Set Yourself Up on LinkedIn

In our previous post, Set Yourself Up on Social Media Sites, we continued our series with a discussion on how to set yourself up on various social media sites.  In this post, we continue with a look at how to set yourself up and get started on LinkedIn.


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Setting Up LinkedIn

“Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming.
It’s about cultivating relationships.
Don’t engage in ‘premature solicitation’.
You’ll be a better networker if you remember that.”

Dr. Ivan Misner, bestselling author & founder of
Business Network International

LinkedIn is a great place to market your business and to find evangelists. It’s the most business-oriented social media site of the Big Three (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) since it’s designed specifically for business professionals, more than 100 million of them.[1]

LinkedIn Overview

While there are many possible business uses for LinkedIn, perhaps the most popular marketing-related uses are:

    • Prospecting for customers
    • Finding partners
    • Searching for talent
    • Brand building
    • Using targeted LinkedIn ads

We’ll talk about prospecting first, but before you attempt to do any social media marketing on LinkedIn, you need to do two things:

  • Ensure your personal profile is complete
    LinkedIn says that users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn.[2] You can check to see if your profile is complete by editing it. There’s a bar in the right column towards the top that indicates completeness. The top three reasons why your profile is not complete are:
  • No picture — Always have a picture, of you only, professionally done. If you’re sensitive about your appearance, substitute a company logo, a high school yearbook portrait, or a caricature or avatar. (There are plenty of free sites to create one.) Note: LinkedIn’s terms of service do specify that only a head shot of you can be used. This rule is widely ignored, but you could get in trouble for it, so, word to the wise.
  • No recommendations — Ask your past and current colleagues, customers, or vendors to recommend you. You’d be surprised at the importance a short recommendation can hold. Potential partners or prospects are likely to check out your profile when considering doing business with you. A buddy of mine recently sealed the deal on a job offer when the employer checked out his recommendations.
  • No skills — LinkedIn added a skills area that enables you to list the things you’re good at. Use Google (use the site:LinkedIn trick we showed you in a previous section to search for people on LinkedIn) or LinkedIn’s search to find others like yourself and see what they’re putting in this area. You’ll want to mimic the more successful profiles.
  • Create a company profile
    Just like having a business card, a professional email account  or a sign over a storefront, having a business profile on LinkedIn lends legitimacy (despite the fact that anyone can create one)

We’ll show you how to create your profile in the upcoming post titled Create Your LinkedIn Profile – stay tuned.


Set Yourself Up on LinkedIn is the 81st in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’re just past page 242 . At this rate it’ll be a long time before we get through all 430 pages, but luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

Infinite Pipeline book cover

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

What Others Are Saying

Infinite Pipeline offers practical advice for using social media to extend relationship selling online. It’s a great way to get crazy-busy prospects to pay attention.”
—Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies

“Sales is all about relationships and trust. Infinite Pipeline is the ‘how to’ guide for maximizing social networks to find and build relationships, and generate trust in our digital age.”
—Sam Richter, best-selling author, Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling (2012 Sales book of the year)

Infinite Pipeline will be the authority on building lasting relationships through online social that result in bottom line business.”
—Lori Ruff, The LinkedIn Diva, Speaker/Author and CEO of Integrated Alliances

Next up: Prospecting for Customers on LinkedIn


[1] While this book was being written, LinkedIn was adding about 5 million members a quarter, so the total is likely to be greater by the time you read this.

[2] LinkedIn on complete profiles: bit.ly/dtH4TT