Websites: Your “Link” to Future Opportunities Posted on May 29, 2011 by Wayne
Before I get to this week’s tip, I want to let you know about a couple opportunities for those of you in the Milwaukee area to catch me in action. On Tuesday morning, May 31st, I will be a guest on The Morning Blend television show on Channel 4 at 9:00 a.m. I plan to critique the LinkedIn profiles of the hosts and share some LinkedIn tips.
Should be fun.
In case you forget to set your DVR, you can catch the replay on their website.
Then at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 1st, I will be doing a book talk/signing at the Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon.
I look forward to sharing some of my latest LinkedIn tips as well as the details of my book-writing journey. Grab a friend and come on over to the book store.
This week’s tip is about using one of the most unique but underutilized sections on your profile to generate not only interest and increased credibility but business leads.
In the Websites section of your profile, you can enter three well-described website links.
This will encourage people to go directly from your LinkedIn profile to some other place on the Internet. It is amazing to see how many people either don’t use this section at all or list fewer than three websites.
Here is all you need to know about how to strategically use this critical part of your profile.
Websites: Your “Link” to Future Opportunities
It is located in the all-important top box (blue summary section) of your profile. You can enter up to three separate URL addresses (Use them all!). You don’t have to include your LinkedIn URL as one of the entries. You can use up to 26 characters to describe these entries.
Putting these on your profile provides links to other sites, which helps you move up on not only a LinkedIn search but a Google search as well. That is the simple part. But then you need to decide what strategic places on the web you would like people to go to and do something because they were encouraged to click this link.
I also highly recommend as a best practice that you refer to these links in your Summary section and your Experience section.
If people see these links several times, they will be more likely to click them and move to some type of action.
Here are some examples:
“Be sure to sign up for our email newsletter by clicking the ‘Sign up for our email’ link in the Website section above” or “You can get a copy of our industry trends white paper by clicking ‘Real Estate White Paper’ in the Website section above.”
Here are a few ideas for using these important links:
The home page of your company website. Of course, this should be first. (Change description from “My Company” to something more descriptive, like your company name or tag line) Your company’s e-mail signup page on your website. This is a good way to build your database.
Any articles, customer testimonials, case studies, and/or white papers that are on your company website.
The LinkedIn profile is all about showing your expertise. This is a great way to show it. Signup for an upcoming company sponsored event.
Videos that you have posted on your company website, other websites or YouTube showing products, presentations, testimonials.
Video is really hot and getting hotter.
Get your Flip Camera and get going. People love seeing and hearing other people. Link to either a completed survey of industry matters or an ongoing survey for which you need more opinions. People love data and being a part of the data group. Websites of related organizations, associations, industry groups.
You can promote your involvement and at the same time help that group as well.
Your blog.
If you are writing content that is important to some of your Linkedin audience, this is really a “power tool” in your journey to be the most credible person in your space. Your Facebook, MySpace, Flickr or other social media accounts. This is great as long as you continue to follow a similar professional level of content and feel. Don’t waste one of your slots with your Twitter account. There is a separate spot for that just below this section. The website of your favorite charitable organization. This shows people what you are interested in and at the same time helps promote a group you really care about.
One additional tip.
Once you have figured out the best websites/pages to link people to, consider using a URL shortener (Budurl, bitly, tinyurl, etc.) so you can count the number of times that someone actually follows the link. This allows you to tell whether it is working or ...
