Using the relevant keywords that your market may search with is important when completing the various sections on your profile. Using the right keywords lets new contacts find you easily.

Some top tips for optimisation

Your public URL edit this to show your name or business (rather than a number) then when people search the main search engines your LinkedIn profile will show in the results.

Website listings in this section of your profile you can list up to 3 URLs. Choose ‘other’ option when setting up these links. Use descriptive keywords and relevant terms to result in more opportunities for higher ranking in the search engines.

Twitter – You are allowed more than one twitter account so provide links to them here giving people other ways to connect with you.

Visibility – ensure your complete LinkedIn profile is publicly visible to everyone. You need other professionals to be able to contact you at anytime, if you are invisible it will be very difficult to build your network.

LinkedIn Applications

To build an influential and vibrant LinkedIn profile there are many applications available to help. Have a look around and choose the appliccations that are best suited to you and your brand.

Slideshare

This app allows you to upload presentations and visually show your expertise. Video and audio can also be embedded into a presentation which can be an effective way to make your profile stickier.

Amazon – Reading list

This is an opportunity to review and show your latest reads, sharing your passions and interests with people. Similarly, when you are searching for connections and introductions on LinkedIn you can gain insight into others passions and interests, if they too have this app installed.

Travel and Events

Allows you to share with your connections where you are travelling and what events you are attending and can lead to opportunities to connect face-to-face with other LinkedIn members.

Wordpress or Blog Link

These applications allow you to pull blog posts into your profile. When you have taken time to create a blog, this is a good way to share your content.

Polls

The polls application allows you to conduct research either within your own network, or to a targeted audience of professional people. Polls can help you understand your audience, but do ensure your survey is easy to understand, and questions are interesting so you have a good response rate.

With 135 million users and a target audience of business professionals on LinkedIn, if you haven’t a fully functioning profile you are missing out on some incredible opportunities. Over the next few weeks we will cover settting up your profile to obtain the best from your LinkedIn presence for you and your business.

LinkedIn Profile

Your profile needs to be completed fully – it is the foundation on which you will begin to build your influence.
A profile will showcase your talents,experience,background, interests, expertise and passions. Additionally you will appear competent in the use of the LinkedIn Network.

A fully completed a profile may lead to new networking/business oppportunities. Without it people do not know enough about you and you cannot move on to the next phase, to grow your influence and build your business.

Professional Image – First impressions count – it is essential to upload an image that will atttract connections.
This is your best opportunity to make a great first impression, and it is essential to attracting connections.

Headline – 120 characters at the top of your profile are there to describe what you do. Use brief but descriptive keywords to create a compelling headline, so professionals in your sphere can find you.

Position – complete your current position and at least two more previous positions that you have held

Summary section – Using the third person, this section lets you expand your description of who you are and how you help people.

Recommendations – for LinkedIn to class your profile as completed you will need at least three recommendations.
Give before you receive. If you first give a recommendation then you may ask for one.
This can then be displayed on your profile

Specialities section – use customer-focused keywords in this section, then when people are searching you will show in the results. To find these keywords, consider what words and phrases people in your target market might use to find someone with your background, experience and service you offer.

Interests & Group Associations - in these sections each of the terms will be hyper-linked, thus taking you to users with the same interests in the network.

It’s still a good idea to plan your strategy and decide which type of page best suits your needs. Facebook profile pages are intended for people, pages for businesses and groups for musicians primarily.

Top 7 apps for your Facebook business page

Poll This is the premier polling application on Facebook. Create polls for your pages and personal profile pages. Very simple and easy to use. Check it out!

Networked Blogs does what it says on the label. Promote your blog on Facebook, network with like-minded bloggers.

Twitter feed for pages simply supply your user name and password and your Twitter account links to your Facebook page.

Zoho online office store documents on line (Dropbox and Google Docs).

Facebook video supports higher quality video and audio than most video sharing sites.

RSS Graffiti centrally manage all RSS/Atom feeds from all your Facebook profiles and all your  pages.

My LinkedIn profile displays your LinkedIn profile or company profile on your  page.

Strategies to use when creating content

Constant interaction makes good communication. Keep the pages alive and up-to-date so that interaction is current and not dated. Tell people what you are doing, don’t sell to them but show how they can benefit from your product/service.

Top 3 tools to use to bring more traffic to your page

If you need help setting up your page, contact us either by email or telephone and speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Facebook are always making changes and just recently thay have introduced some more privacy buttons. Next week, Facebook changes and how to use them.

Following on from last weeks blog about using Twitter for job searching, this week here are a few more ideas.

Tell Twitter you need a job. Using Twitter to announce that you are looking for work gets the message out quickly and to an audience that you could never hope to reach with just an email. The information is not reliant on an email being read, it’s there for all to see in 140 letters or less. In the same way that you are looking for work with keyword searches , likewise companies are looking to recruit. Select your ‘follows’ by researching them, checking that they are the right people to follow, this will build a good network for you to read and learn from. Follow your industry and recruiters within your area of expertise helps improve the possibility of someone noticing when you tweet that you need a job or that someone that you follow will know of an opening. Choose your ‘follows’ wisely, focus on people who can help with your job search and don’t just add for the numbers.

Make your Twitter presence a balanced one. Try to involve all aspects of yourself in the Twitter feed. It’s nice to see the person behind the words, with some personal ’140s’, but don’t concentrate on this entirely. It’s good to add some words of value, whether it is links to your blog, things you have found valuable and think others might benefit from or retweeting other people’s words of wisdom. Don’t let your content fall into the ‘spam’ category, there is nothing more likely to lose your following or get you ignored. Aim to impress your prospective hirers and add value in your tweets.

At this point, if you feel you need to keep your work life and private life separate, set up two individual accounts and organise settings of the account to make sure that people need to be authorised to view your private account. Better still, don’t put it on the internet if you have any doubts, the web has an awful habit of coming back and biting you.

In your bio, briefly describe yourself and include a link to your site, ensure the information that people will be directed to is professional and honest. If I find that the information I’m sent to is in anyway unprofessional, I don’t feel the need to follow them. Your bio on Twitter can be linked to your blog, website, LinkedIn profile or a visual CV. Don’t miss this opportunity to impress people, letting them know all about you and your abilities.

Twitter has the ability to reach an audience that you would be hard put to match in any other way and on a personal level too. But remember if you don’t want the word spreading don’t put it on the internet.

Do you have any experience of Twitter either for job search or employment? Can we help with your Social Media experience? Email us or telephone Tamara on 02034688594.

As a social media tool that is still lagging behind LinkedIn, Facebook and My Space, Twitter may not be the most popular but it does have some advantages when it comes to job search. Knowing how Twitter works may help you understand why it’s so useful searching for work and with an insight in to it’s working it may offer more appeal to you than it  does at the moment.

Tweeting on Twitter,sometimes known as micro-blogging, allows you no more than 140 characters to get your message across. With millions of people tweeting billions of tweets, all available to everyone on the site, your selection of who to follow and read reduces the mass of information available to you personally. Your ability to have short and pertinent snippets to read from your chosen areas can be a refining tool, and reduce the mountain of information available to a manageable amount. Using the site in the same way as other social networking sites, it allows you to connect with recruiters. Unlike other social network sites there is no requirement to ask to connect and wait to be accepted, you can simply ‘follow’, you are then able to see all of their writings.

By following recruiters and hiring agents, you are able to listen and learn from their words. You can reply to anything you read that they have written, hopefully drawing attraction to yourself from the recruiters.

To begin making connections Twitter search and Twellow will find the people you want to follow. Some may well follow you back but don’t worry if they don’t, your ‘follow’ will enable you to communicate with them. You can follow conversations and reply if you have anything to say. If you have found a post informative a ‘thank you’ is very welcome.

Twitter search allows you to search any keywords you choose, identifying your niche, and searching for jobs and vacancies within the tweets. Many hiring managers/recruiters will tweet about vacancies they have. Keyword search for your job you are looking for, and Twitter will provide a stream of tweets containing theses words. The search term can then be saved and reviewed several times throughout the day. When using a Tweet reader, e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck keyword searches can be entered and when these words appear in any conversation the tweet will appear in your feedreader.

As many businesses track social media sites to check when they are being talked about, good or bad, responses to tweets can be rapidly executed. Likewise if you are tracking companies for job vacancies you can be first to respond and have your application in before the crowd.

Next week, other helpful ideas for using Twitter when job searching.

If you are having problems using Twitter, email us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.