How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You

Millions of professionals are on the social networking website LinkedIn, and you should be, too.  But you shouldn't treat your LinkedIn profile as a necessary red-headed stepchild; you should treat it in such a way to help control what people find when they search for you online.

The first thing you should do is change your profile headline.  Your profile headline defaults to "<your position> at <your company>" and doesn't lend itself to easily being found via Google or LinkedIn's search engine.  You should change it to something more descriptive that someone would be more likely to be entering in the search box.  For example, which of the following sounds better to you?  "Owner at VM(doh)" or "Web developer specializing in Drupal and social media"?

Next, you should write a very descriptive summary of yourself, where you've been, and where you're going.  You should also be descriptive about your specialties.  Avoid the usual clichés like "thrives in a fast-paced environment" and anything that sounds spammy and you're golden.  In other words, write it the same way that you would write copy for your website (or hire a copywriter to do it if necessary).

On your job description(s), treat it the same way as you treat your Summary section.  This should not be a word-for-word copy of the official job description you had, but should be a detailed description that is easy and quick to read.  If you had to hire a copywriter for your Summary, pay them to do this part, too.

Lastly, you need to join LinkedIn Groups that are relevant to your local area, expertise, and industry.  This is because when people search for you on LinkedIn, your profile will appear higher in the search results the "closer" your connection to them is.