresh from scratch or if you want to improve on what you already have.

Think of your profile on LinkedIn as the 1st impression you give a person that doesn’t know you in the professional realm. It should be the elevator pitch of who you are.

So lets get started:

– Cover all the basics, things such as Education, Work experience/history, skills

– Use targeted keywords while you describe your experience and skills, try to avoid buzz words that your company uses and that only employees at that company will understand.

– Add a welcoming photo. If you have a professional business taken photo use it, if not, find a good picture of yourself. Don’t cut off people from the pic, so you can still see that ghost arm around you, don’t use a family pic, a seasonal pic with a christmas tree behind it. You want to look professional as LinkedIn is not Facebook.

– Have an interesting headline as that’s what shows up 1st in a search. Make it meaningful, it’s the few seconds that you can grab someone’s attention.

– Adding Skills: What would you like others to notice you are subject matter expert in? things you want people to be seeking you out for at your own company, for customers, for peers in the industry, etc. Don’t be humble, list what you are an expert in.

– Make your profile work hard for you! Make sure you keep it up to date, professional, show your expertise, seek recommendations from your managers/peers to highlight your traits and accomplishments.

Once you are done with this step, when prospects come across your profile they will see who you are and how you can help! If you are looking for a job, you gave head hunters and HR ammunition to pick you, etc

Next step -> Building your network

– 1st connect with people you know, clients, coworkers, business partners, vendors, colleagues, people you studied with, etc.

tip: You can connect your twitter, Facebook, gmail, outlook, etc to LinkedIn for ease to find the contacts you already know that are on LinkedIn

– Never miss a chance to connect. Connections make new connections. Your 1st level contacts will open a route to 2nd and 3rd level connections.

– If you meet someone new online/offline follow-up quickly with an invite to connect with them on LinkedIn.

Tip: make sure you personalize the invitation. e.g. “Paul it was so nice to meet you at the Connectivity Briefing/session/meeting… I would like to add you to my connections so we can further continue our conversation on XYZ”

It takes time to build your profile and get connected, but on the long run you will see that this will help you get connected to prospect clients, to peers in your industry that you can learn from, networking events, job searches if you are looking for that next step, recommendations from others in the field, etc. The next topic will be on LinkedIn for Prospecting purposes.