Whether you are a customer facing employee, CEO, high ranking member of staff or candidate looking for job it is important that you have a good personal online reputation.
LinkedIn is a fantastic business tool for both professionals searching for information on a individual or for building your own visibility and online reputation. There are many ways to enhance your online reputation and LinkedIn is just one of them.
Here are 10 tips on how to use LinkedIn to enhance your own personal online reputation.
1. Consider your LinkedIn profile as a marketing piece. This is where first impression counts, take time to make use of the built in features to give the reader an overview of your experience, passion, interests and goals.
2. Be very clear on your target audience for example simply by pursuing “recruitment managers” will not be specific enough, be specific what type of recruitment managers? HR? Engineering? What type of businesses? Remember to tailor your personal profile to be consistent with this.
3. Do not just put your resume up on LinkedIn, this is lazy marketing and dull. A quick copy and paste will get you nowhere. Fill out each section to match your goals and to attract your target audience.
4. Ask for recommendations, referrals are one sure fire way to gain new business or a new job. Be cheeky! If you know the person providing the recommendation well enough suggest key words, phrases or specific experience for them to reference. Remember this is your own personal advert.
5. Think about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when you are completing your profile, include (but don’t force) key words and phrases that will increase your likelihood of being found when a potential client or recruitment manager searches for you.
6. Connect with people. LinkedIn is all about connecting with other business professionals. Don’t do the mass spam approach that many recruitment staff do and just add everyone they come across while searching, this will only harm your reputation, instead add people you have had contact with perhaps after having a meeting or telephone call with them. Having only a few connections might lead someone to believe your unliked or not very internet savvy, have to many and you may look desperate and they wont feel valued.
7. When requesting a new connection, remember to personalise the invitation. Explain how you know them and what you can offer them or simply by saying I’d love to stay in touch. This approach will lead to them becoming more open and instead of being just another connection you will have a much higher chance of developing an business relationship.
8. Don’t accept every invitation to connect. Only connect with people who can add value to you or you can add value to them and you intend to do something about it.
9. Use a decent recent professional photo of you, a holiday snap of you on the beach is unacceptable unless of course maybe you are a holiday rep and even then its not that wise! This is your first impression and says a lot about you and your online reputation.
10. Try to update your profile on a regular basis, this will help keep your name in the minds of your connections as they will be made aware of your updates .
There are many different ways to improve your online reputation, search for your own name in Google or your name + job title or company name, what do you see? The first page of Google should be your best friend and be filled with positive content.