Turning off update alerts

Regardless of the benefits, there may be times when you don’t want people to know you are making changes to your LinkedIn profile. For example, if you are updating your LinkedIn profile in preparation of a new job search, it’s best your employer isn’t notified of such a change. Or you may be giving your profile page a complete overhaul, and you don’t want to bombard your network with information about each and every change. Luckily, LinkedIn provides the ability to turn off the activity updates associated with profile changes and even delete your recent activity notifications.

To turn off LinkedIn update alerts, follow these steps:

1. Click the Me icon from LinkedIn’s main navigation bar.
2. Click Settings & Privacy from the drop-down menu that appears.
3. Click the Privacy tab.
4. Click “Change” next to Sharing profile edits, as shown in Figure 4-1.
5. Toggle the Yes/No button so that it reads, “No.”

Turning off profile updates doesn’t turn off your profile visibility. It’s the notification of your edits that is turned off; your profile is still on and any changes that you save are visible to visitors of your profile.

Manually removing updates

Did you get excited and start updating your LinkedIn profile without turning off your activity update notifications? Now these changes are on your recent activity screen and quickly hitting your connections’ newsfeeds. Don’t worry! You can manually remove these updates even after they are broadcast out. Here’s how:

1. Click the Me icon from LinkedIn’s main navigation bar.

2. Under Manage in the drop-down menu that appears, click Posts & Activity.

   Your recent activity appears.

3. Hover your mouse pointer over the update you want to delete and click the More Options icon (the three dots located in the upper-right corner of the update).

4. Click Delete post, as shown in Figure 4-2.

   The selected update is deleted from the Recent Activity log on your profile.

Knowing when to allow update alerts

Once your profile is optimized and you are ready to unleash it into the world, go back to Privacy & Settings and toggle the Sharing profile edits button to Yes. Don’t worry; all of the updates that you recently made to your profile are not broadcasted out to your connections. Only new changes to your profile since toggling the Sharing profile edits option to Yes appear on your connections’ LinkedIn home page newsfeeds and your Recent Activity page.

You may feel the temptation to keep those update notifications set to No all the time, but I highly suggest allowing update alerts. Often when people see you made changes to your profile, they are compelled to visit your profile. Most people want more views to their LinkedIn profile, and this is such an easy way to drive traffic to it. Don’t feel shy. Your network wants to stay up to date on your professional career.

Once you are finished updating your profile, toggle the Notify Your Network button to Yes. Go back to your profile and make a single change to trigger an update. My suggestion is to edit the title of your current position. This way you are now alerting your network that a change has occurred, but you are not inundating them with a lot of changes.

Using your name

When choosing the text for your customized URL, don’t worry about getting creative. Choose your name because it is your profile. Whatever you do, do not use your company’s name for the URL. Your public URL is a permanent link to your LinkedIn profile. Companies are not permanent, and although you can change your URL, old links with the old URL may exist for some time. Create a URL that is permanent by using the one thing that is permanent for you: your name.

Oh no, my name is taken!

Unfortunately, most common names are already taken. When this happens, you simply must find an alternative way of stating your name.

Pretend your name is David Jones. Here are some ideas of re-phrasing your name that might not yet be taken:

• First initial and last name: DJones
• First name, middle initial, and last name: DavidXJones
• First and middle initial and last name: DXJones

I highly discourage users from adding numbers to the end of their customized URLs. When I see a number at the end of a URL, I think the person is just one of many. A number gives the feeling of an assembly line of professionals rather than a unique brand. When your name is taken and there is no other way of stating it, utilize a prefix rather than a numerical suffix.

Here are some ideas:

• ToDavidJones
• GoDavidJones
• ImDavidJones
• theDavidJones
• SeeDavidJones
• YourDavidJones
• VisitDavidJones

Marketing your public profile URL

The beauty of your LinkedIn profile is that when people visit, they can connect with you. By connecting with you, they are subscribing to your activity feed. When you post an activity update or blog, they receive a notification. By driving people to your profile and asking them to connect, you are ensuring a long relationship with them rather than a once-and-done visit.

There are a number of areas you can place your public profile link:

• Brochures
• Business cards
• Email signature
• Facebook profile
• Letterhead
• Resume
• Sales literature
• Tattoo across your forehead (just teasing!)
• Twitter bio
• Website

Dealing with a lack of a current position

When you are out of work and looking for a new job, having a strong, complete LinkedIn profile is important. You want your profile to rank high in search results when a recruiter or hiring manager is looking for candidates.

Having a profile that is at Expert level and not an All-Star won’t decimate your chances of getting found or finding a new job, but it is certainly annoying. I often hear from job seekers wanting to know what they can do to obtain a 100% complete, All-Star profile.

In this situation, you may decide to add a current position that states you are looking for your next job opportunity. In Figure 4-8, you can see what adding a “seeking new opportunity” experience looks like.

Adding a current experience works fabulously; however, I must caution you that adding a current experience also cloaks your unemployed status. I have found that recruiters are divided. Some don’t mind seeing a current experience reading “Unemployed.” Others find an unemployed current experience devious. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer; you must decide what makes the most sense for you.

Additionally, LinkedIn sends work anniversary notifications to your network. Be warned; there is a chance that if you are unemployed for a year, your network will be prompted to congratulate you for your one-year anniversary at “Looking for my next opportunity.”

Adding a school without a degree

Whether you opted to not attend college or decided instead to hire someone who did, your profile is also stuck at the Expert strength level. Luckily, there are a few things you can do. My recommendation is to bypass the school list LinkedIn provides and write in your own. If you want to stay on the up and up, enter your high school information. On the other hand, you can get a little cheeky and add a school where you took a class. I have had clients list Sur La Table, Sip and Paint, and The Esteemed School of Hard Knocks. When adding a non-accredited institution of higher learning, leave the degree field empty; it’s not a required field.

Expanding your network

The area of the LinkedIn profile that causes the most difficulty in getting to All-Star status is connecting with 50 people. It’s important to have a strong network so you can earn an All-Star profile, but a strong network is also the backbone of the site.

Connections are key to your success on LinkedIn. When you search LinkedIn for people, the results are comprised of people within your LinkedIn network who meet your search criteria. When people search for you or someone like you, you will appear in their search results as long as you reside within their LinkedIn network. The more people you have in your network, the higher you rank in LinkedIn search, and the more often you are found.

LinkedIn uses connections to provide additional insight unlike any other social network. LinkedIn doesn’t just show with whom you are directly connected. LinkedIn unveils how you are connected to other people.

Your LinkedIn Network consists of first-, second-, and third-degree connections. These degrees describe how a person is connected to another person. A first-degree connection is someone you have added to your network or someone who has added you to their network. A second-degree connection is a person connected to your first-degree connection but not directly connected to you. If a person is a second-degree connection, that means you have a mutual connection in common. A third-degree connection is someone who is connected to a second-degree connection. If a person is a third-degree connection, they know someone who knows a person you know directly. A person is considered outside of your network if you do not share any connections within three degrees of that person.

To truly leverage LinkedIn and get to All-Star profile strength, you must get your online network to reflect your offline network. Here are some ideas of people you can invite to connect on LinkedIn:

• Alumni
• Current colleagues
• Current employer
• Family
• Friends
• Past colleagues
• Past employers

LinkedIn provides a tool to make connecting easy. It’s called People You May Know. Rather than wracking your brain trying to come up with people to connect, the People You May Know screen provides suggestions based upon commonalities.

LinkedIn shows you the name, current job title, and profile picture of people who you may know. They base these suggestions off of similar profile information such as working at the same company or going to the same school. LinkedIn also looks at the contacts you’ve imported from your email and mobile address books and offers profiles with the same contact information.

To use People You May Know to help expand your network, follow these steps:

1. Open your LinkedIn profile.
2. From LinkedIn’s main navigation bar click My Network.
3. Scroll down to “People you may know” to view the connection suggestions, as shown in Figure 4-9.

4. When you see someone you know and would like to add to your network, click the Connect button.

   Clicking the Connect button immediately sends a default LinkedIn connection request.

You cannot personalize the invitation to connect message from the People You May Know page. If you would like to personalize your invitation to connect message, do the following:

1. Hover your mouse pointer over the person’s name and click.

   This takes you to that person’s LinkedIn profile.

2. Click the Connect button.

   A pop-up menu appears prompting you to either add a note or send the invitation immediately without a personalized note.

   If the Connect button doesn’t appear in the profile introduction section, you may have to click the More Options button located below the background photo and then choose Connect from the drop-down list, as shown in Figure 4-10.

3. Click Add a note.

   Although you can send an invitation to connect, it’s best to always add a personalized note.

4. In the “You can customize this invitation” field, personalize the invitation as you wish (see Figure 4-11).
5. Click the Send Invitation button.

By expanding your network, you will turn up more often in searches, have more views to your profile, and find more opportunities via LinkedIn. Next, we take a look at setting up your digital calling card.