Coaching For Success
Posts tagged linkedIn
How To Make Your LinkedIn Profile Better
Aug 18th
Today using Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you will find that there are million ways to expand your business network, however you may want a more focused business network so as to develop long term professional relationships that can enhance your business growth. LinkedIn was specifically designed for business people to network together and thus is a very useful platform to network with other members of your niche area.
Because it is a business oriented social networking website its primary purpose is to integrate small business networks together. This post looks at a few effective methods to improve your business profile so that you can take full advantage of this very effective social network and market to potential customers as well as enhance your business’ growth potential and if looking for a job how LinkedIn can help get you head hunted.
Be Original
The descriptions you provide in your profile must sound like your own voice. You can freely use words like ‘I’ and express your personal opinions and feelings in a way that markets your best points naturally.This entails thinking of your profile as a stand up conversation with someone you have just met and them asking you ‘tell me about yourself’.
Try to use job descriptive terms or specific words when adding your qualifications. Use ‘doing words’ like dynamic, self starter etc anything that will grab attention but still be believable and truly describe your best professional assets. It may even be useful to use a management glossary here but remember keep it natural in the way you would speak with someone face-to-face.
Your words must reflect your basic abilities like ‘leadership’ and ‘team-work’. At the same time, avoid using clichés and do not repeat the information.
Promote Yourself As The Brand
The idea of you using LinkedIn is to be out there to market yourself, so think in terms of building a brand for yourself called ‘Brand Me’. You can also write a ‘personal tagline’ under your name, which is great as this tagline follows your name in search engine hits. The tagline must be as catchy and as crisp possible. A well written tagline shows your wit and creates a big impression with first time viewers.
Some people just add their designation as tagline which may work if the designation is strongly recognised. The summary section should be filled in with the intent of creating an interest among viewers of your profile. The summary must be meaningful and technical words related to your industry can be used.
You need to do some research to find words describing your skill sets. Recruiters use them as filtering criteria. These types of words can be easily found by doing research on search engines. I do not really understand why but people seem to ignore tips in the same way they do not like reading help files, taking directions or reading instructions. These tips are there to help you get the best from your profile so use them, they appear on the right side of your profile. Do not forget to add a profile photograph to give that finishing touch.
Click on Edit Profile in LinkedIn
Explaining Your Work Experience
Your past work experience always counts on your resume, so it is always advisable to describe each job you have done fairly comprehensively, this lends weight to people seeing you are experienced in your field and quite possibly an expert. Do fill in your proper designation and job responsibilities along with the time lines for these. If there are any gaps in between the employments, do not try to cover them up instead give a brief explanation i.e. took a gap year travelling.
Definitely highlight any achievements while working this is a great place to get recommendations. LinkedIn also provides a feature where you can get ‘Recommendation’ from your colleagues and seniors. The recommendations can prove your credibility and earn you respect in your business networks.
Adding Additional Interests
The section ‘Additional information’ allows you to add your interests, hobbies and future plans. If you have constructive hobbies, then they can be mentioned in such a way that they correlate with your career choices. You can add websites that showcase your abilities or passions. If you write a blog or have any pieces you have written for work that do not break any codes then you can also post its link here. If you’re an award winner recognized by peers, customers or employers, then add yourself some prestige without bragging by listing them here.
Then Choose the Information You Wish To Edit
Promote Your Profile Online
There are lot of forums on various social networks related to your business interests where you can post your comments. This way you can engage other people into a conversation and exchange useful thoughts and at the same time establish your identity. People will be compelled to visit your profile if they like your comments. You can also list up to three websites in the ‘blue box’ on your Profile.
It is better to put the links to web pages or blogs created by you. This is one way of getting backlinks and increasing search engine page rankings. Lastly and very importantly is to find people in your business circles on LinkedIn and add them to your network.
It is a known fact that many top recruiters now filter resumes through LinkedIn profiles and many people have been headhunted in this way. This new way of business networking through LinkedIn is indeed beneficial for business and it is therefore important to make full use of it.
Google Updates Algorithm AGAIN!
Jun 7th
Google Algorithm Changes Again
Everyone wants top rankings for their website and most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. We all know that if your website is not in the top of a search engine that you will miss out on prospective clients, however as you also know getting these top ranks are not easy. We almost all know in some form what SEO (search Engine Optimisation) is, even if we have not got a clue how to do it. But whether we have done it ourselves or got someone to do it for us you will know that a one of hit will not fit the bill especially when search engines make changes make changes to their algorithms (this is the special formula that SE’s used to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]). Sometimes these tweaks are minor while other times they are huge and the impact is far reaching for all onliners.
Google has made an algorithmic change, which, looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. Apparently this is not a flyby night minor change either as Google have stated it is a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which suggests that sites getting less traffic will still be indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic. Google have said they will not be rolling it back.
So where does this leave your average small to medium sized business owner? Well if you have an ecommerce site using a structure that has longtail keywords for pages less viewed, you need to check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases), also check out your linking practices ensure all links have been obtained using whitehat techniques. Another very important thing to do to help yourself now is check your link strategy out and ensure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.
Make sure all pages have unique good quality information (if you do ecommerce, this is definitely for you do not just use the manufacturers materials) and if you do not use them currently or have not used your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a while now is the time as this will help you to build links to internal pages and get traffic throughput to them. Most savvy Business owners realise they can not rely purely on Google or any search engine for that matter for traffic and that social media sites can help boost their business’ exposure. Finally do not go mad do not change everything in the hopes of fixing something that may not even affect you, use your stats and above all common sense.
This is not the end of Long Tail Keywords however good optimisation is really important to your continued online success now, forget how to change, manipulate or find a way around the algorithm changes instead work with it and fix your SEO efforts accordingly by making consistent updates to your content, posting high quality articles that have been optimised on to a well designed site that has also be optimised is the winning game plan here. This does not mean that your rank will be the same indefinitely it does mean that you do work a bit harder and a bit differently to consistently keep you business in front of potential customers.
Getting into Social Networking without dropping clangers
Oct 6th
Does your 2009 business plan include social networking? If so, do you know how to use social networking to explode your business? Online social networking is the newest weapon to get more customers.
Social networking helps you grow your business fast. Adding tastefully prepared video, good articles and content for your site can be very effective marketing tools you can use to inform people about your business and the services you can provide them.
If you are looking to use Social Networking to get more customers for your business then The Internet Business Coach is here to guide you in right direction. This article, which comes in three parts will hopefully help point you in the right direction.
Ok so you have heard all the fuss, you want to join in but are not really sure the best way to do it, below Dee one of our Internet Business Coaches gives an overview of the main points you need to cover in order to get great coverage for your business.
Hi
Social media is the phenomenon of our age builds faster than any other online process at the moment and is probably the most baffling to many businesses, however you know it must be useful if rock stars and even politicians use it to get coverage and there is no reason you can not use it too providing you follow the rules so that it is for the client and not a total sales pitch. I am a firm believe in if you give something, you get something in return no matter how small.
So how to you do it well there are four main factors that need considering, creation, control, converse and convert. Create something good, control the way this can work for you, converse, converse and then converse some more and finally convert those prospects into paying customers.
To do this you need to first create good content or gets some for free –then publish it – content is always a big issue (what to write, how to write it) – even when you get it right you still can never have enough of it. Basically there are millions of places to publish content but too little good quality content to make your business stand out in a crowd and this is what you need to do.
Then to be seen you need to spend time to create profiles in all the major social network sites and any smaller ones that are specific to your unique business offering. The major social networks tend to be Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn – millions of people visit these sites each day and as such make them a great forum to show off your business in. All you need to do to be in with a chance of promoting your business is to open an account. However do not do the bull in a china shop approach this will get you in trouble fast and possibly banned L from the network you have chosen to use.
Instead be more subtle create a blog (see our create a blog tutorial if you do not know how) then think about what knowledge you have in your field and create some really good content for your blog and articles from it to publish free in directories.
I heard a huh… one good piece on your area of expertise can be spun into many smaller articles that can be for submission to article directories (an article directory can help you to have a greater presence and help your SEO, in general the more articles you have is the more traffic you can potentially get to your site). Use these articles to create and post HubPages and Squidoo Lens’.
(A lens is a page made of modules that work on categories i.e. about you (called a squid who) or videos (called a squid vids) – get it… and a HubPage is a rich content webpage (images, text, design etc) you can publish articles on any topic as your own hub).
ok thats it for part one see you soon for part two
