Build your online presence to support your professional career - STEP 1: LinkedIn
You're always selling something. Yourself to a new job or to a new position within the current company, your product or service to potential customers or clients, your idea to your boss or to your peers within the same team, or maybe other side of the world.
If you don't have at least some kind of agenda or cause that you want to promote, just going like a dead fish with the stream, you're most probably not even reading this anyways.
A great product sells itself, they say. But what if there are multiple great products available, and in this connected world there usually is? How do you make sure your clients can find you, or your product, get interested, and contact you? A well-built online presence, personal branding, alone is not going solve that. But its a good start.
This how-to is written mainly for the people in the tech business, who quite often, to put it nicely, have the biggest gap between their capabilities and how they present and promote themselves.
It's worth keeping in mind that in marketing, including branding, there is not one absolute right way to do things. This how-to represents my current views, and is evolving with time.
Comments, feedback, contributions, and improvements more than welcome!
Thanks,
Ilkka
Each page has multiple sections, each section header is a check-list item: "Do this..."
Each section text provides additional information (explanation, tips, templates, links, ...) aimed to help to accomplish that particular check-list item. If and when something is unclear, please let me know or help contribute to this guide.
0. Before we start, LinkedIn for Dummies (yes, including YOU!)
2. Make your personal branding personal
3. Don't ruin everything with wrong Settings
4. Smile! Your profile photo matters more than you think
5. Is "Meaningless Title at Neverheard Company" your Headline of choice?
7. Your Work Experience is more than just titles and companies listed
11. Recommendations do matter. A lot.
13. Activity - I know what you did last summer...
When you've went through all pages, the full check-list, you can give yourself a "LinkedIn like a Pro Badge" , and naturally add that your profile ;)
Q: Why on Github?
A: The main reason is learning and testing how it works for developing non-code documentation.
Q: Why you're using the term "client"?
A: Just a habit from consulting business.