Tip 1: Keywords are king

Take some time to think of the keywords that really make sense in describing your business, what it does or offer as this will make a radical difference in where you appear in the search results, you have to carefully select these words in terms of thinking what people will search for and your unique services or offerings.

These keywords now need to be inserted into your headline, and form a sensible statement from those keywords that describe your business offerings/services and in doing this you will then appeal to the LinkedIn search engine but also people who find your profile online by looking for those keywords.

If you are running your own business and have had previous careers, try and get your keywords into your current and previous job positions if they are relevant as this will then demonstrate your expertise.

When writing your summary statement, included your keywords in this as well your headline you crafted will then expand into a summary this gives you the opportunity to expand out what you offer as services or products.

Under the summary, in the Specialties category, write down your specialties but do not forget to include your keywords. Additionally, you should enter more specialties containing the same keywords. For example, if I want to optimise my profile for “Social Media” I can enter Social Media Training, Social Media Speaker, Social Media Consultant, Social Media Marketer and so on.

Tip 2: Recommendations

3rd party advocacy is the best marketing tool available, if you can get customers to state what a great service you have delivered them or produced for them, get them whilst you can, now not later. Attempt to gain a mix from customers, suppliers and also unhappy customers that you have resolved issues for as well.

Tip 3: Promote yourself

Did you know that LinkedIn allows you to add third party apps? So add the slideshare application and upload a presentation that describes in more detail your business or offering, and include the keywords in there as well.

Tip 4: Promote your website

Profile > Edit Profile > Websites > Edit. In a standard profile, you can set three websites in that primary box at the top of your profile – and by default, each is described as “My Website”. Make it more personal. If you choose other when editing this area you can actually put a description in of your website.

Tip 5: Privacy settings

Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile views. This affects what people see after you go visit their profile and thus really you want them to know you have been to look at their profile to gain an interest back to your own business profile.

Also in terms of LinkedIn being a site for farming potential business leads, this will be discussed in the next article.

About: The man in the shirt
The man in the shirt is an independent consultancy setup by Stewart Townsend focused on helping individuals and organisations gain a better understanding of new socially focused technologies. We do this through consultancy, workshops and events across industries as diverse as education, new media and technology.
Stewart Townsend has developed new media strategies to drive business and marketing messages for Sun Microsystems corporation, Oracle Corporation and advised small business such as BookingBug, 3rd Degree and Mobileoninc.
Web site : http://www.stewarttownsend.com
Twitter : @stewarttownsend