Top Tips on Creating a Powerful LinkedIn Profile

So today I'm going to talk to you about your LinkedIn profile and give you some top tips how to make it powerful, if you like. So when I first started out in recruitment, LinkedIn was in its infancy and it was out there, but people were sort of doing a thing called meeting people before they started to create their own personal brand, if you like. Your personal brand previously was known as your reputation that you built up by going to meet the people, getting to know you. They would ask about the different work you've done. Fantastic. But now it's quite different. And actually, well, you can destroy it in seconds, too. I mean, I've seen that happen a number of times where someone puts out an early advised tweet or something like that, and it's destroyed them. But the thing is, you need to be careful about it as well and needs to be protected. How do you make it powerful? And, you know, what do you do to make it powerful Now, Chris, he was one of the guests on our show in the past, on our podcast. He was a great treasurer. He was never actually looking for a role, but what he did was he built up his profile on LinkedIn and then opportunities came knocking for him. At the time, he was a treasurer. He was approached by a law firm, for instance, who said they were looking for a cfo. He's like, well, I'm not actually looking for a role. He said, no, but we've seen your profile. We like what we see and want you to come and join us. So effectively, the job came knocking for him, if you like. But as I say, it's not just about looking for a job. Mike. You might say, mike, I don't need a job. Was not just about that. It's your digital footprint, and if you neglect it, you could be in danger. You know, one of the things I found, I just, you know, go to the Windy City Summit in Chicago a number of times. I was at one of the evening parties and I was chatting away about how powerful and how easy it was to be found by people out there. One of the interns there came up, said, you know, can. I said, actually, yeah. He said, no, I've protected all mine. I'm really careful with it. I've locked everything down, careful on Facebook, because I'm applying for some big roles. I said, jeff, can you do me a favor? Could you grab me a beer, if you would? You say, yeah, Mike, no problem. Went off, grabbed me a beer, came back two minutes later. I said, jeff, that was Tijuana. I said, what? So how do you know about that? I said, well, I used a little known search tool, it's called Google. He's like, oh my goodness. And one of his friends, he'd been tagged in one of the photos and he was like, oh, I'm gonna have to get them. I said, look, that's the danger of it, mate. You need to be careful. It's social media, it's public, so you need to be careful. Okay, so let's move on to LinkedIn itself. Preconception. A lot of the time it's a job site. Yes, there are jobs on there and it's one of their major revenue streams, but it's actually a professional networking site and that's one of the key things. Now you might not have heard this next guy, but I don't know, Mr. Bezos, you know, or he's been quoted as saying the brand is what it does for you when you're not in the room. But I actually think it's a little bit more than that. I think it's not just about what they say about you when you're not in the room. I think it's what they actually think, it's what they believe and it's actually what they assume about you. If you like, this is what they need to do. So you need to be careful and you need to create, if you like, a powerful headline on your LinkedIn profile. For instance, what we don't want to see in your profile. Let's go through a couple of the don'ts, shall we? It's candy floss for the mind. It's horrible. I did this, actually a conference where I looked up the word and I said passionate, creative to the audience. How many people do they have it on there? How many had it in their CVs and resumes? Loads of handouts went up. They went out for strategic as well. Those are some of, as well as this on the screen, some of the most overused words on LinkedIn. So we came up with some alternative words, some really decent, you know, things that actually represented them that was the right way to put them out there. This is one of the key things. So you a good strong, powerful headline. But I want it to show something about you to be that you're the group treasurer for this organization, a problem solver or something. You know, actually, you know, for a great coach of other people. This is one of the things, this is what you need to be doing to actually stand out from the crowd. This is making some reside. These are some of your. So what moments if, you know, this is, why are you different to the person sitting next to you? I've done that before and I've talked to people again at some of the conferences, some of the sessions we've done, training sessions. You know, if you hand a person a piece of paper and it says exactly the same thing as them, that I'm a skilled treasury professional and passionate about my job and everything else, show them what is unique about you, what's individual, why are you special? Maybe take a moment now with, to make a note about this. You know, what makes you different. So maybe you've implemented this system and it saves some time and money and everything else and this is what you want to do. I mean, one of the things that, you know, I was talking about with someone recently, they were doing daily cash report for their company and they were talking to someone and they were talking about automating their cash reporting. Next thing they know, they said, actually, I know how we might be able to automate that. When they put this AI bot in for their team, then they rolled it out globally to the eight treasury cash centers. So every day it was taking one person in each of those centers about half an hour. And then to get out, share it, they've implemented this bot to save time for all of those people globally. And now that click on the mouse, boom, it's out there, goes out to everyone, instant snapshot. So that's the real you. That's why you're different and better to the next person. That's one of the key things. Moving on, why you need a decent photo on your profile. Now, obviously, first of all, it makes you far more likely to connect to people. If you have a decent photo. It's your, you know, your greeting card, it's your virtual business card. In some ways that, you know, you go to a bank meeting or go to a meeting with some of your clients, you can actually get to meet people. They're going to get to know you already. Oh, this is the guy in reception. This is it. Lady in reception things. Now we're going to go straight across into, you know, making sure that your profile picture is visible. So have a look at that. This is the lovely Carly, my colleague. She's going to demo for you guys. She's just going to keep clicking. Oh, hang on, here we go. So that's her setting. That's it. Settings and privacy. You follow it down. Great. And you think, hang on, my photo is showing how LinkedIn visibility. That's it. So click on there. Profile viewing, covering private Mode, so you think, oh, hang on, that's why. So let's show you in a public mode so you're not going stalking some other stuff. Okay. But hang on, it's not there. You've got to go to edit your public profile. Two places. Thanks LinkedIn for putting it. Two places. There you go. You've got your public visibility. Great. But at the moment, only your first degree connections and I want to stop it there. Hang on, go back, Carly. Only your first degree connections could see you before, so you had to be connected or if they were in your network, you know, if you're three degrees. But actually you want it down here. You want the public to be able to see you. That's right. You want all members on or off LinkedIn to be able to see you. Let's keep going from here. So she goes back to home. This is how her profile appears. There you go. You've got her photo up here showing to everybody on it. Not like some, you know, gray blob all the time. Okay, so rogues gallery. These are not. So you made your. Your photo visible, which is fantastic. The worst photos we've recreated. That's right. Selfies. Don't do a selfie. You can see is out of focus. Is that a person you want to meet and do your next treasury recruitment for you is to represent you. Is that a banking guy you want to. No, no, of course. You know. You got the jailbird. Yeah. Took that photo. Remember, to this day. There's me again. Look at me, I'm so cool and stuff like that. No, just got out of jail, you know, call a friend. No, don't pass go. Don't collect £200. The Thinker. Yeah. Extreme close up. Yeah. You had to fit me in widescreen there for those big cheeks. Sorry about that. The joker. Yeah. That photo should only ever been seen on Facebook and probably not even there, to be honest. And that shirt. Yeah. Not only has this seen better days, we do hire it out for parties, bar mitzvahs, whenever you want to use it. But no. Next. Oh, the close up. We saw it and we're thinking, really, you want people to connect to you. You don't. It just. It's just a bit weird, to be honest. The creepy, arty pose that actually came from a marketing director. Just looking up, everyone said, I won't be so funny. No, squashed ahead. Yeah. So you upload your photo, then you decide, you know what? I can't be bothered to look at it on my phone because that's so Difficult, isn't it, to look on LinkedIn on your ph. No. Just take a few seconds, upload it, then look at another device, make sure that the it doesn't change the settings and stuff. And if it does, go back in there and change it and it will sit there 247 representing you. And you want to look like that on widescreen. Old photo of my son, a few years older now. Yeah, family man, lovely and stuff like that. But that's not you, you know, it's not really, you know, the professional image. You want to go, you know. Yeah. But you want people to connect to you. You know, he can get his own LinkedIn profile in later years when he grows up a bit. People ask me, do I need recommendations on my profile? Yes, you do, because everyone trusts them. We ourselves as a firm have been trying to push for a lot more of our testimonials because we get them. People say, oh, thanks for helping me find a role or helping us recruit and things like that. And I was talking to Joe who works with me in the office as he was struggling to get his head around it a little bit. I said to him, joe, have you ever used that little known website? That's right, Amazon. And he's like, yeah, yeah I do. Said, so when you go on there, do you ever look at the star rating? Yeah, I always check those out. Joe, can I ask, have you actually met that person? No, I said. But you trust what they say? Yes, I do. Said, there you go. So get out there and make sure you get those recommendations because people like to believe their peers, they like to believe if you're buying that product, why would they buy it and everything else. So get those recommendations. Now what I would say is try and get it maybe if you're in a work situation, maybe from your boss or someone that works for you, you know, so they can comment on what you like if you're commenting. Yeah, it's all very well to get one from maybe one of your peers and so sitting next to you, but I think it's more valuable to get someone that you might coach or be trained by, as it were. So that's one of the key things to think about. What else should you be doing on LinkedIn? Connecting and wisely and personalize your message. Now who are you going to connect with? Only connect with them, I would say if they can help you, it's, it's about getting those right people. First thing, don't ever connect. I would say from your mobile phone because you can't personalize the invite most of the time and make sure you address the message. I'm. I'm tired of the number of times that I just get an impersonal message. Connect, Boom, connect to this. I'm like, what? Who are you? I don't know you, or have I met you, really? So reference something between the two of you. You know, maybe you want to take it further. You might suggest to them, it'd be great to meet you next time you're downtown or just schedule a call, deepen that connection. If you don't do that and you just send these generalized connections, you're never going to build your network. And also, you know, worst case, it will get you barred from LinkedIn, because they hate that sort of thing. Okay, moving on. So you need to be the promoter of yourself. You need to showcase what you've done, because nobody else is going to do this for you. And remember, LinkedIn is a free tool, so maybe you've won awards. Tell everybody, shout about it. And remember, pictures are better. You know, not just presentations. But put it on there. Make sure you're doing, you know, some good stuff. Just, you know, show what you're doing. This is an old profile of mine. I wrote an ebook and stuff like that. Given a speech, you know, copy and paste the YouTube link. People actually, you know, appreciate that. You know, that's really going to make you stand out from different people. I hope that's helped you today. There are other. We're doing lots of other videos and things like that. We do lots of ones about networking in the real world. What you need to be doing and how do you need to present yourself. That'd be one of our other ones coming up. Hope that all helps. Thanks for your time today, and I look forward to placing you in your next role or recruiting the next member of your treasury team very soon. Many thanks.