3 Things You Should Do Monthly on LinkedIn!

If you use LinkedIn actively, then you need to be doing a few things monthly in order to maximize your benefits from the platform. These have to do with the maintenance of your contacts and your profile, as well as making sure your profile shows you in the best light. Here are 3 simple monthly tasks to get you started.

Monthly Task #1: You should be exporting a list of your connections monthly. Look, if you’re spending time building up your connections, then you surely don’t want to lose all this work if something should happen like you get your LinkedIn account shut down, even temporarily. Although, if you play by the rules, this shouldn’t happen, why let an asset you’ve spent time building be in jeopardy?

Monthly Task #2: Another extremely important monthly task for you is to download your profile. Now you can do all of this at the same time. This is a handy platform change that LinkedIn has made recently. You especially want to download your profile summary. As you grow and change, your LinkedIn profile headline and profile summary will change as a reflection. You’ll naturally want to emphasize some aspects and deemphasize others. As you modify your headline and profile summary, though, it’s tempting to just delete the old ones. That’s probably a mistake. There’s often information or ways of saying things in an earlier profile summary that you might realize later are better than what you currently have. If the summary is deleted, you’ll have to try to reconstruct it. This is a less than ideal scenario! Backup and “save-as” your profile monthly. You’ll see your progress too.

Monthly Task #3: Finally, the third task I think is very important is to review your endorsements. Visitors to your profile scan your endorsements in order to quickly figure out who you are and what your skills are. Again, that changes over time. If you had a certain quality or skill four years ago and you were endorsed a lot for that skill, should it still weigh heavily in your current profile? Personally, I don’t think so. You might have changed jobs, changed positions in your business or profession, or even changed professions all together! Also, ask close friends, supervisors and business connections to “endorse” you for various skills as well. Many of your contacts, if asked, will do so.

Bottom line is that you want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile reflects and brands who you are right now. That it shows you in the best light for your current purposes. Hope this helps. Do something good today, that your future self will thank you for. Have a great week friends.

~Bob Armstrong