Keeping your LinkedIn profile active is a lot like keeping a baseball glove worn-in and ready to use. When I was growing up playing baseball, my dad always told me to oil up my glove and use it regularly. Otherwise, it would get stiff and make it hard to catch fly balls and grounders. Catching these fly balls and grounders would be critical in a game to maintain the favor and friendship of my teammates! Little did I know my dad was teaching me a LinkedIn lesson in the 1970′s!
An active LinkedIn profile is similar to that glove. If you don’t keep it active, then you will not be regularly connecting with your network, and, therefore, might fall out of favor of your constituency!
Here are 5 easy ways to keep your LinkedIn profile “oiled” up to you can catch all of your opportunities!
5 Ways To Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Active And Relevant
- Update your LinkedIn status once or twice daily; once at the beginning of the day and another at the end of the day. Factbrowser reports that 77% of LinkedIn members use the site to research people and companies, 69% to reconnect with past business associates and 50% to build new networks, so regular updates will help you get found! If it sounds like this scheduling and updating is a lot of work, it’s not. Use a tool like HootSuite to schedule your twice-daily updates from curated sources, like the Wall Street Journal or MarketingThink.com. This tool makes it easier to plan your communication strategy from the comfort of your couch! (No … two daily updates are not too much. No one has EVER complained about my volume of updates!)
- Participate in 3-5 key LinkedIn groups 2-3 times a week. LinkedIn reports hosting 1.5 million groups, however, you can only join 50 of them. Even with 50 groups to join, you will never be able to activity engage in all of them. So, pick the most relevant ones and maintain a contributing and consultative presence. Your contribution formula should be 10 consultative posts for every 1 “sales-ish” post. Participating in 3-5 LinkedIn groups can get hectic, too. You don’t have to log into LinkedIn every time you check on a group since you can use tools like Flipboard and HootSuite to check the activity.
- Own the conversation in 1 key LinkedIn group. It’s easy to commit to trying to be an expert, thought leader, or active participant in one group; hopefully one that is thriving and full of other great contacts and potential business for you. Active participation in a group like this will increase the likelihood a growing LinkedIn network, and we all know that a bigger network is a better network!
- Refresh your LinkedIn profile’s headline, summary and job experience quarterly. LinkedIn reports that a complete profile increases your chances to be found by 40%. So, if yours is not completed then get that part completed today. LinkedIn is keyword driven, so running your profile like a PPC campaign will help you get found and make you more relevant when you are found. When refreshing your high-profile LinkedIn profile components (headline, summary, job experience) make sure to rethink if you can update keywords that are being searched for today, instead of how they were searched last year or last quarter.
- Like, comment and share your network’s updates daily. By regularly engaging with your network’s updates, you demonstrate that you are an active and invested community member. Like a news update, share an interesting post or comment on someone’s new promotion! This activity is visible by your network and your contact’s secondary network. Being active with your community will open you up to endless connections and possibilities!
Do you have another way that you use to keep your LinkedIn profile vibrant and relevant? If so, please share below. Or, contact me directly on MarketingThink.com, on LinkedIn, or on Twitter @GerryMoran.
If you are looking for other ways in which to keep your LinkedIn network “the best that it can be”, then you might be interested in:
- Create the perfect LinkedIn profile
- Run your LinkedIn profile like a PPC campaign
- Use LinkedIn invites to deepen your relationships
- Measure the success of your LinkedIn activity
- Have a LinkedIn profile picture that does not scare your network away!
Keeping an active and alive LinkedIn profile is much easier than keeping a glove worn-in and in a ready-to-catch fly ball state! And, it’s a lot more comfortable too since my dad used to make me put my glove under my mattress and sleep on it to help keep it really broken in! Here’s to you catching more LinkedIn opportunities with an active network!