Getting the Most out of LinkedIn

I didn't have high hopes at the start of this session because the first 10 minutes were sucked up by Lewis Howes talking about how he'd had a sports injury. I was less than thrilled and figured this would be another hour-long self-promotion.

Then he got into the nitty gritty of his session.

I found it immensely useful and interesting. Personally, LinkedIn is my favorite of all the social networks because its very focused. There isn't the fluff and silly apps like there are on some of the others. As a surfer, the variety and substance of the groups is comprehensive.

He really delivered on the title of the session: Getting the Most out of LinkedIn.

He immediately addressed how to get more connections and how to be found the most in searches (to come up first in a search list, if possible), such as the 5 places you need to have your associated keywords (like Marketing, Crafts, Sports, etc.):
1) Your headline
2) Current employment
3) Past employment
4) Summary
5) Specialties

Additional areas to place keywords are in titles of articles and within the body of the articles.
But be sure to fit these keywords into your messaging, rather than forcing the words.

We all know the key to presentation content:
Tell them what you're going to tell them
Tell them
Tell them what you told them

Lewis suggests the same tactic for your LinkedIn profile. Say who you are and what you have to offer - you know the drill. Also, this is the place to put your website but make sure you label them in an interesting/enticing way. Instead of http://www.xyz.com/, put in something about your website thats special, for instance: LewisHowes.com free sports social media videos (this puts your keywords in yet another area).

I'm not sure this will translate on the recording, but go the far right of the 'menu' and, on the pulldown, click on Website, then click on Other. - here you can customize your website url/descriptive.

For your Headline: be sure to tell something about YOU, your goals, passions, and why you do what you do. People want to know you - who you are, why should people do business with you and who you help (your audience). One of his key hints is that it should NOT be a resume. It should look like a professional profile. One of his main hints is to get rid of bullets, they look like ppt and not the format for this forum.

Use Specialties. Here, use your keywords - at least 1-3 of them and list them vs a long string separated by commas.

Recommendations - the more you have the better. How do you get them? Give them, 'nuff said.

Welcome message: Make sure to put a call to action here, "sign up for our newsletter to get social media tips, tricks and hints". This helps build your database.

One this I found very interesting is that within a Group, you can create Sub-groups so that emails can be sent to just a region vs nationally, for instance.

To add blog applications, Amazon widgets, etc., go to MORE, this drags an rss feed and adds it to your profile.

Once you have your groups, you can create EVENTS. Signing up for your events also allows you to gather a database.

One of the questions I was wondering was: Can you create a Corporate LinkedIn profile? The answer is No, but you can create a 'company page'. This was brought up by someone else on the Q&A, and he didn't specify what that was, and I'm not certain if that is just a Group or not. Of course LinkedIn was having issues (perhaps from all of the SMSummit attendees checking out the site at the same time??) so I couldn't check it out. But I plan to.


To go to Lewis's website and get free helpful videos, go to http://www.lewishowes.com/