Configuring Profile and Account Settings
You’re in complete control of your LinkedIn profile. You can edit your profile at any time. Remember it’s your story, so set up your profile and account in the ways that best communicate that story to your audience.
To modify your settings, log in to your LinkedIn account and click on your name in the top-right corner of your window; a drop-down menu appears. Click on the Settings link from that menu to open the main settings page. As shown in Figure 3.10, on the left side of this page is a box with quick links to complete common tasks such as changing your password or email address.
In the lower-left corner of Figure 3.10 is a box with four tabs: Profile; Email Preferences; Groups, Companies & Applications; and Account. This is where all of your various settings can be found. By default, the Profile tab is selected and visible.
Figure 3.10: The Settings page is where you can customize all configurations for your profile and account.
Profile
There are a wide variety of settings you can configure to make your LinkedIn profile look the way you want it to. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the different settings. You can’t break anything, and reverting to previous settings is as easy as a click of the mouse.
As shown in Figure 3.10, the Profile tab offers a list of links. When you click on those links, you can modify the following:
Turn on/off your activity broadcasts: Just click the check box to let people know when you edit your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies on LinkedIn. When this setting is checked and turned on, all of your activity updates will appear in your LinkedIn activity feed. This is a great way to stay on your connections’ radar screens.
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Select who can see your activity feed: If you don’t want anyone to see your LinkedIn activities at all, you can modify this setting by selecting Only You from the provided drop-down menu. For greater levels of exposure, however, you can select to make your activity feed visible to only your connections, your entire network, or everyone. For maximum exposure, choose the Everyone setting.
Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile: Depending on your LinkedIn goals, you might want to change this setting in your profile. You can select to make your name and headline visible to members whose profiles you view, or you can choose to show an industry-specific anonymous profile where only your industry and title will be visible. You can also choose to be totally anonymous, so other members won’t see any information about you when you view their profiles. Again, for the most growth and opportunities, display your name and headline.
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Select who can see your connections: You can allow all of your connections to view your entire list of connections or you can keep your list of connections private by choosing the Only You option when configuring this profile setting. Keep in mind, mutual connections will always be visible to members in your network. Furthermore, one of the primary purposes of social networking is networking, so making connections visible to others is an important part of meeting new people and building new relationships based on mutual goals and interests. With that in mind, it is recommended that you make your connections visible.
Change your profile photo & visibility: This link provides another way for you to edit your profile photo as discussed earlier in the Photo section of this chapter.
Show/Hide “Viewers of this profile also viewed” box: If you want your profile visitors to see links to other profiles that previous visitors have looked at in addition to your profile, click this link and select the check box to display the “Viewers of this profile also viewed” box on your profile.
Manage your Twitter settings: If you use Twitter, it’s extremely easy to update your LinkedIn profile with your tweets automatically. Just click the Manage your Twitter settings link followed by the Add Twitter Account link in the settings page that opens to link your Twitter account with LinkedIn. That’s all there is to it. Be sure to select the check box next to Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile once you’ve successfully added your Twitter account.
You can also limit the tweets you share from your Twitter account. For example, if you don’t want all of your tweets to appear in your LinkedIn profile, you can select the check box next to the Share only tweets that include #in, within this settings page. Anytime you write a tweet that you want to be published in your LinkedIn profile, make sure you include the #in hashtag. Only those tweets with that hashtag will publish to your LinkedIn profile when this setting is selected.
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You can also choose to show rich link display where possible, including a picture, page title, and short description. Just select the check box under the Tweet Display heading.
Edit your name, location & industry: This is a quick link to edit the basic information in your profile as discussed earlier in the Basic Information section of this chapter.
Edit your profile: This is a quick link to take you to the Edit Profile page as discussed in the Profile section earlier in this chapter.
Edit your public profile: As mentioned earlier in this chapter, you can make your LinkedIn profile public by selecting this link in the Profile settings section of your LinkedIn account. Pick and choose the sections of your profile (in the Customize Your Public Profile box on the right side of the page) that you want to make visible to everyone who sees it (whether or not they’re logged in to LinkedIn).
Scroll down to the Your Public Profile URL box and click on the Customize Your Public Profile URL link. This is a very important setting to configure because it allows you to personalize your LinkedIn profile URL, making it easier for you to share your profile link and for people to find your profile on LinkedIn.
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For example, instead of having a generic numeric LinkedIn profile URL, you can choose your own 5–30 letter personalized URL extension. All LinkedIn Profile URLs include the same parts except for the final extension that signifies the specific profile, as follows linkedin.com/in/YourPersonalizedInfo. My LinkedIn profile URL is linkedin.com/in/SusanGunelius. That’s so much better than a generic URL. You can make your personalized URL anything you want, as long as it hasn’t already been taken by someone else. Personalizing your URL also helps boost your Google search rankings when people enter your name into the Google search box.
Manage your recommendations: This is where you can request, send, and administer recommendations on LinkedIn. Recommendations are discussed in detail in Chapter 8.
Email Preferences
To avoid being inundated with email related to your LinkedIn activities and connections, you can modify your email preferences by selecting the Email Preferences tab on the Settings page in your LinkedIn profile as shown in Figure 3.11.
Figure 3.11: Configure your email and LinkedIn communications preferences.
Select the types of messages you’re willing to receive: You can configure your LinkedIn account so you receive messages notifying you of new introductions from other members and private email messages via the LinkedIn messaging tool, InMail. Alternatively, you can receive only introduction messages. I highly recommend that you choose the former setting, so other members can easily contact you. Why are you on LinkedIn if you don’t want to communicate with other members?
You can also select the check boxes next to each item listed under the Opportunities heading: career opportunities, expertise requests, consulting offers, business deals, new ventures, personal reference requests, job inquiries, and requests to reconnect. These preferences appear in the Contact section of your LinkedIn profile and give other members a better idea of the types of communications you’re interested in. Finally, you can enter any advice to people who contact you in the text box provided.
Set the frequency of emails: This is where you can modify how frequently you receive notification emails from LinkedIn related to your connections, groups, invitations, and so on. You can set each of the following emails to be sent to you individually (as they happen), weekly (in a digest format), or not at all:
• InMails, Introductions, and OpenLink messages come from outside your network, and you can choose to accept or decline them at any time.
• Invitations to join other members’ networks.
• Profile forwards sent from other members who think you might be interested in the profile owners.
• Job notifications sent from other members who think you might be interested in job openings.
• Questions from your connections.
• Replies/messages from connections in response to messages you sent.
• Invitations to join groups.
• Network activity updates on your connections’ major activities.
• Network activity discussion updates. These are updates to discussions you’ve participated in.
• Referral Center. Sent from LinkedIn when Referral Center has identified connections that could be a good fit for open jobs at your company.
• Receive Actionable Emails from other members.
• Connection Suggestions sent from other members.
• Top articles news digest. An aggregated list of top headlines being discussed by people in your industry.
Select who can send you invitations: The best choice is to allow anyone on LinkedIn to send you invitations to connect. You can always accept or decline individual invitations; so to grow your network, allow anyone to send you an invitation. If you’d prefer, you can choose to receive invitations only from people who know your email address or appear in your Imported Contacts list (if you imported a contacts list as discussed in Chapter 5). For the least growth potential, you can allow invitations only from people on your Imported Contacts list.
Set the frequency of group digest emails: If you belong to any LinkedIn groups (discussed in Chapter 7), you can configure how frequently you receive emails about group activity updates to daily, weekly, or not at all.
Turn on/off LinkedIn announcements: If you select the check box in this setting, you’ll receive messages from LinkedIn with announcements, tips, and information about new products and services. These messages are useful, so I recommend that you activate this setting and give it a try. You can always turn it off later if you don’t like the messages.
Turn on/off invitations to participate in research: LinkedIn invites users to participate in market research studies based on nonpersonal information contained in their LinkedIn profiles. If you’d like to participate in online research studies, select the check box in this setting.
Turn on/off partner InMail: LinkedIn Partner InMails are sent by third parties for marketing purposes. You can opt out of all or some third party InMail messages by deselecting the check boxes in this settings page.
Groups, Companies & Applications
Select the Groups, Companies & Applications link on the main Settings page in your LinkedIn account to reveal links to modify settings related to groups, companies, applications, and privacy controls as shown in Figure 3.12.
Select your group display order: Click on this link to change the order of the groups you belong to in your LinkedIn profile. Most people belong to multiple groups, and some groups are more useful in telling your story than others. Put those more useful groups at the top of your groups list by entering numbers into the boxes under the Order heading on this settings page.
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View your groups: Get a quick look at the groups you belong to, groups you might like, groups you’re following, and the groups directory from this settings page. You can also create a group here. Again, groups are discussed in Chapter 7.
Set the frequency of group digest emails: This is simply another place where you can access this setting, which is discussed in the Email Preferences section of this chapter.
Turn on/off group invitations: The groups feature of LinkedIn is an important part of networking with other members, but if you don’t want to receive invitations to join groups, you can deselect the check box on this setting page.
View companies you’re following: You can get a quick look at the companies you’re following, search for companies, or navigate to a company’s home page from this settings page. Company Pages are discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
View your applications: You can get a quick view of all of the applications you’ve added to your LinkedIn profile as well as any external websites you have given access to your LinkedIn profile. You can remove any application or external website from your profile permanently by selecting the check box next to it and clicking the Remove button. Applications are discussed in detail in Chapter 6.
Add applications: This settings page lists available applications that you can add to your LinkedIn profile. Again, applications are discussed in Chapter 6.
Turn on/off data sharing with third party applications: There are many applications that are not owned by LinkedIn but can add features to your LinkedIn user experience and profile. Make sure the check box in this setting is selected so your data can be shared with third party applications. You will always be prompted to allow individual applications to access your data when you add them to your profile, so I recommend that you turn this setting on and allow or disallow apps to access your data on a case-by-case basis in the future.
Account
You can configure your main LinkedIn account settings by clicking on the Account tab on the main settings page and revealing links to privacy controls, settings, email and password, and helpful links as shown in Figure 3.13.
Manage Social Advertising: It’s highly likely that you’ll want to turn this setting off by deselecting the check box in the settings window. If this setting is selected, then your name and photo could show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members when you recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions.
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Turn on/off enhanced advertising: LinkedIn partners with third party companies to show ads to members based on nonpersonally identifiable information in their profiles. If you don’t want to see these ads, you should deselect the check box in this setting.
Change your profile photo & visibility: This is just another way to access the same setting you find under the Profile tab described earlier in the Configuring Profile and Account Settings section of this chapter.
Show/hide profile photos of other members: If you want to limit the member profile photos that you see as you navigate LinkedIn, you can configure those preferences on this settings page. Options include viewing everyone’s photos, only photos from people in your network, only your connections’ photos, or no one’s photos.
Customize the updates you see on your home page: This is a particularly useful setting to modify to meet your needs because it lets you reduce the clutter of updates displayed on your home page. You can choose to view or hide the following updates on your home page by selecting or deselecting the corresponding check boxes:
• New connections in your network
• Updates from your extended network
• Status updates from your connections
• Posts from your connections
• When connections change profile information
• When connections change profile photos
• When connections receive recommendations
• When connections upgrade to a premium account
• Questions from your connections
• Answers from your connections
• Jobs you may be interested in
• Events your connections are interested in or attending
• Polls from your connections
• Groups your connections have joined or created
• Discussions from your groups
• Application updates from your connections
• When connections modify or add a Company Page
• When connections follow news
Select your language: You can change the primary language of your profile to any of those offered through this settings page.
Add & change email addresses: You can add, delete, or edit the email addresses you want associated with your LinkedIn account from this settings page. Select your preferred email address as the primary email address for your account. This is where all notifications and email messages related to your account will be sent. You should also enter all other email addresses that you use to provide more ways for people to find you. Taking this additional step also eliminates messages to your alternate email addresses inviting you to join LinkedIn when other members invite you using those addresses.
Change password: Choose a password that is at least 6 characters and enter it into the password form.
Upgrade your account: You can upgrade to a paid account by clicking this link. Upgraded accounts are discussed in detail in Chapter 16.
Close your account: If you want to delete your account entirely, this is where you do it.
Get LinkedIn content in an RSS feed: If you want to be able to view LinkedIn content via your preferred feed reader you can enable an RSS feed for your network updates or access the RSS link for any category in LinkedIn Answers (LinkedIn Answers are discussed in detail in Chapter 9) through this settings link.
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As you spend more time on LinkedIn, you might find that you want to change some of your LinkedIn settings. That’s absolutely fine. You should be flexible in using LinkedIn to meet your goals. Don’t be afraid to experiment and learn in order to build the most effective and powerful LinkedIn profile.
The Least You Need to Know
• A public LinkedIn profile offers the most exposure and opportunity for growth.
• A powerful profile is focused, highlights your strengths, tells your story, and is 100 percent complete.
• You should take advantage of all sections and personalization options available to you to make your LinkedIn profile stronger.
• Configure your profile, email, and account settings to ensure that your LinkedIn profile and account work the best way to meet your goals.