The LinkedIn Challenge, Part II: Successfully Managing Your Account

What can you do to manage your LinkedIn account, and also improve your brand and professional career? Here are some tips to follow.

Review other profiles

One of the best LinkedIn profiles that I have reviewed belongs to an IT executive who was one of the first people to ask me to join LinkedIn in 2006. She has a professional photo, more than 500 connections, and a well-written summary, and lists her entire work experience, honors, awards, and education. She currently is a SVP/CIO in the healthcare industry, and has some unique additions to her profile.

• Received 17 recommendations
• Written 23 recommendations
• Received 240 endorsements in 10 categories
• Joined 30 IT and healthcare related groups

Check out other CIOs you admire, colleagues and even your boss to get some ideas for improving your profile.

Connections, recommendations, endorsements and groups

Your goal should be to connect to 500-plus contacts on LinkedIn this year. It broadens your network to millions of members and allows your profile to show a highly regarded number of connections. Having only 19 or 43 contacts would be a poor example of a profile.

Recommendations are wonderful to receive, but you may not feel comfortable giving them out. If you are approached by a contact to do a recommendation on LinkedIn, do not feel obligated to complete one. You can let the person know that you only doing certain recommendations or not doing them at all. I have had to refuse several requests in the past from CIOs because of the advisory nature of the recruiting business.

Endorsements on LinkedIn are a new feature that lets users “endorse” the skills and expertise of others. These endorsements are testimonials of your expertise. If you are lucky enough to receive endorsements, the names of the endorsers are publicly displayed on your profile. This feature can be turned off; and not publicly displayed, if you prefer.

Join key industry and CIO groups to network with contacts and stay in touch with trends. You may have to edit your email updates so you are not flooded with extra emails.

Privacy Controls

The true management of your LinkedIn account is through the “Settings” feature near your name in the upper right hand top of the page. Managing your privacy will allow you to be open and seen, or be more private. Below are the privacy controls to make those decisions.

• Turn on/off activity broadcasts — option to display to all or not to everyone
• Select who can see your activity feed — either everyone or “only me”
• Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile — your name, title and company; an anonymous profile with title and company, or anonymous
• Select who can see your connections — either everyone or “only me”
• Show/hide “Viewer of this profile also viewed” box — option to display or not

So consider these pieces of advice, and use your LinkedIn account to your advantage and make improvements to it.

[To read Part I of this post, click here.]