I am excited to unveil my new format for "Wayne's LinkedIn Tips & Helps."

Each week I will be presenting two separate ideas that have specific focus and purpose for the reader. The first section (Beginner Tip) will be designed more for the beginner user but will also be a good review for those of you who are more experienced.  It will have more of a "how to" feel to it and should be very quickly executable.  

The second section (Advanced Strategy Help) will be an idea to help increase your strategic effectiveness on LinkedIn.  The focus here will be around features, techniques, and thoughts that should cause you to think about not just "doing" LinkedIn but being more purposeful in what you are doing.

So let's get to it.

Beginner Tip

Your headline (the 120 characters that show up just below your name) is one of the most important parts of your profile for the following reasons: 

• The words in the headline are given extra search weighting in the LinkedIn search formula.  A good headline will get you higher on the list of search results.

• The headline travels with you when your name is shown in most areas of LinkedIn, such as updates, group discussions, People You May Know, search results, etc.

• It is your ability to have a sound bite of what you and your business are all about, and it should encourage people to click through to your full profile. 

Now that you understand the importance of your headline, I want to propose to you that there are two different schools of thought from the world's smartest guys and gals on LinkedIn.  Here is how my headline could look using the two different techniques being debated.

Traditional Narrative Style:  "President - M&M Office Interiors (where we have served the office furniture market for over 50 yrs) and LinkedIn Trainer"

Keyword-Filled Pipe-Key Style:  "Haworth Office Furniture Dealership President | LinkedIn Trainer, Speaker, Consultant & Author | Social Media Consultant"

Based on the three points I have outlined above, you can see why both of these have differing benefits.  The choice boils down to the tradeoff between readability and the number of keywords you feel you need to include in your headline.

If you are waiting for me to give my opinion, which by now you know I am never short on opinions, I have news for you.  This happens to be one of those times I am going to leave the choice up to you.  Got a coin?

Advanced Strategy Help

No matter what your current strategies are for using LinkedIn, we all want to find more companies that are similar to the companies we are already having success with or are targeting.  In this help, I will show you how to zero in on new targets you may not have thought of by bringing together three LinkedIn features.

• Write down the name of the companies you have had success with in the past or are currently targeting.

• Take this list of companies and enter those company names, one at a time, in the Companies section of LinkedIn.  When you are on the company's profile, on the right-hand toolbar select "Check out insightful statistics about (named company) employees."  When you land on the Statistics screen, scroll down to "People who looked at (named company) also viewed," and you will see the logos of other companies that are similar to the one you are viewing.  Add the names of any new companies to your list. 

• Before you leave that company's profile page, go to the top left and click the blue box titled Follow Company.

• Repeat this step for all companies on your list.

• Set yourself a reminder in your calendar to repeat these steps every quarter.