Getting you Started on LinkedIn

Social Networking Newbies will help you get started on LinkedIn. But first of all you need to be a little proactive. Sign yourself in and invite some people to join you. We make that easy here. It might take you some hours over 6 months to perfect your profile on LinkedIn, but you can join and make an invitation in 10 minutes. That's what you should do now.

JOIN: Use this link to join LinkedIn.

Make a connection to John Veitch. Use the Quick Invite Boxes on your Welcome page. You need two things, my name, and my email address.

Guess what this is? john.s.veitch AT gmail DOT com

Most of the people who have joined LinkedIn have not made a good job of completing their profiles. LinkedIn does well in encouraging you to enter all your qualifications and work experience. There is a distinct need for training in the effective use of LinkedIn and that is one of the services Social Networking Newbies is offering.

Preparation Beforehand

Be prepared with a secondary web-mail address. (you@yahoo.com or you@gmail.com for instance.) You need a password of 6 or more characters. You are asked to specify your main activity, or profession. You will add the details of your professional and voluntary work, both present and past. It would be good if you could be prepared to enter three of those in the beginning. e.g. for each one: Your title, the organization, your responsibilities, start-date and end-date.

Be prepared to enter the details of your education, university, qualifications and dates.

Finally think about who you need to contact you, and be precise about what sort of contact you are looking for.

Don't worry. Everything you do can be edited later. The LinkedIn interface is quite easy to use if you have some detail. Thinking about it first helps.

First Steps

The new user screens make it easy to fill in your LinkedIn profile if you have the information I suggest above.

One of the most important sections of the profile is your Summary. This is a self-written statement about who you are, what interests you, and how you hope to collaborate with others. How you write that statement depends on who you are, at this moment. You will change, your knowledge and skills will change, and your summary will need to be updated. This statement will be read, so take some care in writing it. Decide now what your objective is, are you writing to attract a job offer, or are you a consultant or specialist who is looking for contracts, or are you looking for people to develop new projects with? State clearly what you are looking for.

Finally go to the "My Profile" page. At the top there is a tab called "Contact Settings", click on that. There are some check boxes which you can adjust as you please, and a text box at the bottom. In that text box state exactly what you want and expect in the way of offers, requests, or help you are prepared to offer. Be plain. Also, although LinkedIn recommends that you do not include your email address, I think you should make it available. Use the web-mail address I suggested you needed at the beginning of this article. You might also include links to your business web site, or to your homepage in some other networks.

When you've finished, click on the tab "My Profile" and you will see the editing page for the information you've just entered. Correct it if you need to.

On the top right there is a button which allows you to see the page as other people see it.

Learn from the best Profiles

Look carefully at the profiles of the best known people. Think about how they are branding their own names. John Evans of London, made the point to me four years ago. He is John L Evans, and strongly branded that way. My name is John Veitch, but for three years now I've been using a brand name, John Stephen Veitch, on the Internet.

Most people only ever read the top section of a LinkedIn profile. The links to web pages and blogs are important. The headline under your name is important.. How should you write the overview or summary at the beginning of the page? Read several LinkedIn profile pages, and take notes. What are you learning? Can you apply that to your own page?

Private Reply to John Stephen Veitch (new win)