How to strenghten your reputation with effective and strategic Linkedin profile as 1 key priority

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” - Warren Buffet

Linkedin's profile is your reputation, it is your professional face and your ad page.

A profile business card or your profile landing page is a platform that allows you to highlight your professional experiences, knowledge, scale, level of responsibility, evaluation by former clients.

Linkedin's profile is your business card and a professional face. Not less.

By investing time in the strategic improvement of your Linkedin profile page you are also anchoring your reputation.

Why you need an effective Linkedin profile

The answer depends on your goals on the channel. It is important that you are aware of your goals before starting to improve your profile and add any information.

Action without strategy, strategy without action - these two elements are effective when working together and only when a goal has been set.

It's the same with your Linkedin profile.

"A goal on a Linkedin platform is a foundation. A goal is followed by a strategy. A strategy is followed by effective actions. In this way, you approach your goals in the Linkedin channel." - Ieva Drāzniece

Your goals on Linkedin can differ from goals of others, for example:

• You want to show your loyalty to the employer, thus arranging your profile, taking co-responsibility for the company's overall reputation and image.
• Represent your company, brand, thus you want to instill confidence in customers about the knowledge of your company's team of professionals and persuade potential customers to cooperate.
• You are currently in search of job and want to attract the attention of managers, HR function specialists and professionals in the chosen field.

If the goal is clear it's time to create a plan

In order for your profile (and we can call it your advertisement) to be effective, you need an action plan or strategy.

How to measure whether the strategy is effective?

If your profile reaches the audience you want and receives feedback - you are approached, you are written, you are followed, you are invited for an interview - you have implemented an effective advertising campaign. Your profile business card is effective, it meets your goals and provides you with the desired results.

Linkedin profile as busines card and channel presence strategy

A strategy for creating / improving a profile business card is part of your overall presence strategy on Linkedin. This is topic i really enjoy and we can meet for a call to arrange our collaboration to create such for you.

Creating / improving a profile business card is the first step towards your strategy for an effective presence on the Linkedin channel. Here are the other steps that are in line with your goal.

1. You are a loyal employee and representative of the company and you can:

• Engage in the promotion of your business content by sharing it on your profile.
• Apply for help creating content on behalf of your business profile
• engage in comments from potential and existing customers to company records or your records that share company news,
• Basically, you become the mouthpiece of the company, another voice that helps bring the message to the customer.

2. You represent your business, brand and you can:

• create content and develop a content strategy, which I will mention in one of the upcomming artciles. And content planning goes hand in hand with measurements as well. See my article about metrics topic.
• engage in commenting, posting reactions to content created by others.

• make contacts, use the opportunity to communicate with the target audience already in private messages, interest groups.
• if you additionally work from a Company profile, you can create ads to reach a very specific, carefully selected audience provided by Linkedin's advertising capabilities.
• and possibly already in 2021, you as a professional will also have the opportunity to create an advertisement for your service from your private profile. There is no confirmation date for this option yet, but it could greatly change the content of the Linkedin news feed.

3. You are actively looking for a job, or you know that you will look soon for a new job and career development opportunities and you can:

• create content about the field you know, share interesting information that allows your audience (managers and HR function) to understand better all your skills, your vision, language, understanding of the industry, in-depth knowledge, etc aspects.
• get involved in creating comments, posting reactions to content created by others, thus being present at the profiles of professionals or companies that are relevant to you, and letting you to be noticed. The role of comments on the Linkedin channel is important, it is the best advertisement, especially if the comment is of high quality - friendly, professional and engaging. See my recent post on comments role on Linkedin.

• make contacts, use the opportunity to communicate with your target audience in private messages, interest groups, contacting proactively HR function specialists, managers, heads of departments, or even representatives of companies you are interested in and who can recommend contacts of responsible decision makers.

What you need to know about the Linkedin algorithm

Thinking about the Linkedin profile business card, I would like to invite you to understand the essence of the Linkedin channel. It is based on people, channel members as a value, and each of your actions or passivity in the sense of the algorithm increases or decreases your value. The more valuable your profile is to the channel, the more favourable the algorithm is for your activities on the Linkedin channel, especially when you think about how many followers, contacts or level 2 or 3 channel members will receive messages published by you.

Also, the quality of your profile, as one of the elements, determines the friendliness of overall algorithm for you. Here comes the Linkedin SSI index which corelates to your profile content and activity mix.

In this way, the channel will ensure that the profiles that are of high quality, both in terms of the quality of your business card and the content, engagement and support provided to other members of the channel, are more visible to the public.

One of my inspiration leaders on Linkedin related subjects is Richard van der Blom as he has been sharing valuable insights and research data on Linkedin algorythm topic.

Your first strategic step is a Linkedin profile business card

The business card is designed as your home page and includes several segments.

However, in order to protect the channel and ensure that professional professionals apply for it, there are segments in your profile that are validated and involve engagement by other members of the channel.

This is the reason why the Linkedin profile business card has become more valuebale from perspective of HR function and managers than the classic CV. As CV has the opportunity to post information you have made up while on Linkedin profile literally every second section is connected to channel members, their profiles, and it is already a public validation of your experience and professional reputation.

If you see value of Linkedin within your career and life - we share the same feeling.

Top 3 strategic elements of your Linkedin profile

Before looking at your profile in detail - I would like to pay attention to 3 components which are your hook on Linkedin. So pay attention to these. Having solved these 3 you will be noticed throughout the channel and these 3 make people interested to look deeper to your profile page.

• Your name, surname
• Profile picture
• Short description

And here is another example that shows me there is basically no reason for me to want to know more about this person.

So remember, the first 3 and most important elements of your profile business card will drive audience to your profile page to know more about you.

I will describe those 3 elements and all othe profile emenents below. What do you need to include in your profile and why does it matters.

Andy Foote is another Linkedin guru for me always showing the path through Linkedin profile and channel related topics . I have started #LinkedinLatvija hashtag because of Andy's suggestion as well as made many changes on my profile inspiring from his suggestions.

Profile picture

The role of a profile picture is to promote trust, it shows that you are a real person (and do not hide).

• I invite you to choose a headshot that suits you today so that it is not takend 10 years ago
• The presence of headshot shows your care about your profile, your focus on details and it can also be transferred as to translate how carefully you deal with things.
• I recommend using a neutral or corporate background for the picture
• Please do not not use scarves, hats, outerwear, sunglasses.
• Choose a photo where you are neither said or super excited.

Name and surname

Given that Linkedin is an international channel, already used by at least 722 million professionals worldwide, I highly recommend that the name is written in English, meaning without specific alphabetical letters of your languege to make it easier to read.

• Often professionals tend to add caps lock letters, symbols, emojies - this is a matter of taste, how you want to present yourself, how to draw attention to yourself.
• Other professionals use this section to include already professional information, thus, already deliberately using a combination of these three elements as an advertising space adds attention to learn more about person on profile page.

Short description

This is your main message, which includes the field represented and the professional scale. Basically, this is your "elevator speech" - a short description of your contribution, what you stand for and how you can help your partners, your potential employer, members on Linkedin.

• Remember, the very first few words will be included next to your picture and first name, so, strategically, choose to put the most important words first.

• There are two ways to add this description. The first option is to add longer description on desktop as then the number of characters allowed is higher. If you insert a description from your phone, the number of characters is limited.
• This is not a section where your workplace should be mentioned, unless it is the most important accent you want to show others. Because, in essence, your profile page has several blocks to mention the employer name.

Other important and strategic elements of your Linkedin profile page

URL personalized link

Make sure that the link to your profile is correct and includes only the first and last name, not the digits assigned by Linkedin, when the profile was originally created.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/ievadrazniece/

Contacts

Make sure this section contains all the current information, not a long forgotten Twitter profile link, or a previous workplace email.

Banner

This is an additional, free advertising space, whether it is a image of corporate identity of the workplace, or some keywords on a photo or a quote - this is your choice how to tell who you are here on Linkedin.

If you want to create the layout yourself, I higly recommend using free Canva application on both your phone and desktop.

Education

I invite you to link each education with the Linkedin profile to display the logo of organization.

It's important to mention the period of study, choose the type of education and mention the programm you have studied.

Work experience

I invite you to link each work experience with Linkedin profile in order to display the logo company / organisation's logo.

It is important to mention what has been done. In this way recruiter / potential partner can compare you with other professionals in this field, understand is your USP (unique selling point) and evaluate what contribution you have made to the company's business.

There is no need to create a description of the company - it can be done on company's own Linkedin Page.

Longer description "About"

This is one of the most creative sections of your profile, where you can convince profile visitors where the knowledge and experience gained is applied today and what drives you professionally.

• This section can be helpful as an argument why to hire you, entrust the management of a business or why you will be the best business partner, service provider.
• In this section you can also mention your personal nuances, because the human moment makes it more attractive professionally, and who knows, perhaps the unifying element with a potential partner will be the genre of music, sports or books.

Skills and their assessment "Skills and endorsements"

This section can play out for you in two ways - both as a SEO tool to help finding you and a way the channel members can validate your skills.

Choose 3 strategic ones, and in total I recommend choosing all 50.

Recommendations

The way in which channel members can validate you for your past collaboration. This is valuable section that can give some final confirmation for potential client just before calling you for collaboration.

I also invite you to be proactive and support your partners on giving feedback as well.

Featured

This is an opportunity to "pin" the current posts at the top of the profile, including links to interviews, Linkedin articles, youtube videos or various information that gives more insight about you, information you want others to know at first sight.

Certificates, projects, courses, volunteer work, etc.

Important sections that allows to understand better your knowledge, interests, directions in which you have worked, what you have learned. Use these options to highlight your experiences.

Contact for

Choose 3 of the ones offered by Linkedin. Definitely, this is an option to show that you are open to collaboration, mentoring, volunteering etc.

Open to work

There are three ways you can use this feature:

1. The first option is to add an informative green outline to your profile picture with this statement.
2. The second option is to mark the types of projects, the amount of workload in which you are currently interested. You can also mark this section to be visible to all your Linkedin contacts.

1. Least, you can note that only HR specialists see this, so they can offer you a job or collaboration on a project.

Value of being on Linkedin

If you have read this article by this far, I truly appreciate for having this time here while reading this post. It means you are interested in your profile strategy and you want it to work for you.

During my presence on Linkedin which has started not so long ago, only on mid 2018, I really enjoy this platform as I get to know so many great personalities, professionals, I even make friends and true lasting relationships from being here around. So if you see value of Linkedin within your career and life, we share same feeling.

Another bonus for me is creating trustful collaborations and build my brand presence here on Linkedin. The main confirmation of value I can deliver to followers and my network is engagement and some metrics I can use as rational conformation to that.

• Here is printscreen of current status of my Linkedin SSI Index

• Here is printscreen of my dashboard on Shieldapp.ai showing my content metrics:

Strategic audit and recommendations of your profile

If you have any questions about the quality of your profile, you want to review it with me, I will be happy to get involved. I provide such service on a daily basis, perform profile audits and changes. The type of service depends on your resource to create the content yourself or you wish me to re-write your profile for you.

The first thing we can start with is a 15-minute online conversation about your profile - goals, audit, and will send you recommendations by e-mail.

I look forward to hearing from you and creating an effective and strategic Linkedin profile for you together. Write me dm on Linkedin or send a note to my e-mail:

[email protected]

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