If you heard any of the political news in the last election cycle, you might have come across a news story where the reporter states something like…
“Politician’s LinkedIn Profile says…“, or “According to his/her LinkedIn Profile...”
As a LinkedIn speaker and trainer, I read a lot of articles about LinkedIn profiles.
Today, I came across an article from the Chicago Tribune, from Reuters, where the author used information found on a LinkedIn profile, as part of the article: “Ernst had worked at Deutsche Bank for 9 years, his LinkedIn profile showed.”
Times have changed.
More and more reporters are using LinkedIn as a go to reference point.
That being said, if you’re looking for a job, think of what a Hiring Managers might see.
Or, if you are in Sales and Marketing, what are your Prospects and Buyers going to see?
(You know they’re looking at your LinkedIn profile before your meeting… Right?)
From the Sales and Marketing fields, I’ve seen some pretty bad profiles.
One of my favorites: “The Quota Killer”
Go ahead… look it up “quota killer” in LinkedIn:
I found 136 profiles that included the term “Quota Killer” listed in them…
I’m not too sure a prospect is going to be really excited to see that in your profile before your next sales meeting.
What are they going to find?
Is your profile accurate and up to date?
Is your story compelling, or does it read like a resume?
Does it sell your strengths?
Your LinkedIn Profile is now your online business card… but free to access by almost anyone.
What message does your LinkedIn Profile say about you?
LinkedIn Profile Tips:
Check your profile job titles and timelines.
Are they accurate?
Are they descriptive of your roll?
Or they the official titles pulled from your companies “Human Resources Pay Grade System” (ie. Programmer IV, Systems Engineer II, Account Manager”)
Will someone reading your job title know what you do?
I get a lot of email and spam from my LinkedIn connections.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t seem to do much about spam. I really wish they would. At least that would control the spam that I get from within LinkedIn.
Today, though, I got an email from one of my first degree connections.
It was sent directly to my LinkedIn email address (I maintain a separate email address for all LinkedIn connections, so I know where the email is coming from, and if it’s from LinkedIn Spam, etc.).
This was one of the weirdest emails I have ever seen from a LinkedIn connection.
It was so strange, and just wrong, that I just can’t imagine what was going on in the writers head.
This is a fantastic list of things you can do to Add Value to your professional network, meanwhile increasing the number of visitors to your profile.
If you’re using LinkedIn to build your Personal Brand, get noticed by employers and recruiters, or building your professional network, take note… these simple tips work.
In fact, for the last 6 weeks, I’ve been running a LinkedIn social media marketing campaign, based solely on sharing relevant and excellent quality articles, similar to what Andy was mentioning.
I have a large LinkedIn network (14,000+ 1st degree connections), so I wanted to see if I could “Activate” it through Updates on my personal profile, and in highly targeted LinkedIn Groups.
Here’s what I have been doing, and my results:
Between Thanksgiving and New Years, I started getting more involved with sending updates through my LinkedIn Account.
Then, with the first week of the new year in play, and thousands of people “restarting” their New Years resolutions and “job searches”, I committed to actively updating my LinkedIn profile. At first, I wasn’t doing it very often, only a couple times per week, but as I got into the rhythm, I was able to post more updates on a daily basis.
The results are amazing: LinkedIn Profile Views
In a few short weeks, from less than a couple hours of actual content curation and writing my own blog posts, I was able to increase the number of viewers to my LinkedIn Profile, by over 500%, in less than 6 weeks.
When I started, I was averaging about 4 views per day to my LinkedIn Profile.
The first 4 weeks were pretty slow, as I wasn’t doing it consistently, and I wasn’t really putting much effort into an organized campaign. Additionally, it was between Thanksgiving and New Years, when pretty much nothing happens in the Job Search, Career, and Recruiting markets.
Then, once I got a system in place that allowed me to update several times throughout the day, without continually interrupting my normal daily workflow, things started to change dramatically.
On week 5, between Christmas and New Years, I started sending about 2 updates per day, on average.
I would seek out timely, and quality job search articles, career advice blog posts, LinkedIn How-to advice, Youtube videos, recruiting and human resources news, and general business news.
I also wrote two of my own blog posts, and posted them in multiple LinkedIn Groups, as well as posted links to the blog posts on my profile.
On week 6, I increased the number of daily updates to 3-5 updates per day.
The results show a 500% increase in Profile Views in just 6 weeks, most of which time was spent learning and testing, and not updating.
My profile went from 4.25 avg views per day to about 22 views per day, and climbing.
So, do updates help?
I would say absolutely.
Updates certainly get you attention.
The question is do the updates have a direct impact on your brand and blog and social authority.
I would say yes to each of these questions.
LinkedIn is by far the biggest driver of traffic to the GO Jobs Career Blog, with 77% of traffic coming from LinkedIn. As my topics and articles were of a professional nature, this makes perfect sense.
Facebook and Twitter are only marginal sources of traffic, yet I share the same links. Facebook and Twitter are also have different social cultures to them. At this time, I don’t want to blast all my ‚Äújob search‚Äù and ‚Äúrecruiting‚Äù topics to my friends a family who are connected to me on Facebook, so I didn’t share much of this content on Facebook. I am however starting a Jonathan Duarte facebook page, where I will add this content though.
When I post an article on the Career Blog. I also share the url across multiple social media networks, including;
my personal Twitter account @JonathanDuarte, with 4,500 followers,
While this is just one, isolated, social marketing test, I know that I found a formula to grow an audience with a network of users who are taking action… the key ingredients in a successful social marketing plan.
If this report was helpful to you, please use the buttons below to share it with your friends and fellow professionals, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Today, I receive the following LinkedIn email… from a self-described “Branding Expert”.
Tom Peters described a Personal Brand in his now famous 1997 article published in FastCompany;
‚ÄúThe brand is a promise of the value you’ll receive.‚Äù
‚ÄúHow do you decide whose messages you’re going to read and respond to first — and whose you’re going to send to the trash unread?
The answer: personal branding.”
It’s obvious that this individual has absolutely no idea what “Personal Branding” is, even though she describes herself as a “Branding Expert”. I though I’d help her out, and anyone else reading this blog post.
First, just because I connect with you on LinkedIn does not give you the right to start sending me unsolicited emails. This, by it’s nature, is Spam.
Second, LinkedIn is truly about networking; however, you seemed to have missed that part. Instead you broke just about every possible Networking rule.
#1. Since I don’t know you, the first and only email you should have sent me is an introduction about yourself, and possibly a reason that you might be able to help me. The world does not revolve around you. I, like everyone else on this planet want to know “What’s in it for me?” Clearly, you just want me to subscribe to your email list so you can send me more spam.
#2. Never send bulk or generic emails to people you don’t know. Again, I don’t know you and you sent me an email with the opening “Hi!”… and the email was addressed to at least 11 other people. Come on. Do you really think I’m even interested in opening the email in the first place?
#3. Your newsletter and facebook page may be great, but I’m not going to subscribe or visit until you give me a reason to do so. Quite honestly, even some of the worst spam offenders in the world offer me something… “Free Viagra”, “$1 Million to my bank account, tomorrow”, “Over night get rich quick schemes.” How about a free tip on “Branding”, since you are a “self-proclaimed” expert. You don’t even do that. How sad. That’s simply terrible marketing, too.
#4. Your signature is completely unacceptable in the context of Professional Networking and LinkedIn.
“XOXO” Hugs and kisses? Are you insane? This isn’t Adultfriender.com or Match.com. Leave the Hugs and kisses for your kids or BFF!
I hope this was helpful and slightly enlightening.
When it comes to personal branding and networking, just you the old Golden Rule… “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” Most of the time, you’ll be alright.
And please comment and share this with your network. We all can use a little laugh.
I admit, I used to use LinkedIn a lot. Now, is simply doesn’t work.
I have over 14,180 1st Degree connections, and 12,289 unopened Invitations to Connect in my Inbox.
Why are do I have so many “Invitations to Connect”? Good question.
I’ve been trying to accept them, but slowly just stopped. It was a complete waste of time. 94% of them are spam, bogus, or simply duplicates, or a combination of the above.
Yes, that’s right 94%. So, if you think LinkedIn’s user growth rate is growing, maybe they should have an independent auditor look at the profiles that are being created. They are mostly bogus.
To be clear, I have set all of my profile settings to no longer accept invitations, yet I still had over 298 “blocked” connections in my inbox in just the last 5 days alone.
How can I be getting “Invitations to accept” if I checked the box that says, “Don’t accept invitations?”…
Will someone at LinkedIn explain why their system doesn’t work, and what they are doing about it?
Here is a screen shot of my “Blocked Invitations to Connect”… LinkedIn Spam Invitations from Bogus Profiles
I did some analysis, (ie spent WAY to much time trying to figure out the spam patterns of these bogus profiles… I really should be charging LinkedIn for doing this work.)
Here is what I came up with:
* Total Blocked Invitations to Connect (after I set all my profile settings to no longer accept connections): 288 (in 7 days)
* Duplicate Profiles and Invitations: 253 (88%) of the profiles had a count of 2 or more invitations from a profile with the same name. In several cases, there were 4 or more profiles with the same name.
* Profiles with no company name attached: 95
* Profiles with the title “human resources” and no company name- 64… obviously spam.
* Too many profiles to count manually (without loosing my hair), where the profile picture is either a duplicate professional headshot, or worse, doesn’t even exist.
Over the weeks and months that I have been receiving these bogus connection requests from obvious spammers. I have marked them as “Spam”, but I continue to receive them each and everyday. I can only assume that if I am getting them, lots of other LinkedIn users are getting them as well. In fact there are several LinkedIn Groups that have discussed this same issue, as well a personal blogs, so I know it’s been going on for some time, but LinkedIn hasn’t done anything to stop it, or control it.
Here are some of the things that I have noticed:
1. There are a lot of profiles using the exact same stock image professional headshots. LinkedIn can quickly identify these bogus profile pictures during the upload process. If a user is trying to upload a “known fake profile picture”, based on a combination of file name and file size, then automatically flag the user account as possible spam.
When a profile is marked as possible spam, than the user account is disallowed from sending invites to connect, as well as post and join groups. (Groups are consistently being spammed an Group Administrators have been ticked off for a long time, but LinkedIn hasn’t done anything to fix the Group Posting spam.
2. If a profile does not include a current company name, than disallow the user to post, or send invitations to connect. Why should a user have access to email and spam the rest of the community if they haven’t passed the most basic steps. Only 95 out of the 288 invitations were from profiles that included a company name. (Hint.. no company name… no ability to send emails, invite others to connect, post in grwoups, etc.)
3. I found only 16 of the 288 profiles to be even remotely “Not Spam”. That’s just less than 6% as possible Live, real users. The rest had obvious reasons that suggested they were bogus, no pictures, duplicate names, company names that don’t exist.
If you are seeing this same thing in your LinkedIn profile, please comment below. I want to keep a record of this issue, and see what LinkedIn has to say in response. Additionally, I want to make sure that when I click “Spam”, something does actually happen.
I just finished reading 
