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LinkedIn Background image changes!

Do you have a LinkedIn Background image?

My favorite social media tool recently changed the way the LinkedIn background image appears on your public profile. I mean recently. I taught a class on May 7 and it looks different today!!

It is a good idea to include an image on your background. If you sell products or services, make it a marketing type image. If you are in job search mode, try to find an image that reflects what it is that you do. When I teach LinkedIn workshops, I suggest to attendees that they create a word cloud to find / represent their key words. That word cloud image might make the perfect LinkedIn background image for your profile.

The image size they suggest is 1584 pixels by 396 pixels. If you have an image created for a YouTube or Google background, the image is about the right size. As you can see from the image, your profile picture covers the lower left corner of the image, so take that into consideration when you are designing something new.

I write and teach about LinkedIn. In my opinion it is the best tool to network and connect for business. Using this image and a professional looking head shot will boost your views. You need to also pay attention to the keywords you use in your profile and where. Interested in an upcoming workshop for job seekers? Check this site – Harper College Eventbrite

If you would like to read other articles about LinkedIn, check out these:

I am happy to work with you one-on-one to make your profile show up higher in search results organically. Consider this when searching for a new position or promoting your products and services.

While it is just something nice to have, you can make your LinkedIn background image work to your advantage. Contact me if you need more assistance.

Stay Connected, no matter who it is

How do you stay connected with your acquaintances?

A few weeks back I attended a high school class reunion. It has been about 15 years since the last one I attended.

I arrived after having looked through my high school yearbook, checking on a directory to see who from my class lived near or far. Needless to say, I didn’t recognize everyone. What did help is Facebook. I was able to be in contact with several of my classmates over the past few years, so recognition of those people came pretty easily.

After the reunion, I looked up a few people with whom I was able to spend a few minutes speaking on LinkedIn to connect there. I am sure I will eventually look for others as time permits.

The whole point of this article is this:

Social media did not exist when I was in school. For that matter, neither did the internet, and computers were in their infancy.
Networking meant shaking a lot of hands and making a bunch of phone calls.
Your network is broader than you think.

How will you stay connected with all of those people, especially some with whom you may have lost contact? Using social media is probably one of the easiest answers. If you are trying to reach a particular person, look at your network to see how you might be connected to them. When I teach LinkedIn my adage is;

“It’s not about who you know, but who they know.”

Being able to leverage your network to your advantage is, what I feel, the entire purpose of social media. Get connected, build relationships, share useful information, pay it forward, and don’t over-sell.

Remember the theory of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? It was originally created in 1929 and popularized in 1990 and has spurred things like the Bacon foundation at sixdegrees.org and the six degrees of the Dali Lama. If you aren’t familar, the theory says that you are connected by six steps to every person in the world. I think that with social media, the gap will decrease tremendously. If you need to learn how to close the gap on social media, give me a jingle.

How many LinkedIn Connections do you have?

LinkedIn Connections help broaden your networking reach!

It is real easy to tell how many LinkedIn Connections you have if you have less than 500. The number shows up on the headline area of your personal profile. But what happens once you reach that magical 500+ number that most people strive to achieve?

Why do you need so many connections?

Part of what makes LinkedIn so useful for anyone is the fact that someone knows someone that might need your services or product. The greater the number of connections, the further your reach is in the LinkedIn network. 30% of the 360m users (as of this writing) are in United States. How can you reach the person you need to reach if you network is small and closely held. Today for LinkedIn to work, you need a minimum of 500 connections. How can you find out how many more than 500 you have?

It is more difficult to find out what that number is. One of the previous versions of LinkedIn used to have the listing of how many contacts you had on the right hand side of your status update stream. When they moved the Home page around, they lost that bit of information. Now you have to go to your Connections page, click on the settings and find out how many contacts you have there. It will also tell you how many of your email contacts are in your network as well.

Watch this brief video to see where you need to look to find out how many LinkedIn Connections you have.

Build Your Network

How can you build your network without having to physically network?

I just read a LinkedIn post from William Arruda advocating that you accept every invitation that comes your way on LinkedIn. Read it here While I totally agree in principle with what he says, I do understand people’s reticence to actually doing accepting anyone and everyone.

For an experiment, I went to my invitation box. It had 328 invitations in it. Almost every single one of them was not personalized. That means that either the person just clicked the connect button too quickly, they thought I would know who they were, or they were just inviting someone from the people I might know section. I did find a few people that had personalized their invitation that I may have overlooked during a busy time period, but for the most part they were generic invitations.

To follow through on the advice from Mr. Arruda, I decided that I was going to connect with almost all of the people whose invitations were awaiting my response. I added about 170 or so people to my network in about 20 minutes. I received a response from 2 of them relatively promptly, so I could begin to build a relationship with them right away.

One of the reasons that I didn’t automatically connect with the people is because I like to tag my connections for future reference. Read more here. With this in mind, I tagged all of them with a tag that let me know they were “on-line only” connections.

Another reason I like to keep at least some of these generic invitations in my in-box is that when I teach LinkedIn classes, I like to show people how to “reply don’t accept yet. Read more here.

My mantra when I teach is – It’s not about who you know, but who they know. The broader your network is, the more likely you will be able to connect with a potential employee, employee, or new business connection.

Whatever you choose to do with your LinkedIn connections, it is the best way to build your network without actually having to network!

I invite you to share your thoughts.

LinkedIn – Top 5 Tips – Photos

Whether you are trying to expand your business network or searching for a new job, LinkedIn can be your “go-to” social media platform.

When performing a social media audit for a new client one of the first things I look at is the presence they have on LinkedIn. Whether you are B2B or B2C (business-to-business or business to consumer) you should have a profile on LinkedIn for you AND your company. Your personal profile is your on-line resume and connection file. It is a living representation of your career and should represent you. There is a specific area to represent your company.

My question to you is – Do you use LinkedIn or just collect connections?

To help you move past the “collecting connections” phase, I offer my Top 5 LinkedIn Tips. We will be covering these over the next five articles.

Photo – There are two schools of thought on this option. The detractors feel that having a photo of yourself can lead to discrimination. My philosophy is put on a smile and snap a headshot that is professional in appearance (doesn’t have to be professionally done) that is tight and well-lit with limited background distractions.

One of the benefits of having a good photo on your profile is instant recognition. With a good photo, gone are the days of discussing what you will be wearing or your appearance when have a meeting scheduled with a new client or a prospect for the first time. If you take a look at their LinkedIn profile, you will be able to recognize and greet them right away.

Let’s spend a minute on what I mean by limited background distractions. Plain backgrounds work best. Bookshelves, an American Flag, or perhaps your “tidy” desk are all acceptable. What is not considered professional is your kids (unless you own a daycare), your dog (unless you are a dog groomer or veterinarian), and especially you in a tiki-hut with an umbrella drink in front of you. Don’t laugh to hard, I actually had an invitation from someone with a photo like that.

Try to have the photo be close enough to allow facial recognition. Group shots and further out than than the waist really don’t achieve the purpose of the photo. Branded images are, if they are used in your marketing materials are fine, but logos should be reserved for the company pages. Speaking of branded images – you should use the same headshot across all of your professional platforms. It helps with your personal branding. Differentiate your profiles by your LinkedIn image vs. you and the family on your personal Facebook page.

Worried about discrimination? Caricatures or black and white images help eliminate the representation of age.

Check back over the next several weeks as we discuss the other 4 top tips:
Complete | Connections | Invitations | Participate

Tag: network