Ian Brodie’s good advice for Linkedin

I recently discovered Ian Brodie, a professional services consultant for firms like mine. After attending a webinar and receiving his emails, I have to admit I really like his style. Pithy, packed with good advice, and so easy to read.

We all receive plenty of tips and ideas on everything from SEO improvement to social media success to marketing advice. Yet I find I look forward to Ian’s. I thought you might find his thoughts useful, too.

Rather than paraphrasing, I’ll quote him directly. After all, don’t we all agree Linkedin is the best social channel for building a professional reputation and networking?

The basic rules for profiles remain the same: write your profile for your clients, not as a CV. Tell them who you work with and what problems you solve or benefits and value you bring.

Here’s what’s changed:

1. Photos are bigger and more noticeable. So if you don’t have a good headshot, you need one now. In fact if your photo is low resolution it’ll now appear small inside a big white box – pretty ugly.
2. Your website details have moved to the contact section. I found mine had actually disappeared after the move and I had to re-enter them. Check the same hasn’t happened to yours.
3. Recommendations have been “demoted”. In old Linkedin you could get a page or more of recommendations and move them to right under your profile summary to impress potential clients. Now the recommendations only show next to the previous job roles you’ve had and only 2 show per job.
4. Endorsements have become important. I know some people view endorsements as a bit of a joke. Far too easy to click and endorse someone for something you don’t really know they’re any good at. But the truth is they’re an easy to use, highly visual tool and they’re here to stay. Once you get a decent number, move the section up to below your profile summary so that potential clients get to see your high ratings very quickly.
5. Keywords in your profile summary now impact the Linkedin search results – so make sure you’ve got them in there. Not in a spammy way – make sure the summary is human readable. But also make sure it’s got your keywords in.

As I said, just a few changes. but the tweaks to the way recommendations work and the increased visibility of endorsements are important to get a grip on.

Great advice to put into action today

Great, easy to implement tips for the new Linkedin profile format. I’ve worked on my profile, how about you? Do you have any other Linkedin insight or tips to share? Would love to hear them!

You can find Ian here … http://www.ianbrodie.com/welcome