“TELL ME MORE…” — ON LINKEDIN
Dear Executives:
In many of life’s situations, LESS is MORE. Marie Kondo urges us to de-clutter our surfaces and pare down our belongings, so that with LESS stuff, we actually have MORE room and the ability to find the things we want to use. Likewise, silence following a key conversation point is often more effective than continuing to talk because it invites contemplation and puts the onus for responding on the listener. However, on LinkedIn, LESS is never MORE; only MORE is MORE. Every LinkedIn profile has two kinds of readers: LinkedIn bots and humans. Both crave MORE. If you’re not getting any traction on LinkedIn, a likely reason is that you’ve ignored the needs of one or both kinds of profile readers.
Delighting the LinkedIn Bots
LinkedIn is a search engine, and its bots do its bidding. The job of the bots is to match the keyword being searched for with those profiles that have used that keyword the most in their text. The frequency of use of the keyword being searched for, combined with your relationship with the person searching, determines your position in the search results. When your headline is just your current position title, and you have a minuscule (or no) About section, or your Experience section has no detail, you have seriously undercut yourself.
Although bots are efficient, they are not clever. You could excite the LinkedIn bots by simply listing your keywords, one after the other, and repeating the list ad nauseam. (But then your human readers would be disgusted!) Because it is the bots that determine your ranking on a keyword search, satisfying them is important – only profiles that rank on the first two pages of a keyword search will have right-for-them opportunities come to them without effort.
To determine the keywords your profile should feature, think of the search terms you would use to find someone just like you. Work your keywords into your LinkedIn text and skills section naturally. Of course, you cannot write an infinite amount about yourself. Each section has an associated character count, which changes from time to time. The limit for each section as of this writing is:
| Section | Maximum |
| Headline | 220 characters |
| About | 2,600 characters, about 4 paragraphs |
|
Experience (for each job listed) |
2,000 characters, about 3 paragraphs |
| Skills | 50 skills |
Delighting Your Human Readers
People do business with people they know, like, and trust. The people reading your profile are looking for an engaging story to help them understand your purpose, passions, and principles. They are deciding whether you are someone they’d like to do business with. They want to read prose that flows with meaning. Neither sentences that are awkward because of keyword stuffing nor text that is barely there will do.
To delight human readers and bots alike, take some time to decide what you’d like to communicate about yourself.
What do you want to communicate?
The three questions I ask to help people identify their personal brand are:
- What are the three things you want to be known for?
- What are your differentiators?
- What are your keywords?
When you’ve identified these, you have identified the building blocks of a great LinkedIn profile that channels right-for-you opportunities to your doorstep. To learn more about using these branding questions to craft your LinkedIn profile, see my article: What’s Your Personal Brand and Why Does It Matter?.
If you are a C-Suite executive or senior leader who would like to improve your LinkedIn profile and presence, I can make it easy for you. I have a track record of working effectively with C-Suite executives and senior leaders to create LinkedIn profiles and other executive-branded materials that help them show up as authentically and powerfully online as they do in person. I also mentor clients on LinkedIn etiquette and effective posting strategies to ensure their success. Contact me through my website: www.carolkaemmerer.com or profile: www.linkedin.com/in/carolkaemmerer.
Other resources for you and your team:
For a virtual or in-person presentation on personal branding via LinkedIn, contact me. I am a member of the National Speakers Association, a Certified Virtual Presenter, and an Advisor to the C-Suite Network.
My NEW book Second Edition: LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive: Promote Your Brand with Authenticity, Tact and Power through online booksellers. For quantity discount or signed copies, contact me directly.
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