As you may remember I have been surveying people after they attend my training class and some interesting things are starting to take place, most important one that I thought I would share now is that the percentage of people who are already in Linkedin prior to attending the class is increasing almost everytime as well as the number of connections they have before I teach them is higher than it was when I started in February. What this tells me is that Linkedin is becoming more and more popular and what that means to you is that-Your competitors are probably using it and are you in the position of a more advanced and consistent user than them or not, a tip on checking that out later:  If you have been following the tips, now in week #8 you should be way ahead of them....Ok on with this weeks helps:

 

 

Have you moved your Professional Headline past things like; President, Account Rep, IT Professional to things like........Owner of Swimming Pool Company, sold and serviced 20,000 perfect installations in southeastern wisconsin....Don't you remember my rant at training about that!  Be interesting and tell something about what you do or what you are not just your boring title.

 

Remember the Professional Headline is very important because it is the first thing that people see when they do a search and what is shown when you answer a question in Answers or in a Discussion.  In many cases the Headline will encourage or discourage people to click your name to read your profile, and I hope you know how powerful that "click" is.

        

 

Did you know you can save searches that have worked for you in the past?  This is as a relatively new function on Linkedin but a super powerful one.

 

You need to experiment with the search function just like all other searches you do on the internet. Be sure you are also trying abbreviations for things like CPA, VP, etc.  Be sure to use the + - and " " to be specific and add(+) or delete(-) certain terms and find some terms that have to stay together (" "). 

 

Remember this is the reason you have been spending all this time adding connections, so make this productive and a consistent part of your business development efforts, check that.

 

 

A few tips on checking out whether your competitiors are ahead of you in there usage on Linkedin or not:

              -Do a search in the "Company" section of Linkedin on your largest competitors

              -In "Advanced Search" use keywords to find out who is out there in your field using Linkedin, look at profiles

              -When looking at profiles of people who come up in this search read the names of "Viewers of this profile also viewed..." on bottom right

              -Look in industry groups to see who in your competition are members and how many connections they have

              -Look at recommendations on the profiles of competitors, maybe some of your customers or influencers of your customers