By Dean DeLisle

As I was coaching some students this week on their profile, I thought it would be worthy to share this with the rest of you. We were working on our profiles for LinkedIn, and in 100% of all instances, I convinced the students to develop a different style profile.

See, in LinkedIn, when you create a profile, the keywords used in your profile get indexed and are used in a search. Like a very relevant website, we often teach students to make sure they work their most relevant keywords into their profile. However, we found that many were still writing the “resume” style profile – a bit dry and ultra professional. Not bad for most, however with over 80,000,000 people on LinkedIn, we have to stand out a bit!
It’s no secret that when setting your profile to “Full Public”, this opens your welcoming profile up to the entire searching population. We are now emphasizing a new best practice to most all of our professionals, that when they create their profiles, do not just include the keywords, but speak to the visitor. That’s right, welcome them to your page, tell them what your about and what you will do for them.

This is your time to shine; sometimes you only have a few sentences before they click away. It’s the ultimate elevator pitch!

Think of this like your official website for the next 20 appointments. What would you say if you could talk to them? Then say exactly that and invite them to connect with you so that you can help them in their business.

Remember, they most likely found you though a search, meaning they were actively looking for someone like you or by connecting to you from a related connection in your network – a referral. If they found you, why wait – let your page start talking to them immediately!

So with that in mind, go back and read your profile. Are you effectively speaking to your visitor and will they be inclined to take the next step and connect to you – or will they move on?

Log in and fix your profile today!