Just a Few More LinkedIn Best Practices

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Because of the popularity of Just a Few LinkedIn Best Practices (which if you missed it, can be found here), it seemed like a few more are in order.

Thanks in part to the changes recently introduced on LinkedIn, some of the best practices I learned have evolved, while in other cases, new functionality has forced a different understanding. But here is what I expect will be my last blog of the year: Just a Few (More) LinkedIn Best Practices.

Profile

In the Experience section of your profile, where your current and past positions are listed, please make sure that you are seeing a superscript square after the organization’s name. If not, do a Company search for the organization and edit the name in your profile to match the Company Profile you find. The odds are good that due to merger & acquisition activity or simple re-branding the name may have changed since you first walked through their doors. So long as the company’s name is a match for how it appears in the Company Profile.

This is a good thing to do for 2 reasons:

1. Although this is uncommon, it’s possible that there are multiple organizations with very similar names. In fact, questions and confusion stemming from this appear every week on LinkedIn. Make sure you are not inadvertently representing yourself as a (former) employee of an organization for whom you have never worked.

1. Listing the organization’s name correctly, in a manner consistent with current branding practices, creates a more professional impression.

Status

I know, I discussed this last time, but I realized there was more that needed to be said here.

When you log into LinkedIn, there’s a slender, rectangular box with the words “Share an update”. In Facebook fashion, you can create an update of up to 140 characters. When you do this, the people in your network receive an update in their LinkedIn “update stream”.

Don’t know what to say? What about some project you recently completed, or a convention from which you’ve just returned? Maybe you just started taking classes for a new certification or license.

Do yourself a favor and update this from time to time. By so doing, you are providing the clearest and most unambiguous indication that you’re maintaining a presence on LinkedIn. I recommend updating no more than once every day, maybe once every other day. This is directly related to the next point…

Status Updates/Twitter

If you’re not on Twitter, you may have recognized that 140 character restriction I mentioned two paragraphs earlier. And if you are, you very likely already knew this.

The temptation exists to integrate your Twitter and LinkedIn status updates. Fight the urge. Fight it very, very hard. Because for the people in your network, filling their LinkedIn “update stream” with your tweets, retweets and the like is a surefire, first-class, all-expense paid ticket to having all of your LinkedIn updates hidden by people in your network—even the really good stuff that’s going on with you.

I’m far from a Twitter hater: I’m on Twitter. I like it a great deal, in fact. But the expected update frequency is very different. On LinkedIn, it’s once/day at the outside. If I’m on Twitter, reeling off literally dozens of tweets (OK, RTs) is normal for me. But I will never push all my tweets to LinkedIn, specifically because I know what that looks like for those not on Twitter.

The truth is that the people who dislike Twitter really dislike it. And I am willing to bet there’s at least a few in your own network.

Heck, on LinkedIn, that includes me, too.

I Found Myself, I’m Right Here

We’ve all heard of the practice of searching (or more specifically, Googling) ourselves, right? Try logging out of LinkedIn[i] and doing a search on your name. If you aren’t the first result, it might be worth asking why not. Having a 100% complete profile will certainly get you higher in the results.

Another, often under-recognized reason to do this is to discover instances in which you might have accidentally created a duplicate profile. This can happen very easily by accident if you accept an invitation to connect that was sent to an e-mail address you haven’t included in your profile.

You can help avoid that situation by adding any other e-mail addresses you have used in the past or are using now. This is done by going to the Settings page (see the endnote re: finding the Settings page nowadays). From the Settings page, select Personal Information|Email Addresses.

It’s important to note that so long as you are not changing your primary e-mail address, it doesn’t matter if you no longer have access to the secondary e-mail address you add: LinkedIn will just create a cross-reference between you’re the one (or more) secondary address(es) in question to the primary address.

Summary

I am sure there are other best practices re: LinkedIn that I neglected to mention either in the last blog entry or in this one. So feel free to tell me what I’ve missed! I removed an entire paragraph because I’m running pretty long here so I can definitely think of one off the top of my head.

In fact, I double-dog dare you.

But whether you can or can’t, a very happy holiday season to you: enjoy the snow in the background!

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[i] Perhaps surprising, I do know how to do this. However, due to recent unannounced changes in the user interface, the method isn’t very intuitive any longer. You can do this by hovering your cursor over your name in the upper right corner where it appears on any LinkedIn screen. This will produce a menu with two options: Settings and Sign Out.