10 ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile

“LinkedIn is a powerful tool” is something we hear over and over again from marketing, social media and human resources professionals. I recently had the chance to attend two presentations on this tool, one with Pedro Fonseca, from Kaksimedia and the other one with Gala Gil Amat at TLC 2016, in Warsaw. Here are 10 tips that might be useful for people working in translation:

• Add a professional photo, a headline and the industry you work in. Try to be original and use keywords. Ok, this shouldn’t be big news.
• It’s possible to see who has viewed your profile. This wasn’t news to me, but apparently most people thought this was an exclusive feature of paid accounts. It’s not. You just have to follow the steps below to access all kinds of information on the people who  have been visiting your profile recently.

Now, the big news (at least it was for me):

• You can have your profile in two different languages.

• You can switch the order of all sections. For example, if you work in the translation industry, it might make sense to have the language section before the rest.

• You can (and should) also put skills in a different order. People tend to lay more emphasis on the skills that appear first, as they assume these are the most important for the profile owner.

• Do not endorse or recommend other people light-heartedly. And mutual recommendations do not make a good impression either.
• Now, if you already have a LinkedIn profile and decide to freshen it up, turn off the update notifications feature. Update everything you want and leave one thing out. Then, turn on the update feature and update just that one last thing. This way, your network will only be notified once that your profile has been updated, instead of receiving countless warnings for every change you make.

• Set getting more than 500 contacts as a goal, but don’t add lots of connections all at once or add them haphazardly and don’t add people there seems to be no reason for you to connect with.

• You can use InMail to contact people outside your circles, but beware: every unanswered InMail you send will have a cost.

• Rapportive is a plugin for Chrome which you can integrate with Gmail. It gives you information about the LinkedIn profile (and other social media) of everyone who sends you an e-mail.

Did you know all these features already? It would be great to hear your thoughts on this and, perhaps, add to this list.