Liz King Events: Social Media Event Planning Specialists

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LinkedIn is widely recognized as a professional social media networking site and has been used by countless individuals as a conduit for job leads and vendor referrals. That being said, I think it’s the best place for you to start posting your brand. Of course, the first thing you need to do is create a profile, which can easily be done from the main page on their site. However, creating your account is just one step in the process to having a highly viewed and highly productive LinkedIn page. There are five things I think will be most beneficial for you to master on LinkedIn – your profile, connections, recommendations, and groups along with your ability to search effectively. These are the five things I’m going to cover in the coming days since I believe each deserves a good chunk of our time.

Today, I’d like to focus on perfecting your profile so that it conveys your brand and attracts attention. Below are my tips for constructing your Profile Page.

Details, Details, Details!
Your profile will be viewed by potential employers, clients, colleagues and friends. This means that you must pay close attention to every word that you post. Please make sure that everything is spelled correctly and that the grammar is also correct. If you need to, draft it in a word processor and run spelling and grammar checks before putting it into LinkedIn. You also want to make sure that your profile is packed with keywords that will help ensure that it is recognized by the search engine bots looking for matches. Litter your profile with your brand and try to keep it simple and easy to scan. Your LinkedIn profile will be viewed much like your resume – in about 10 seconds. People will scan for what they want and bounce to another page very quickly if they don’t find it so you need to catch their eye.

Headline
Your headline is the first thing people see other than your name so it needs to catch attention. You need to change this field manually otherwise it will automatically post your most recent work experience. While that may be nice, you want to change it to grab attention and convey your brand. You need to convey in quick order what you do and why you are the best one to do it.

Summary
Your summary should be an expansion of your headline. You should summarize your experience quickly and then keep the focus on what you are good at, what changes you have made in organizations you’ve worked for, what type of events you have planned and why only you could have done each of those things. Again, like with your resume, keep it short and sweet so people can easily find what they are looking for.

Links
You absolutely need to link your LinkedIn account to your home base. Instead of selecting "My Website" as an option, type in the name of your website to ensure it is recognized in searches (i.e. "Liz King Events Website"). If you are already using Twitter, a Facebook page or other web applications, feel free to link them here as well. The goal in branding is that if a person finds ANYTHING about you, they will be able to see EVERYTHING about you. You WANT them to find you. Another way to link is to use applications like the Word Press one that I use. All you need to do is enter the RSS feed address into the application and it will publish your blogs to your LinkedIn profile.

URL
Another trick to optimize your brand on LinkedIn is to choose a custom URL. From your profile page, you will see a place to edit your Public Profile URL. You want to make sure you update this to be your name. In my case, I use http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizkingevents. This ensures that when you search for me, you will find my profile and not any other Liz King.

These are some of the most important components of your profile so they are the ones you should focus on for now. You may be tempted to move on and begin working on your connections and recommendations, but I strongly encourage you to take some time with these sections. Check for accuracy and make sure the wording is concise and conveys your brand and it will be worth it in the end!

Liz

Liz King is a social media-integrated event planner and award winning blogger. As the owner of Liz King Events, she runs an innovative firm that creates dynamic branding events integrating the use of social media. Planning events from soup to nuts, she works with her team to create and sustain your event brand and enhance attendee engagement. Liz is also a co-founder of the Event Technology Showcase PlannerTech. As the owner of Liz King Events, she has been featured as a speaker at the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, National Association of Colleges and Employers, ExpoWest/Supply Expo and several other events as an expert on the topic of social media and events. She has also been featured in Connect Meetings Intelligence and Convene Magazine, among others.

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Tags: 30 Days of Branding, LinkedIn, Personal Branding, Social Media/Technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.