No. But It Is Healthy for Your LinkedIn Home Page
If you’ve been following my blog posts for the past few weeks, you should have a nicely optimized Linked In Profile by now:
- You understand the power of Linked In. To maximize your visibility and sale-ability, you looked objectively at what to include and what NOT to include in your profile. You wrote a good title description with no silly emoticons, and you created a url that works overtime for you.
- Your profile is now supercharged with keywords and advantageous connections to maximize your SEO and find-ability by people who are looking for someone just like you.
- You fully accept that LinkedIn no es Facebook. You know who – and who not – to connect with, and to personalize your invitations rather than using LinkedIn’s prefab invite wording.
- You’ve set your privacy settings wisely, protecting yourself from prying competitors and 3rd party data miners, and you’ve set up a Twitter account for professional tweeting only.
So now you think you’re pretty much all set.
But I laugh.
Not at you, of course. I laugh with you, because LinkedIn just keeps on giving – even though you haven’t even signed up for any premium services yet – and you just may never!
Today we’re going to button down your Home Page.
Your Home Page is your “start” page on LinkedIn, same as your home page on Yahoo, Google, MSN, or even Facebook.
It’s got a space for you to post status updates at the top. As you scroll down, you’ll see your news feed, which includes messages posted to you or that you’ve been tagged in, LinkedIn Today news, endorsements your connections have received, connection recommendations, job postings you might be interested in, network growing suggestions, and other updates.
Your Home page is also where you’ll see who’s viewed your profile, who’s in your LinkedIn network, plus ads, jobs, groups, companies you may like or want to follow, and one-click ways to grow your network.
Note that when you post something here on your LinkedIn Home page, you can choose one of three sharing options: Share with LinkedIn, Share with LinkedIn and Twitter, or Share with Your Connections.
You can also tag your connections within each post simply by starting to type a name; a list of connection options matching what you’ve typed will magically appear.
A powerful sidebar
Now check out your Home Page sidebar, over there on the right side of your screen. Right now it’s got ads and suggestions for you, but you can use this real estate very profitably with LinkedIn’s new rich media feature which allows you to display samples of your work.
For instance, you can set up a real-time connection display of your WordPress blog. Simply log in to your WordPress account, go to Sharing in your Settings, click the LinkedIn icon and you’re in. You can also display your SlideShare Powerpoint presentations and:
My Travel by TripIt
Projects and Teamspaces by Manymoon
Commercial Real Estate by Rofo
FT Press Delivers by FT Press
Legal Updates by JD Supra
Portfolio Display by Behance
Lawyer Ratings by LexisNexis
Box Files by Box
Amazon Reading List by Amazon
plus Blog Link, Events, or Polls by LinkedIn
Blogging regularly and displaying your current work keeps your LinkedIn presence fresh and dynamic and lets people know that you’re interactive, available and energetic – all very good things when you’re looking to increase sales or your income.
