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Do You Have a LinkedIn Profile Update Strategy?

October 29, 2018 by Marc Miller 2 Comments

LinkedIn Profile Update Strategy?

You have plans to update your LinkedIn profile, but do you have a strategy on how you will leverage the update?

If you turn on Sharing Profile Edits in your LinkedIn settings, all of your LinkedIn connections will be told that you have updated your profile. I know, I know you have been told to keep it turned off. There are times when you want to tell your network that a change has been made. This could be:

Acquired a major certification
Been hired for a new job
Received a promotion
Launched a new business
Published a book or an article

What will happen is, you will get lots of LinkedIn messages that will be congratulating on your new accomplishment. You have their attention, you should be prepared with a strategy on how you will respond.

I recommend you respond to every single LinkedIn message! Yes, every single message with a standard, but a strategic response.

Turn On Sharing Profile Edits

If you have a lot of minor updates to make, go ahead and make those first.

When you make the major change that you want everyone to hear about, turn on “Sharing profile edits” in your privacy settings like you see below.

Only set this when you are ready to make the major change.

I will use the example of when I added my podcast to my LinkedIn profile.

Create a Strategy with a Clear Call to Action

As soon as you make the change, you should be prepared to:

Thank them
Tell them about the change
Give them a clear call to action

What do you want them to do?

In my case, I added the following to my LinkedIn profile:

When anyone said congratulations I responded with a stock answer:

Dear [insert first name]

I have been podcasting for one year now. Next week will be the anniversary episode and I encourage you to listen to it. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/repurpose-your-career/id1170333446?mt=2&ls=1

I would also appreciate while you are in iTunes to write a review.

Marc Miller

What do I want? I want the reader to listen to the podcast. I point them directly to iTunes.

Did my podcast numbers spike the next week? Heck yes.

My call to action was clear and I made it very easy. Each evening I would make a copy of the stock answer into my computer’s clipboard and then I would respond to each congratulatory LinkedIn message.

New Certification

The idea for this post came from a note from a former client who is currently unemployed and looking for work. He just attained his PMP certification which should make him a bit more attractive to employers.

He added his certification to the last name and to his accomplishments section of his LinkedIn profile.

I suggested he should craft a response like the following:

[First Name],

Thanks for reaching out to me and offering your congratulations. It was a lot of hard work to complete the coursework, studying for and passing the exam. In some ways, I was surprised I passed on the first try.

I am currently looking for a project management role in the [insert industry]. Would you have a moment for a quick phone call to get some sage advice? If you are willing please schedule 15 minutes on my calendar at https://meetme.so/mycalendar .

I would really appreciate it if you would pass on any leads you might have.

[signature]

The call to action was to schedule a quick phone call and he made it easy to schedule a time. Notice what we asked for was some sage advice. You want to use a magic word of advice. This can also be referred to as asking for A-I-R or advice, insights, and recommendations.

Note: I am a big fan of ScheduleOnce and I have no affiliate relationship with them. I am just a very happy customer.

Simple LinkedIn Update Strategy

The key is to ask for a call to action and make that something easy to do. You want to eliminate as many barriers as possible in allowing them to take action. If they need to send an email that asks when are you available or look up your phone number or anything else, your contact is less likely to take action.

K.I.S.S – Keep it simple stupid. Make it easy for them to help you.

Finally, please remember that most people would like to help you if they can. Not everyone will be able to help you. However, for the ones that make the effort make sure and say “thank you”.

Have you taken the time to create a LinkedIn Update Strategy? If so, comment below and tells us about it.

Note: When you are done with this process, you probably want to turn off the Sharing profile edits field in your LinkedIn privacy settings.

Marc Miller

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How To Stay Connected When You Are Not There

July 9, 2018 by Marc Miller 3 Comments

Stay Connected

I was asked, by a member of the Career Pivot Community, about how to stay connected to his remote network during a job search. He and his wife are living in an area where the economy is in decline. He is looking for a job halfway across the country.

I previously wrote the post, I Want to Be Hired Before I Move Dilemma. I share how to make it look like you are in the remote location without actually having to physically move there.

The Career Pivot member is currently making regular trips to a remote location for networking. The problem he is struggling with is how he can stay connected in between the trips. He wants to stay connected to the people he meets on each trip, but not be a pest. He does not want to email them every week or so, to check to see if they have heard anything. He knows that when people do that to him, he stops reading their emails.

My response was to become a resource to them on LinkedIn. Share targeted curated content to become a resource to them.

Share Curated Content on LinkedIn

Curating content is nothing new. Museums and galleries have been doing this for years. They have curators who select pieces to display or share.

He should do the same by curating content from the geographical location and industry he is pursuing.

Let’s talk about finding relevant content and then sharing it on LinkedIn

Finding Content to Share to Stay Connected

I always suggest subscribing to the Business Journal in multiple locations in the state where you want to relocate. In this case, he was targeting North Carolina. I suggested he subscribe to the Raleigh/Durham, Charlotte, and Greensboro/Winston-Salem Business Journals.

You might also subscribe to the email lists of relevant industry associations. You might want to check out Feedly, which helps you to locate RSS feeds and then filter the content based on keywords.

I use Twitter lists to organize the Twitter feeds of various organizations. If you are not sure how to use a Twitter list, check out my post, Twitter Lists, and the Targeted Job Search.

Schedule Content to Share

Once you have located content to share, you will want to use a tool like Buffer to schedule the content to be shared on LinkedIn throughout the week. There are other tools out there, but I am a big fan of buffer.com. The free version will let you schedule to a personal LinkedIn account for free.

For example, you might locate 4-5 relevant pieces of content on a Monday morning, and schedule them to be shared mid-morning and early afternoon for Tuesday – Thursday on LinkedIn. You may want to check this Hubspot article called, The Best Time to Post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+.

You will want to check the engagement level for every post by checking how many clicks and likes each post gets. Buffer will provide those basic statistics.

Target Individuals in New Location

Now comes the important part to this strategy. After a post has gone live, make a comment in the post and specifically tag individuals.

You may be saying to yourself, how do I tag an individual in a comment. You do this by typing first an @ and then their name.

I posted a recent podcast episode where I was interviewed by Denise King. I wanted Denise to know I was using the recording. I typed in her name and a drop-down list appeared. I selected her name from the list and typed in a message.

Denise will now be notified that she was mentioned in a comment.

Be Helpful by Sharing Relevant Content

For each curated content you find, tag one or more individuals who you think would find it worthwhile. Pay attention to see who engages with the content by commenting or liking the post on LinkedIn.

If you consistently share relevant content once or twice a week, people will notice and want to stay engaged.

This strategy works whether the connection is local or remote. It is even better if you are sharing content that you produce, like a blog post or a podcast.

There are two themes I want you to remember :

Be helpful
Be consistent

If you do share relevant content every week at approximately the same time, people will come to expect your sharing.

This makes you memorable!

Marc Miller

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Being Bold is the Pathway to Success in the 2nd Half of Life

May 7, 2018 by Marc Miller 1 Comment

Being Bold is the Pathway to Success

Are you being bold in making changes in the 2nd half of life?

The inspiration for this post came from the numerous comments I have been receiving from one of last month’s podcast. People have been telling me how inspired they were by episode #72 of the Repurpose Your Career Podcast titled Rebranding Yourself with Alexander Buschek [Podcast]. If you listen to this episode you will have heard Alexander Buschek say the following:

“You need a lot of discipline to change your life. People ask me these days, ‘How did you do that?’ When I tell them the steps I took, they say, ‘Well, yeah… no .. this is something that I couldn’t do.'”

What Alexander did was be bold and he took action. Another way of saying it was he took a risk and worked his tail off to make a change.

Being Bold is not as Risky as You Think

When you want to make a change or a pivot, it is not going to be easy. It does take hard work. However, if you are willing to put the effort in a methodical, planned fashion you will come out on the other end as a better person. It will feel very risky but playing it safe is very risky these days.

Alexander worked hard at establishing himself as a thought leader in an area that he had no direct work experience (Digital Transformation for Small and Medium Business). He was also reticent about standing out.

I cannot tell you how many times I told Alexander to “Be bold. You know your stuff!”

How could I tell? Well, go look at his website, DigitalTransformationBlog.com. Watch his videos. My favorite is Alexander Buschek on 3D Printing and Generative Design.

He did all of the videos using the equipment he had or could purchase for a few Euros.

Remember, Alexander did this by studying up on the subject but had no practical work experience. He did this through hard work, then he was bold and put himself out there. It felt very risky to him at the time.

Being Bold on LinkedIn

Whenever you are making a change and you are in a safe well-established career, I hear over and over again, “I do not want my boss or company to know I’m going to make a change.”

This is when you start making subtle but bold changes to your LinkedIn profile.

Change your header image that matches where you want to go. One of my favorites is this one.

We were doing LinkedIn profile reviews in the Career Pivot Community last week and the question came up about how much personality should be put into the profile. My response was:

As long as it relates to your professional career and where you want to go, be yourself.

The woman who asked was pivoting out an I.T. role that she had been in for over 25 years to being a technology-based creative. She wanted to create artwork using a 3D printer and shoot 3D videos.

Slowly add material to your profile that shows the world that you know your stuff. You could create:

Videos and post them on YouTube
Whitepapers
Blog
Website

Be bold and quit worrying about what others will think. Most of that worrying is because you are suffering from MSU (Make Stuff Up) Disorder. The reality is you do not know what people will think until are bold and try something new.

Being Bold Can Bring Criticism

I know, I know, you do not want to put yourself out there. If you write blog posts, whitepapers, or create videos you open yourself up to criticism.

When I published my LinkedIn Publisher post 5 Things on Your Resume That Make You Sound Too Old, it went viral. Almost 600,000 views and 2,800+ comments. A lot of those comments were negative.

Some people wrote negative comments to the following:

I am going to go out a limb and declare that putting two spaces after a period is obsolete. It is how most of us were taught to type on a typewriter. Therefore, most of us who do this (I have taught myself to stop putting two spaces after a period and it was hard) are over 50 years of age.

Over the years, I have heard that this has been used as a method of screening out older candidates.

This one piece of the post caused it to go viral. Why because the statement I was making was bold and more importantly correct. I was saying something that others did not want to say.

I attended a conference the week this post went viral. I had more people come up to me and tell me that they could not be bold like I was. They could not handle the criticism.

Making a Career Pivot is not Easy but Being Bold is the Pathway to Success

Are you ready to stand out from doing something new? Are you willing to be bold?

This will not be easy. It will take hard work.

Being bold can be very uncomfortable, especially for those of us who are introverts.

Go ahead, be uncomfortable and be bold!

Marc Miller

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Do Others Prejudge You Based on Your LinkedIn Profile? [Updated]

March 21, 2018 by Marc Miller 3 Comments

Do You Prejudge Someone After Looking at their LinkedIn Profile?

Do you prejudge people? If you say no … well, I do not believe you. We all do whether we like to believe it or not.

Thom Singer’s keynote speech at Product Camp Austin 14 was on how someone decided to prejudge him based on seeing him speak. This person thought that she would not like Thom. However, when she actually met him in person, she discovered he was a really nice guy.

She had prejudged him based on seeing him on stage.

Hmmm…do we do the same with LinkedIn and other social media platforms?

Do you prejudge someone when you view their LinkedIn profile?

Do others prejudge you?

Note: This post was originally published in March of 2015 and updated in March of 2018.

LinkedIn Profile

My presentation at Product Camp, “Leveraging LinkedIn – Creating a Professional that People will Remember“, was about establishing your brand on LinkedIn.

People will prejudge you based on your LinkedIn profile.

If you have no picture what will people think?

Yeah, yeah, I know we are not supposed to do that, but we do. This goes hand in hand with all of the discussion about Unintentional Bias.

Let’s discuss what you can do about establishing your brand on LinkedIn. We can then manage how someone might prejudge you!

LinkedIn Picture

I previously wrote a post called 3 Key Elements of your LinkedIn Photograph.
The three key points were:

Framing and Clothing
Background
Chin Line

LinkedIn Background Image

Since this post was originally written, LinkedIn allows all users to create a background image. This gives you the option to add some style to your profile.

What do you think a readers impression of you will be if you use the default background image like the one below:

What do you think their impression will be if they used a personal photo like the one below:

My guess is a smile will come to your face when you see the last one and you will want to read the rest of the profile.

People will prejudge you based on your background image. It is your opportunity to use the image to create a favorable impression of you.

(More: 6 Key Attributes to Your LinkedIn Profile Header [Updated])

The vocabulary you use in your LinkedIn Headline and Summary is critical.

The default LinkedIn headline is “Current Job Title at Company Name”.

The headline is 120 characters long. USE ALL OF IT.

Instead, insert phrases like “Product Management” or “Merges & Acquisitions” and separate each with a “|”.

You may also want to use your tagline in your headline. A good example is Jason Alba‘s headline:

JibberJobber.com – Online Job Search Organizer helping pros in over 100 countries Own…

Jason is the owner of JibberJobber.com one of the leading online job search platforms.

You also might want to check out my LinkedIn profile to see an example.

Yes, people will prejudge you based on the headline.

(More: 1st Place to use Keywords is in your LinkedIn Headline)

Summary

The Summary section of your LinkedIn profile should contain your brand story.

Many of you will copy the summary section from the beginning of your resume and paste it into your summary section. This is typically written in 3rd person and is incredibly impersonal. The LinkedIn profile should be a personal and let your personality shine.

Tell me who you are and not what you have done.

You can tell the reader what you have done in your experience section. Write the summary in 1st person as a story. The first sentence should grab you.

When you first look at a LinkedIn profile, you can only see the first two lines of the summary like the following:

I have an opening sentence of “I have had an eclectic career, to say the least.” My goal is to get you curious enough to click on the ‘Show more’ to read the rest.

I have written four posts on the process of writing your brand story.

If you want the reader to prejudge you in an authentic way, then tell an authentic story!

We will be prejudged based on our LinkedIn profile. What we want to do is paint an authentic picture of ourselves so that we can develop a real-life relationship.

Do you prejudge based on what you see and read online?

By the way, I’m honored to share that my presentation won the best session at Product Camp Austin!

Winner for Best Session #PCATX14: Marc Miller “Leveraging LinkedIn – Creating a Professional Brand That People Will Remember.” @CareerPivot

— ProductCamp Austin (@PCAustin) March 7, 2015

Marc Miller

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6 Key Attributes to Your LinkedIn Profile Header [Updated]

December 18, 2017 by Marc Miller 1 Comment

LinkedIn Profile Header

The first thing you see on your LinkedIn profile is the LinkedIn Profile Header section. There are 6 areas that I want to address in this article.

Note: This is an update of a 2013 post called 5 Key Attributes to Your LinkedIn Profile Summary

Photograph

Having a high-quality image of yourself is critical. The picture should portray the story you will be building using your LinkedIn Profile. In my honest opinion, the most important aspect of your LinkedIn photograph is the background.

If you do not have a photograph, the odds of someone clicking on your profile when displayed in a search drops dramatically.

To read more on LinkedIn pictures check out my post, 3 Key Elements of Your LinkedIn Photograph.

If you would like to test your LinkedIn photograph, check out Photofeeler.com.

Your Linked Profile Header should ALWAYS have a photograph

Headline

The LinkedIn Profile header headline field is 120 characters in length. Use all of it! It should be keyword rich and should demonstrate your personal brand. By default, LinkedIn will fill this with Your Current Job Title at Current Company. If you have multiple current positions, by the way, I have 3 current jobs, it will pick the first position. Do not let LinkedIn fill this in for you.

I point this out because this allows me to have 3 current job titles that could be found in searches. Please check out the post, Why Are You Not Being Found? Try Thinking Like a Recruiter for why this is so important.

Location

Since most searches on LinkedIn are done geographically, setting your location is key. If you live in one city but are looking for work in another, you will want to set the location to the city where you are looking. I had a client living in Georgia but looking for a position in Dallas. I had them set the location to Dallas and they immediately were being found by recruiters in Dallas.

If you are looking for a job in a different location, then I highly recommend you get a Google Voice number with an area code where you would like to work.

Vanity or Custom URL

You should always generate a vanity or custom URL for your Public LinkedIn Profile. Your LinkedIn public profile is what LinkedIn exposes to Google and the other search engines. This can be found in your Public Profile and URL settings.

Your vanity or custom URL is what is used whenever someone is viewing your profile. LinkedIn changed to using the vanity URL when displaying a profile in 2016 or 2017.

Contact and Personal Information

LinkedIn has made it fairly easy to enter all of your social media properties, websites, and contact information in one place.

Take notice that the websites are clearly named. In order to do this, you must use the “other” option when filling in the contact info form. This allows you to customize the name of the website. See the contact info form below.

LinkedIn Background Image

Everyone now has the capability of setting their background image. This is the large (1,584 x 396px recommended) image that sets the tone for the profile.

Personal Photograph

You could use a personal photograph. See the picture of the railroad bridge in Austin Texas that someone is using.

This is a great example of using an iconic landmark to make a point.

Stock Photograph

You could use a stock photograph from websites like 123rf.com. Below is an example of the image used by a bi-lingual educator.

I suggested that she add some foreign language text to the image to deliver a more targeted message. I suggested she use Canva.com to accomplish this.

Custom Image

Lastly, you could construct a custom image similar to what I am currently using.

This was constructed by one of the members of the Career Pivot community using Canva.com. I want you to take notice that the email address and phone number are part of the image and cannot be screen-scraped by spammers.

Canva is one of my favorite tools that has a freemium option. I only pay if I use one of their stock images which are $1 per image. I acquire all of my images from 123rf.com and I have no financial relationship with either 123rf or Canva, I just love their products.

LinkedIn Profile Header Should Deliver a Consistent Message

I want you to think about the message the entire LinkedIn profile header delivers to the reader. The headline, your photograph, and the background should deliver a common and coordinated theme.

For those of us who are … artistically challenged, we need to get help. I have always found that one of my friends has been able to help me. My current headshot was taken by Sherwin Field from Field Photography and is someone who has pivoted from working in the corporate world to being a freelance photographer in the 2nd half of life.

Do you have all 6 components of your LinkedIn Profile header working together?

Marc Miller

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

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Job Search	Career Pivot/Change	Career Success	Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media	Multi-Generational Workplace	Networking	Entrepreneurship

Being Bold is the Pathway to Success in the 2nd Half of Life

Being Bold is the Pathway to Success

Being Bold is not as Risky as You Think

Being Bold on LinkedIn

Being Bold Can Bring Criticism

Making a Career Pivot is not Easy but Being Bold is the Pathway to Success

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