Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn. Neal Schaffer

a year, your brand is worth a potential $2,000,000 over the lifetime of your career! That is a brand that you want to manage carefully to maximize its value!

WindMill WISDOM Your brand is your most valuable personal asset. Create it carefully, and utilize social media sites like LinkedIn to develop, broadcast, and even potentially monetize it.

      So branding is related to social media, social networking, and LinkedIn? Absolutely! There are 40 million other people on LinkedIn. Don’t you want to be thought of as someone unique—someone with a valuable and distinct brand? What happens if you change your headline from “Technology Sales” to “Savvy Technology Sales Executive” or “Global Sales Director” or “Senior Sales Executive” or even “Experienced Sales Executive”? Each one of these headlines will shed a different light upon your skill set; thus, you will be creating a different brand. In some ways, creating your brand is equivalent to carving out your own niche, so you will want to be careful when deciding on one. It is key to utilize LinkedIn to help create your brand; you then support this brand throughout your profile to make a strong impression on anyone who may come across it. Your branding will also make it easier for people to remember you and help you should the need arise.

      No matter what experience you have had, there is bound to be someone similar to you out there. By defining your brand and carving out your niche, you will increase your perceived value. When you communicate with others, you will be viewed as someone who is aware of his or her capabilities, making you harder to forget. While reading this book, particularly the next chapter about creating your LinkedIn Brand, think about your own niche market brand and how you can differentiate yourself throughout your profile. Think of yourself as your own small business.

      When you start tinkering with the “Status Update” text box, you can really affect the way your LinkedIn Brand is perceived. What do you think of people who write “I am currently looking for a job” versus someone writing “Spoke to a class of MBA students on entrepreneurialism today.” People will feel differently towards your brand based on what you write. It really is that simple.

      You will be able to Windmill Network more effectively with others once you develop a strong brand. It will make it easier for others to help you, as they will clearly understand your LinkedIn Objective. They will also remember you more easily. The same goes for others whom you are trying to help as well.

      I highly recommend reading Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand, by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson or Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel to supplement the branding knowledge I present.

      Creating Your LinkedIn Brand

      Once you have established your objective for using LinkedIn, and ideally have started thinking about your own unique and differentiating brand, you can begin to create your User Profile. Doing so will help you define and create your own LinkedIn Brand. At this point I assume you are already on LinkedIn, but if not, please visit www.linkedin.com and join.

      Your profile is the heart of your personal information that will be exposed to other LinkedIn members. Your profile is, in essence, a resume that you are sharing with the entire world. Although the best way to create a resume is to customize it for each position you are seeking, there is only one universal profile on LinkedIn that everyone will be able to see. This is the secret to why LinkedIn’s database and search capabilities are so awesome: the fields for which everyone enters information are standardized.

      For the same reason, it is easier to brand yourself, as everyone else has to complete the same data fields as you. By doing something different you will undoubtedly make yourself more noticeable.

      How much information you put in your profile really depends on your LinkedIn Objective. If you want to Windmill Network or are currently in transition, the more information, the better. If you are happily employed and simply want to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, you may not want to go into as much detail. If you want to be successful in achieving your objective, there is a minimum of work history and schools attended that you will need to enter in order to search for and be found by former acquaintances. To develop and strengthen your own LinkedIn Brand, the more data you enter to back it up, the stronger your brand will be.

      Don’t be shy here. Yes, this will be a publicly accessible resume for you or your product. But if you don’t put enough information on your profile, you simply will not be found in competition with 40 million other profiles. I used to think you should not have too much in your profile, as it is best not to reveal more than you need to. The thought process behind this? The more you reveal, the higher the chance that certain aspects of your profile may not be agreeable for whatever reason. I still feel this way to some extent. But the fact of the matter is, if you don’t have enough information in your profile, you might as well not even be on LinkedIn. If you are not branding yourself enough, you are not taking full advantage of what LinkedIn can offer.

      With that in mind, let’s examine each part that makes up your User Profile for additional advice on how much you really need to include. If you have already filled out an initial profile, simply go to the “Edit My Profile” tab under the “Profile” section to make any adjustments. You can see how others view your profile by selecting “View My Profile” under the “Profile” selection on the left-hand menu bar.

      One last note: LinkedIn conveniently will display your “degree of profile completeness” in terms of a percentage as you add to your profile. If you enter all of the information that I suggest, you should earn a relatively high score. You will probably not reach 100%, as you may be asked to recommend three people. Regardless, do not sweat the details, as you should hit 100% if you heed both my and LinkedIn’s advice.

      “Basic Information”

      This is the information that will first appear with your name. It is the bare minimum necessary to start making connections on LinkedIn.

      Your Name

      LinkedIn is strict when asking you to include your name, and only your name, where they specify. Do not put a company name or add something to the end of your name to advertise something; there are plenty of other places where you can do this. You will see many people who continue to do this, but here’s the scoop: should you need to contact LinkedIn Customer Service for something, they will not help you if you do not show your proper name. You do have the option to show only the first initial of your last name, but unless you have something to hide, you should join the other 99% of members who list their name in its entirety. Finally, if you are a business and plan to put a business name as your name, don’t join LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social network for professionals and people, not companies. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to brand your company within your profile!

      Headline

      You will definitely want to customize your headline to align with your LinkedIn Objective, as this headline appears next to your name within search results. In fact, your Headline should include your key branding statement. It is the area, next to your name, that will get the most visibility, so think carefully as to how you want to brand yourself here. You can add more information about your profession and indicate your objective for being on LinkedIn. Enter searchable keywords to increase your visibility. Remember, you are limited to 120 characters, which makes customizing this section very challenging! LinkedIn does include some examples which should give you some specific ideas. Another idea: Search for someone who may have a similar objective or professional background to see what their headline displays to help you brainstorm ideas.

      Country/Zip Code

      There is no need to deceive anyone here. In order to be correctly found, it is in your best interest to enter your actual country and zip code. Worried about privacy? So is LinkedIn! The actual city name of where you live, based on your zip code, is not displayed—only your closest major metropolitan area appears. So no privacy worries here. The zip code you enter is merely used in searches when trying to locate someone x number of miles away from your address.

      Industry