LinkedIn

Is Your LinkedIn Headline Doing Its Job?

Your professional headline is the tagline that shows up just under your name in the search results. If all you have there is your job title and company name, you are wasting a great opportunity! This tag line shows up every time you do ANYTHING on LinkedIn. It’s also one of the main drivers for the LinkedIn search feature. If you want to show up higher in the LinkedIn Search results, you need have a great headline.

Tips for Writing Your LinkedIn Headline

• You've got 120 characters to catch the attention of that recruiter, customer, or contact. Think carefully about what words will give the best reflection of who you are.
• Your headline should describe the main things you do, not your job title. For example, instead of saying “Trainer at Smith & Co.” try using “Soft Skills Trainer, Instructional Designer and LMS Administrator”.
• Include the keywords that people would use to find someone like you. For example, if you want to connect with other people in the medical insurance industry, use “medical insurance” in the headline.
• You can put something catchy in your headline as long as you also include your keywords. For example, mine has been “Learning & Development Passionista” and I get a lot of great comments about it. At the same time, Learning & Development is my main keyword driver for my profile at the moment. I recently added “Professional Networking Coach | Speaker” as a second keyword set.

If you're not sure what your headline should say, post your idea in the comments and I'll be happy to give you some feedback!

~Kelly

Friday Fun Day: Card Munch and Old Booth

I’m so excited to be doing today’s Friday Fun Day App Review and I thank Kelly for sharing this blog spot with me.  The reason I’m so thrilled is because last month was my personal conversion from Blackberry to iPhone.  Although I went in kicking and screaming I am now a full fledged iPhone addict (complete with a Siri girl-crush).  Following in Kelly’s footsteps – today I present you with one “work” app and one “fun” app.

This app is by all means one of the most efficient apps for capturing and a saving business card information that I have ever used.  It’s so easy and so accurate.  I am big on time management (because I suffer from it) and this app really frees up all the time that you would normally spend hand entering in contact information especially during and after a large meeting or conference where you accumulate a lot of cards.  Here are the pro/con’s as I see them:

Pro:

 One snapshot of the card is all you do – Card Munch does everything else.

Captured information is actually transcribed by humans not technology.  Supposedly, every card goes through three human transcriptionists to ensure accuracy.

If your contact has a LinkedIn account – their profile information will also be loaded. This allows you to see a full profile with all the additional information it contains.  If you are not connected to them on LinkedIn it will give you the option to link to them with one click.  If they do not have a LinkedIn account than you will see only the information that was provided on the business card.

Envelope “button” allows you to begin an email with this contact quickly and easily.

Auto Save to iPhone option will save the contact into your actual iPhone contact list.

Holding your iPhone allows you to see all cards in a carousel style view.

Cons:

You must have a LinkedIn account to use this app however LinkedIn accounts are free and in my opinion everyone should have one anyway.

Currently only available on iOS devices.

There is no way to transfer the contacts (in bulk) to your PC. 

Transcribing time can range from an hour to many hours (although I have never had it last more than 6 hours total)

This app is a must have for me and many of my business colleagues. 

  Old Booth is not a free app but it is certainly a fun app.  Currently a bargain at $1.99 it will provide hours of fun and laughter.  Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad – also available for Mac however price may vary.   

Old Booth lets you take a photo (either now or one from your library) and allows you to change the look into an old-time photo.  Some of the photo editing options:

*Comic Touch -make your pic look cartoonish
*Face Melter – Allows you to morph, resize and squeeze photo image
*GooeyFaces – The difference between this and Face melter is that you can add your voice to the pictures. You can also change the pitch of your voice which provides some very interesting results.
*Juxtaposer – You can erase parts of a picture then put it on top of another picture. Every wonder what you mother-in-laws head would look like on a horses body?  (What? That’s just me?  Never mind)

So there you have it – my two pics for the Friday Fun Day app review.  I look forward to discovering more fun apps for my iPhone and sharing them with you in the future.  I’m now officially in the “there’s an app for that” club.

Thanks for reading!

M

Have You Done Your Conference Pre-work?

To get the most out of attending a professional conference, you’ve got to do your pre-work. I know that you’re busy. I know that you barely have time to think about the clothes you’re going to pack let alone think about doing extra work before your airplane even leaves the ground. But if you knew that by putting in a few minutes spread across each week leading up to your conference could help you make connections that will be of lasting benefit to you personally and professionally for years , would you be interested? If so, read on.

You can use LinkedIn and Twitter to break the ice with other conference attendees and get to know them a little bit. It only takes a few minutes at a time to check these two platforms and contribute to the conversations.

Doing your pre-work on LinkedIn

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you need to create one now. For me, LinkedIn has been the most useful social media platform for building my professional network. It’s easy, it’s unobtrusive, and you don’t have to log into it every day to update your status. (well, you could if you wanted too!)

Once you are on LinkedIn, join groups associated with whoever is hosting the conference. Usually the conference is put on by a professional group, and industry leader, or a group of industry leaders. To find these groups, enter keyword into the Search box, and make sure the drop down says Groups before you click the search button.

Once you are in the group, look for discussions about the conference and join in. If there isn’t a discussion about the conference, start one! Great discussion starters are:

Can anyone recommend a good hotel near the conference location?

I’m flying in to [conference city] the night before the conference. What’s the best place in town for good [your favorite food]?

Are there any speakers at [conference] that I shouldn’t miss seeing?

When people respond to you, send them a connection notice with a customized message thanking them for their response and asking a follow up question. Keep the conversations moving. Once you get to know people, you can suggest meeting up at the conference.

Doing your pre-work on Twitter

Most conferences now designate a Twitter hash tag that everyone can use to share information and talk about the conference. Find out what your conferences hash tag is. You can often find it right on the main conference page. If you don’t see it there, go to Twitter and do a search on the conference names and acronyms. For example, I’m attending ASTD International Conference and Exposition in May 2012.  The hash tag is #ASTD2012. If I didn’t know that, I might go to Twitter and search on ASTD, ASTDICE, conference, Denver, etc.  If anyone is tweeting about this conference, their tweet is likely to show up in a search on at least one of those terms. Only search on one term at a time.

Once you’ve found the hash tag, it’s time to start tweeting. You can start slow if you want, retweet something first. When you get a bit braver, reply to a tweet. And finally, start tweeting yourself. Tweet about a speaker you like, or tweet that you’re going to the conference. If you need ideas, do a search on the hashtag #conference and see what kind of things other people are saying about their conferences.  When you feel ready, start tweeting directly to people, such as:

 @KellyPhillipsNC see you in the Expo at #ASTD2012!

One important thing you MUST do is to have a clear face shot of yourself on your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Even the attendees that you don’t connect with online will be lurking and watching the conversations and Twitter stream. They’ll see your name and picture go by, and if they see you at the conference it will be much easier to start up a conversation with them because you’ll be familiar to them.

I encourage you to give it a try. Just a small amount of time and attention to pre-conference social media can turn your conference experience into a networking boosting adventure!

~Kelly

How to Use Your LinkedIn Status

• Keep it business related. LinkedIn is for business, and everything you post should be appropriate for your professional connections.
• Updates should be timely. Don’t post more than once a day, and don’t leave a status up if it’s clearly no longer relevant.
• If you’re job seeking, don’t post “I’m looking for a job.” Be a bit more subtle.You could post about job fairs you’re attending, or facts about different companies you’re researching. If you are currently employed and don’t want your boss to know you’re looking to change jobs, you can catch recruiter’s attention by posting about projects your working on, industry trends, or people you’ve met recently.
• Content recommendations: share job postings, links to interesting articles, your accomplishments, projects you’re working on, events you’re attending.

To locate the status update box, go to your LinkedIn homepage and type an update in your status box.

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Why Worry About Your LinkedIn Profile?

Photo courtesy of Fotocromo

Three Reasons to Use LinkedIn Groups