After exploring the many avenues of networking and advertisement available for free on LinkedIn, now let’s take a look into the most personal part, your profile.

As with any open social networking site you want to take care in putting together your profile. It will help to showcase not only yourself but the companies you represent.

Where should I start?

The first item someone will see when they land on your profile (or even when they see you post within groups, find you in a search, and/or more) is your picture. Making sure to post something that is memorable yet professional is key. Having a higher quality photo is important as well.

What else should I include?

After this, you get a chance to post a type of resume with work history. This is your time to shine to either perspective clients and/or employers. As you put together your current and previous work history, you not only show what jobs you did in the past but get to go into detail and showcase your true skill set. Listing awards and special acknowledgements really helps to separate you from others as well.

Should I add something about my personality?

You are also able to write a summary about yourself and list your specialties. It is important to understand that neither of these areas is to list previous job experiences or the like. This is where you can point out personality traits, interests, as well as other possibly beneficial information that otherwise would not have a home.

Check back next week as we wrap up LinkedIn profiles and share how to get great recommendations.

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When managing a company page on LinkedIn possibly, one of the most important resources is the recently built-in analytic system. Many companies have been offering this as a service for a fee, but times have changed. Now offered to its users free of charge, LinkedIn provides companies with the ability to see who, what, when, and where built right in. With the easy to read/see charts running a LinkedIn campaign has never been easier.

Page Views

Broken down on a monthly scale you can track page views, both on a specific level and on an individual as well. If your advertising on LinkedIn is working, this will tell you where and what content people are enjoying. If it is not, it also tells you what they are not enjoying. It also shows you how you may compare to similar companies.

Unique Visitors

Broken down in the similar monthly form as page views, you are able to see just how many of those views are by separate users. This tells you how many are revisits your page possibly has. Depending on the product/service you are marketing your wanted results will vary.

Clicks

This area shows you clicks based on the links on any given page, which ones are clicked the most and the least. This is helpful because it can tie into your website analytics which is a whole other monster all together.

Members following and member visits

This gives you great input, it allows you to see what number of your visits and followers are already members of LinkedIn. This will allow you to see if your advertising efforts are still best spent on LinkedIn alone or if it’s worth exploring other avenues as well.

LinkedIn in the end is just like any other social media outlet, it takes work and dedication to understand, watch and learn. It is also ever changing. No single marketing plan works for all companies, or even groups of companies. What it all boils down to, if you want your marketing to be successful, you need to seriously consider hiring a professional. Doing it on your own is great and works best for small start-ups, but eventually you have to make the financial leap if you want big numbers.

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Picking up where we left off, we are going to explore the other areas of LinkedIn’s company pages. Next we will explore the other components beyond the general overview.

If you are the manager of your own company’s page, then you will see four sections total: Overview (which we have already covered), Careers, Products & Services, and then Analytics. If you are not the owner of the company page, then the only item missing from the list above would be the Analytics tab and/or any of the above that has no content.

First exploring the two that are visible to the public sections, they seem to be rather self-explanatory. But let’s look a little deeper and see why they are important.

The Careers section is great for growing companies; you are able to advertise a new position for your company and have a possible avenue to find gifted talent. After all if an individual finds the job posting via LinkedIn rather than just the newspaper, it does show a level of motivation.

The Products and Services section, however, is where your company can shine. Just as individuals can recommend your company, or you, they can also recommend a specific product or service you offer. This is some great advertisement if done correctly. It gives your business more reputation while also telling your audience what you do. This is probably one of the best ways to market on LinkedIn. But of course, there is no single method that works.

Check back again next week as we take a look at Analytics on the company pages to better understand what they mean and how they can help you advertise on LinkedIn.

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More and more of us, entrepreneurs and small business owners, are using social networking as a marketing tool. Did you know that Virtual Assistant services include creating your profiles in social networking forums? Creating profiles is very time-consuming and, again, one of the benefits of working with a Virtual Assistant is to handle these types of projects for you. The time that you gain can be used to focus on the services you provide and/or the products you sell.

Speaking of social networking forums, there are two forums, which I feel are beneficial for entrepreneurs and small business owners. One that I have recently discovered is Sta.rtUp.Biz located at http://sta.rtup.biz/. It is a forum designed specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners. The other forum, Shout Life, is geared towards Christian business owners, Christian leaders, and coaches of Christian leaders. It can be found at http://shoutlife.com/.

If you don’t have time to set up your profiles and customize your profile pages, outsource it to your Virtual Assistant. Did you know?

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