If you watch my LinkedIn profile (or Mike’s), you might notice that we update our information fairly regularly. What is it that spurs people who live and breathe LinkedIn to want to spend even more time tweaking and tuning what many consider a masterpiece?
It’s a matter of a) being relevant to your audience, b) maintaining the integrity of how you describe yourself and what you do, and c) staying ahead of the competition.
When Mike and I speak at conferences, we often relate building your LinkedIn profile to building a house. It does take effort to build it out but once done, then only requires maintenance.
If you are on LinkedIn and your job or role doesn’t change often, checking in with your marketing speak perhaps quarterly is appropriate. However, if you’re role is ever-evolving, checking in once a month or bi-monthly is more realistic.
We speak and train on LinkedIn and Social Media. The industry we are in is evolving rapidly and so we adjust what we do and how we represent ourselves as the shifts occur. For example, although we speak and train for any industry, we typically lean toward the technology sector because we spent much of our previous careers in that arena.
Mike was a sales engineer – practiced at making difficult technology concepts easy for customers to understand. I was an end-user expert trainer on so many platforms, I can’t name them all. I spent 15 years training on everything from Microsoft (as a Certified Master Instructor) to proprietary software systems designed and built for medium to large companies.
So now, speaking and training not only the technology but the nuances of online software applications, such as social networking platforms like LinkedIn, is second nature. We live immersed in it 24/7 and use the depth and variety of our experiences to make the subject understandable to our audiences.
So, back to the question of what that means for updating our profiles. Sometimes when anyone writes their own bio or marketing language, it’s too broad. You end up saying “I can do this, I can do that!” and you end up diluted. As we focus on industries and sectors, we tweak and twang so the language is attractive to our target audience while still be authentic to who we are. …being relevant to your audience and b) maintaining the integrity of how you describe yourself and what you do.
Now, regarding c) staying ahead of the competition, we run searches weekly on the keywords we are found on and adjust a word here or there where it matters most so that we continue to come up at or near the top of the searches that bring us clients.
(Ok – I know you asking how you know where it matters most. Stay tuned tomorrow for the answer to that question!)
So, how often should you update your profile?
It depends where you are. If you’re just getting started, you’ll want to spend 30 minutes every weekend or at least twice a month until the profile is beefed up as much as you can make it. Then check in once a month to see if the language is still attractive, if the searches are producing results, if people are finding and engaging you on the platform. If the answer to any of those questions is “not quite,” then it’s time to tweak.
Comments: How often do you update your profile now? What causes you enough dissatisfaction that you just want to massage it a bit?
Stay tuned for ideas about where to tweak what and other great profile tips!
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