Leveraging LinkedIn to lift your career                               

More and more business people are using LinkedIn to promote their professional activity. Recently C.G. Lynch of CIO.com wrote for PC World magazine about adding more horsepower to your LinkedIn profile to boost career opportunities. Following are the top 5 LinkedIn enhancements you can easily implement today. Whether you’re managing your career through transition, launching a private enterprise, or looking to attract clients to your existing business, these features can boost your online stature and credibility.

Tip #1. Get in the Picture

If you are not featuring a photo of yourself on your LinkedIn page, you’re making a mistake. Granted, some people might be trying to avoid having LinkedIn visitors jump to conclusions based on a photo. But unless you have three heads, excluding the photo suggests you might be trying to hide something or that you’re not comfortable with yourself.

The key is to use a professional photo, not a poorly cropped snapshot of yourself at the last tailgate party. It’s not about revealing your inner self. It’s about projecting your current professional persona. So wear business attire and pose for the picture against a neutral background.

Tip # 2. Write a Descriptive Professional Headline

When you create/edit your LinkedIn profile, you can enter a “professional headline” right beneath your name. Most subscribers simply put their names and title: e.g. Joe Doaks, Marketing Specialist. Try something catchier. If you’re a project manager, say something like, “Joe Doaks, managing complex projects involving IT and marketing—on time, on budget.”

When people search for you, they will see this professional tagline, and it might decide whether or not they feel compelled to click on your name and see your profile.

Think of LinkedIn as part of your e-marketing effort. It has to sizzle a bit.

Tip # 3. Properly Label Websites Displaying Your Work or Blog

LinkedIn allows you to list websites where your work might be displayed. This is a value-add option if you maintain a personal website with a resume or a blog, or a business website that offers free-downloads, newsletter subscriptions, a contact form, or a shopping cart.

Instead of using LinkedIn’s default labels (My Company; My website), when you edit your “websites” section, click the LinkedIn drop down menu and select “other.” You can upload the link to the relevant site and describe it to your best advantage. For example, instead of “my blog,” you might write, “my blog on complex project management.”

Tip # 4. Consider a Vanity URL

Ever notice all the personalized license plates and state-sanctioned specialty tags dressing up front bumpers and trunk lids? Use the same principle to personalize your standard LinkedIn URL. You can modify the default URL that LinkedIn provides for your profile. Doing this reaps both cosmetic and communication benefits. If you offer your LinkedIn profile address over the phone or print it on your business card, it should be as concise and self-explanatory as possible.

You can do this in a minute or two, and it makes your profile look more purposeful. Go to the “public profile” section to create your LinkedIn URL of choice.

Tip # 5. Finish with a Strong, SEO-Friendly Summary

This tip is a little techy, but the web-designers are all about “driving traffic” to a website by using words and phrases that the top search engines are programmed to seek out. The web folks refer to this as “search engine optimization” (SEO). The “summary” section of your LinkedIn profile is a good place to “attract” the searches from google, yahoo, or bing.  Job seekers, networkers, salespeople, and business owners will benefit from optimizing the language in the 2,000 characters that LinkedIn allows in the professional summary section.

The likelihood of people finding you will depend on LinkedIn’s search engine linking your name to certain search keywords. So, staying with our fictional project manager, Joe Doaks, a project manager might want the term “project management” to appear a few times throughout the summary. Since Joe works on IT and Marketing projects, repeating those terms would also help direct traffic.

LinkedIn is like the Yellow Pages—chock full of information, yours and your competition’s. So “stopping” visitors on your page is key to opening opportunities. Your summary should feature short “problem- action-and results” stories that show how you contended with challenges that helped you succeed. Lead with verbs the same way you compose resume items (e.g. “manage implementation of cost-effective sales automation projects that help sales forces increase sales by 20%”).

There’s your top five. Time to get busy.

Word of the Day

DEFERENCE

Definition: respect, courtesy

Example: The respectful young law clerk treated the Supreme Court justice with the utmost DEFERENCE.

Synonyms: honor, reverence

This Day in History

November 30, 1897   Thomas Edison’s motion picture projector had its first commercial exhibition.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.

– William F. Scolavino

Word of the Day

temerarious

DEFINITION: marked by temerity

EXAMPLE: The brave explorer set off for the unplumbed depths of the dangerous cave with only a few supplies and one temerarious companion.

SYNONYM: daring

This Day in History

November 27, 1779  The College of Pennsylvania became the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first legally recognized university in America.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.

– Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English Scientist

Word of the Day

mollycoddle

DEFINITION: to treat with an excessive or absurd degree of indulgence or attention

EXAMPLE: Parents of other players complained that the coach was unfairly mollycoddling the team’s star pitcher.

SYNONYM: pamper; indulge

This Day in History

November 25, 1783   During the Revolutionary War, the British evacuated New York. New York was their last military position in the U.S.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves.

– Ovid

Word of the Day

macédoine (mass-uh-DWAHN)

DEFINITION: a confused mixture;  a mixture of fruits or vegetables served as a salad or cocktail or in a jellied dessert or used in a sauce or as a garnish.

EXAMPLE: The focal point of the painting is a mesmerizing macédoine of warm colors.

SYNONYM: medley

This Day in History

November 24, 1963   Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s accused assassin, in the garage of Dallas police headquarters.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

Tough times never last. Tough people do.

– Robert Schuller

A-Words

When I began my professional life, I taught English at the college level. This involved teaching writing. One of the tips I passed on to students was to focus their writing style on verbs rather than nouns. Verbs are action words; they keep the writing moving.

I left the classroom many years ago for a career in business (although I still coach people on writing), but I didn’t abandon actions words, or as we’ll refer to them here, A-Words. Here’s what I mean.

Business is a contact sport

Unlike academics, business is a contact sport. Learning is traditionally an individual pursuit and mostly solitary. Business is always social, requiring Action to Acquire customers and Action by customers to be successful.

Before the niche comes the knack

As with any endeavor, business people need certain Aptitudes to run, grow, and protect their enterprise. In addition to a bias for action, they need an aptitude for the numbers that typically measure the health of a business. For example, it’s not enough to make a sale and satisfy a customer. The sale must be made at a minimum profit margin in order for additional customers to be served. An aptitude for relating to people at the level of their needs and an aptitude for communicating that understanding by matching the business service/product to those needs are indispensible. Other aptitudes include an ability to lead others, plan, organize, implement, and evaluate business operations.

An ear to the ground

Many communication experts tell us how important listening is in personal and business interactions. Listening is the front-end.   Paying Attention to what you hear brings the results at the back-end. How do you pay better attention as you listen? The communication experts say to maintain eye contact (without creating a stare-down). As you listen, be conscious of making subtle physical reactions to what you hear: nodding, smiling, making brief interjections such as “I see.” “I understand,” “uh-huh,” You should also offer brief re-caps of what you hear: “So if I’m understanding you correctly . . . .” These “check-ins” let the speaker know you are physically paying attention and mentally processing what you are hearing. Asking clarifying questions rather than assuming you understand helps you and the speaker feel confident that real communication is occurring. Paying attention as you listen also means being alert for the emotional subtext of what is being expressed outwardly. This would come into play more frequently dealing with employees than with customers, although in some consulting work, the emotional subtext could be significant.

The devil is in the details

Paying Attention to detail is also an important business trait. Clearly, knowing the business numbers critical for your industry is an absolute requirement. Your own internal company vitals must also be on your daily radar. Things like sales volume, closing ratio, cost-of-sales, P&L Statements and Balance Sheets, personal and employee scheduling, tax issues, benefits issues, market data, competitor intelligence, and on and on. Managing a business becomes more about these things than about the specific work that is done.

Being there

Related to paying attention is staying Awake or being Aware of what is going on in and around your business. Political, social, environmental, financial, and economic events exert a direct or indirect impact on  your operation. Keeping up on these things and consulting official or informal advisors about how you should react to external events are two ways to keep ship on an even keel and maintaining course.

Questions, we get questions

Many confident business owners and corporate managers become successful because they are directive and proactive. They know their objectives, they’ve learned how to operate and get things done, what and the buttons to push. They know what they know. This directive approach often leads them away from the one of the most effective business tools at their disposal: questions. These strong, confident, and successful managers stop Asking questions. So asking is the A-word that controls conversations, opens up business possibilities (as in “What if we did such and such?”), gains important information from clients and employees (“What can you tell me about . . . “). Questions are more powerful than statements for at least two reasons. First, humans seem wired to answer questions. So if you ask a question, you will get a response. Second, when you tell someone something, it’s received as just a statement that they hear. When that same person responds to your question, what they say is a fact in their minds, and therefore tells you more.

“When placed in a position of authority, take charge”

I heard that statement from General Norman Schwartzkopf. It speaks to the importance and value of Assertiveness, another A-word business trait. A companion word, not beginning with A. is decisiveness. Not all decisions you make will be correct. You often have to make decisions without all the information we would like to have. Successful owners and managers are assertive enough to take charge and make the best decision they can. They key is to make more right decisions than wrong. Nobody bats 1000; but it doesn’t take a 1000 batting average to make the Hall of Fame.

You’re always 100% responsible

The last A-word in our list is Accountability. Whether you are the owner, the manager, the CEO, or the newest employee, you are 100% responsible within your sphere of activity. You always will work with and through others and will need their participation to achieve results. But you are 100% accountable. Leo Durocher, hard-nosed baseball manager in the 1950s, once said, “Nobody likes an alibi ballplayer.” In other words, there are no excuses. In business, stuff happens. Whether you are the owner or a corporate manager, you are accountable for dealing reasonably with the stuff that happens. One way to stay accountable, take charge, and make more good decisions than bad, is to embrace the A-words in this article.

Just as when you were in school, you always want an A.

Word of the Day

FATUOUS

Definition: stupid; foolishly self-satisfied

Example: The FATUOUS cheerleader was often mocked by the members of the football team.

Synonyms: vacuous, asinine

This Day in History

November 23, 1889   The first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Alan asks, “I know you’re crazy about that little daughter of yours, Steve. What are you going to do when she starts to date?”

Steve says, “I figure I’ll take the first young man aside, put my arm around his shoulder, and pull him close to me so that only he can hear. Then I’ll say, “Do you see that sweet, little young lady? She’s my only daughter, and I love her very much. If you were thinking about touching, kissing, or being physically affectionate to her in any way ………… just remember …………… I don’t mind going back to prison.”

Daily LaParable

Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.

– Euripides (480-406 BC) Greek playwright

Word of the Day

voluble

DEFINITION: easily rolling or turning; rotating

EXAMPLE: The young man proved to be a voluble informer who would tell stories of bookies, smugglers, and hit men to the detectives for hours.

SYNONYMS: glib; fluent

This Day in History

November 20, 1789   New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.

– Samuel Johnson

Word of the Day

PUERILE

Definition: childish, immature, silly

Example: Although she was a grown woman, Marguerite often resorted to PUERILE tactics such as temper tantrums to get her way.

Synonyms: juvenile, adolescent

This Day in History

November 19, 19977   Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to set foot in Israel on an official visit.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

– Seneca

Word of the Day

ennui

DEFINITION: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction

EXAMPLE: In reaction to the ennui that he was feeling after working for twelve years in an unchallenging position, Darrell began to look for a new career.

SYNONYM: boredom

This Day in History

November 18, 1928   The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered in New York. It was Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willie,” starring Mickey Mouse.

Daily Chuckle (maybe)

Daily LaParable

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;

courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

– Sir Winston Churchill