Getting LinkedIn

LinkedIn has always been a bit of anomaly for me, a strange beast if you will. Or, more accurately how I might use it to connect and communicate with businesses better. Earlier this year in May at unGEEKed elite Milwaukee Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) gave away a nice tip regarding the headline for your LinkedIn profile and how you wanted that to be more than just a job title, you wanted it to be stacked with words that described you as this is what recruiters will see first. At the time I was setting up a basic LinkedIn profile of my own so I took his advice and I gave that shot and so far it seems to be working okay for me.

Another thing I tried involves the principle of Adapt Don’t Adopt. What this principle teaches us is to study people who inspire us or whom we admire, or who we just think are getting it right. Study how they do things. And then figure out how you can adapt what they’re doing to fit in with how you do things. If try to to adopt exactly how someone else is doing something chances are it won’t work for you for obvious reasons like you’re not them, they don’t talk or write like you, you don’t think like they do, and so on. So, I looked at LinkedIn profiles of people I know, at the profiles of all my connections, but I also checked out the profiles of people I didn’t know who were thought leaders in my industry and of various famous people Guy Kawasaki.

One thing I noticed with the profiles that resonated with me is that in the Summary section they told me a story of sorts about how they got to where they are and where they hope to go. Not an easy task when you think about it because you only have something like 250 + words you’re limited to. It wasn’t just sterile facts, they’d taken the time to craft an actual narrative that gave me a sense of who they are as an individual.

For instance, right now Guy Kawasaki is a 3rd degree connection for me, so not likely someone I’ll run into in the near future and meet in person. On the personal side, Guy sounds like someone I’d love to spend a day talking to, or maybe having a beer with and just chatting — provided Guy drinks beer, I could be talked into tea or whatever his beverage of choice was though —, but when it comes to business, Guy is someone I study because of what he’s accomplished and because of his willingness to tell you how he got there.

So like I said, LinkedIn is a bit of a strange beast to me still and I am still learning my way around. I’ve got a favorite feature or two, one I just learned about status updates yesterday. So, I’d like to ask you that if you could give me one tip / piece of advice on how I can make better or more efficient use of LinkedIn what would your tip / piece of advice be? Have you got a favorite example that Illustrates this that I and someone else might benefit from? Have you got a favorite feature? And if so, what makes it a favorite? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.