I recently attended a business networking breakfast in Brisbane. Colin Bushell from Bigger Boat Creative Solutions presented the benefits of individuals and business having a professional LinkedIn profile.
I already knew many of the tips Colin shared from my experience in writing LinkedIn profiles for clients, but I realised that many people aren’t fully aware of the impact their LinkedIn profile can have on their career choices and progression.
How can LinkedIn help you?
From its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has seen exponential growth, becoming the world’s largest professional network with more than 414 million subscribers reported for Q4 2015.
Just like CVs, a LinkedIn profile, which is well written, concise, and professionally presented can help both individuals and businesses achieve the following:
- Attract employers, employees, clients and recruitment professionals
- Increase employment success
- Demonstrate industry knowledge and project expertise
- Network more effectively with business contacts and clients
- Promote news stories, blog posts and insights from individuals and businesses via LinkedIn Pulse
- Improve the individual’s and business’s brand.
Throughout my career, I have written and edited hundreds of CVs for clients (predominantly in the engineering sector). I tailor CVs to suit client tender specifications and also update and edit generic employee CVs.
This provides tender writers with well-written, concise and updated CVs which they tailor to tender requirements. While it may seem like a tedious task to the employee (and tenders team!), this task will:
- Save the employee, tenders team and business time (and money) as it prevents CVs being constantly re-edited. This is dependent on centralised storage of updated CVs
- Allow the tenders team more time to focus on developing a winning strategy and competitive tender response and win the company more business.
I regularly advise clients to get their employees to update their LinkedIn profiles with the CV content I have written.
Professionally written LinkedIn content provides two-pronged benefits for businesses and individuals.
Business benefits
Brand improvement: More and more businesses are using LinkedIn as a platform to promote their services, products, company values and brand. If employees update their LinkedIn profiles, they help their company remain competitive in the industry through increasing client and employee engagement and attracting potential employees.
Projects: Employees can include project descriptions, which are linked to their role descriptions. Highlighting a key project success also helps improve the business’s brand and reputation.
Company Pages: LinkedIn has also launched Company Pages to help businesses build a presence on LinkedIn. I have Company Pages for Janmac Tenders and Janmac Creative and think this LinkedIn function has scope for further improvements before it matches the success of an individual’s LinkedIn profile.
Individual’s benefits
Professional CV content: Employees can be interviewed for CV project description updates and their key skills and strengths.This saves them time writing their CV and also eliminates anxiety if they aren’t strong writers, or good at promoting themselves.
Improved networking: There’s no doubt about it, LinkedIn is an amazing platform for improving connectivity between business contacts. With ever-evolving technology, we now have easier and quicker access to view an individual’s business skills and expertise.
I have generated significant workloads from networking with LinkedIn connections alone. I also find the LinkedIn Invitation character limit a useful exercise at pitching myself concisely to prospective clients. A key tip is to personalise your LinkedIn Invitation, rather than send the generic ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.’ message. I have been guilty of doing this in the past, but I think people respond more positively if you invest effort and interest, rather than send a standardised invitation.
Increased employment success: The flip side of businesses encouraging their employees to update their LinkedIn profiles is, of course, the chance of the employee finding new employment. A professionally written LinkedIn profile will also make it easier for recruitment professionals and businesses to identify potential candidates.
Keep it professional
When updating your LinkedIn profile, it’s wise to consider the type of platform LinkedIn is. Your contributions to your profile, blog posts and discussions can have a significant impact on your professional brand and reputation. As the old adage goes ‘once it’s on the Internet, it’s there forever’.
Privacy is relatively scarce in the world of social and business media sites and employers can now learn more about a person’s character through a few sneaky searches on search engines and social media sites.
I have noticed a recent shift in the type of LinkedIn posts on my feed to be more representative of what I would expect to see on my Facebook or Twitter feeds. Inspirational memes may be useful for some people, but I prefer to see more in-depth and informative business information shared on LinkedIn rather than relationship and love advice.
Speaking of which and I’m sure this is rare…I don’t think it’s a good idea to use LinkedIn networking for romantic pursuits – there are plenty of dating websites for that use!
If you have any insights on this topic, please share in the comments below.
I will share LinkedIn and CV tips on an ongoing basis, so watch this space!
