How to set up a personal LinkedIn page
In this blog on the How To? series today, we will explain why you should have a personal LinkedIn profile as well as a company page, and how to set one up. If you make contact with a potential customer or client then the first thing they are likely to do is to google your name. Yes, they may well google the company too, but if you've reached out to them personally, signing an email for example, then they will want to check you out. LinkedIn ranks very well on Google, so a personal profile will almost definitely end up on the front page. Having a career focused profile on the first page gives a much better impression to a potential customer than your personal Facebook page. So, now that we've agreed that having a personal LinkedIn profile will assist the reputation of your company as well as enhancing your own online presence, how do you set one up? Clicking on LinkedIn’s Sign-Up page will get you to a landing page which looks a bit like this: So you enter your first and last name (your name, not your business’s’) your email and a password. Easy peasy. Next you’ll have to enter your location, job status and title. Bam, your new profile page is created! But what else to put on it? The areas that you should fill in first are the photo and headline, since visitors will see them first. The little window which appears beside you posts in Groups looks like this: LinkedIn profiles with pictures are far more likely to get views. Use a headshot with your face clearly visible. Smiling or laughing is perfectly fine as long as you feel it fits the tone of your company. Your headline should probably be your job title. The rest of LinkedIn is like the biggest, most comprehensive CV you've ever filled in. As well as the job history and space for a personal summary, there are sections for volunteering, languages, education, organisations you are a part of, companies that you follow, and any groups you've joined. Whereas CV advice is to tailor your information, here on LinkedIn it is recommended that you put your entire job history up there. Yes, even that part-time job you had when you were sixteen. You never know what visitors or recruiters might find interesting. LinkedIn is very good at walking you through completing your profile. It even shows a graphic on the right-hand side of the screen! We hope that this blog helped you understand why it is important to have a personal profile in order to effectively use LinkedIn for business, and helped to guide you in setting one up. How to set up a personal page on LinkedIn is part 2 of our new How To series. This series consists of short, visual guides on exactly how to set up and use various social media accounts as a business. The previous part explained how to set up a businesses page for LinkedIn. The next part will tell you how to improve your follower count on LinkedIn. Error: Contact form not found.