02.28.12
LinkedIn has rapidly become a legitimate professional networking and recruiting tool for the business-minded. Often pegged as the “facebook for business”, this networking site is much more than that name suggests. According to the
Wall Street Journal , “LinkedIn Corp.’s (LNKD) fourth-quarter earnings soared as the professional-networking site’s revenue more than doubled”. This information is not surprising considering (as shown by this
Infographic ) that LinkedIn’s current membership estimates are numbered at 100 million.
Furthermore in 2010, executives from every Fortune 500 company could be found on LinkedIn while there were approximately 2 billion people searches done via the site. Wow! So while LinkedIn at its core remains a recruiting tool it has noticeably evolved into an online community where professionals interconnect, share, and recommend information to their industry peers. In other words: it’s a marketer’s dream resource.
Many businesses and job-seekers indeed are jumping on the LinkedIn bandwagon. So how should one market themselves or their company on LinkedIn? This Inc.com
article outlines 6 basic steps to crafting a more marketable LinkedIn profile:
Revamp your goals. “At its most basic level LinkedIn is about marketing: marketing your company or marketing yourself. But that focus probably got lost as you worked through the mechanics of completing your profile, and what started as a marketing effort turned into a resume completion task. Who you are isn’t as important as what you hope to accomplish, so think about your goals and convert your goals into keywords, because keywords are how people find you on LinkedIn.”
