Are you searching or willing to be found?

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful searching tools on the Internet and if you have a LinkedIn profile you can use it to find and/or to be found.

TO FIND - This is the easiest way to use LinkedIn. If you are looking for a job, for a group regarding your job or for news with a lingo close to your job, LinkedIn should be more suitable than other search engines.

Surely, "your job" can be many things, not just what you do 40 hours (or more) per week. Nevertheless, a simple search may lead you to people, companies, groups and therefore conversations involving you as mush as you like, probably more than you have planned, when you started searching.

TO BE FOUND - This a step forward with LinkedIn and I deem it is a matter of quality and not quantity: your profile can be full of all your achievements, but the first thing to consider if you are willing to be found is whici part of a LinkedIn profile has got the highest indexing on searching engines: headline and summary.

The Internet is full of tips and top5 suggestions about how to write them. But it is up to you what to write.

Subscribers on LinkedIn are many and you must be recognizable for something specific. So start thinking about you and what you do and highlight the difference between you and the rest of the world.

In this connected wolrd, you may have the feeling it is mandatory to do and know everything, leading to a LinkedIn profile suiting everybody. Though this is what your intuition tells you, it is the opposite of what many professionals suggest.

Focusing is not an easy task, but it is a good exercise to start with: it will force you to think about yourself and what you really want.

Doing so, you will:

• clear your ideas about who you are and what you (want to) do,
• be found by all those you expect are looking for somebody like you (your positioning will be correct and your contacts in target experts say).

IN SHORT - Focusing is a good practice even if you do not have a LinkedIn profile. But in case you fancy go social and being found, try to put in words your focus: I deem it is the best start to be found, to share and probably to collaborate with colleagues, customers and suppliers.

Nothing is for good and you may change your profile from time to time, without changing your DNA, so try to identify it from the beginning.

If everybody would do this, the benefit would be great for everone, even when you just use LinkedIn to find.