Professional headlines sell: improve your LinkedIn search ranking

Your odds of getting introduced to a CEO on Linkedin increase dramatically when you use the platform correctly. So, in the professional network of more than 150 million, how do you get noticed? Here’s a tip that will improve your LinkedIn profile and make you more visible.

Make the most of your professional headline.

The professional headline is the area that most users just fill in with the title from their business cards. For example, “Vanilla Sales Associate,” or “Lukewarm Account Executive.” What should they really state there? The headline should reflect a person’s full business scope or capabilities; the savvy user goes beyond their title and shows their skill set. This is crucial because the professional headline is often the gatekeeper for someone clicking to find out more about you.

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Pinterest Rivals Twitter in Referral Traffic

To those of you who lead “the Pinteresting life,” you’ve contributed to a phenomenon that is certainly putting its clicks where the hype is. By that I mean, Pinterest is a two-year old cultural sensation that is borderline causing dependency among its users and the rabid audiences they’re developed. This rapid fire network has pinned itself to a rocket with estimated unique viewership ascending 429% from September to December 2011…and I’m not even sure if the sky’s the limit here.

For those who are unfamiliar with the fledgling community, Pinterest is a effective marriage of social bookmarking and visual curation with an extremely fervent user base.

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To Link or Not to Link Social Media Accounts?

One of my LinkedIn connections (Phil Masiello) recently asked me an important question – one that, in my opinion, everyone should be asking themselves if they haven’t already.  Following is his question, with my response and a few additional thoughts:

Phil: Ted, 
I have my Twitter linked to my LinkedIn account. One of my contacts is complaining to me that I shouldn’t do that. Linked in is for business and Facebook is for other. My twitter is mostly related to business, business travel, etc. What is your thought? Should I take twitter off LinkedIn?

My response went something like this:

I connect my Twitter activity to my Linkedin account because I do very little daily LinkedIn interaction and this way my LinkedIn presence still has a life. I DO NOT connect Twitter to Facebook since those posts  do fill up peoples pages and cause issues, and the language I use for Twitter and Facebook differs so greatly.

I have had a few LinkedIn complaints as well (about showing my Twitter activity there), but those complaints are HUGELY outweighed by the positive feedback and interaction it creates for me in a medium that lacks that easy functionality. I explain this to those who complain, and they all understand my reasoning. That being said, if they are unhappy, they can simply unlink from me, with no harm done.

I DO pay attention to these things and if the negative begins to outweigh the positive, I will change my practice.  

The key things to ask before linking any social media streams are:

  1. Is the information relevant to more than one network?  If not, don’t link.
  2. Is the language (tone, formal vs. informal, etc) appropriate for more than one network?  If not, don’t link.
  3. Is the content valuable to more than one network?  If not, don’t link.
  4. Is the content appropriate for the purpose of more than one network/tool?  If not, don’t link.
  5. Is the link (and resulting automatic feed) likely to get in the way of other people’s online experience?  If so, don’t link.

Although each social media tool has several shared attributes, each tool also has different functionality and different purpose – which draws a different audience and content for each. 

Bottom line?  Pay attention to your audience and make sure your links between tools are of value to each audience involved, and not just an easy (but useless) way for you to spray your content far and wide.  Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. 

On the other hand, when done intentionally and appropriately, linking content feeds from one social media tool to another can be a highly effective and valuable way to extend your online presence to more than one relevant audience in more than one way. 

Bottom line?  It’s your choice… just choose wisely, for the sake of all involved. 

Ted Rubin 

PS. Notice how Phil used social media to request information from a trusted source.  LOVE it!

Originally posted at Zemoga’s FromBogotaWithLove.com

Two Big Lessons from Morgan Stanley’s Social Media Investment

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Image from Wikipedia.com

1.  Tell Your Story in Social Media or Someone Else Will
Wall Street brokerage powerhouse, Morgan Stanley, made a bold investment decision:  within the year, all of its 17,800 financial advisors will be tweeting on Twitter and connecting on LinkedIn.  Bullish on Social Media, its head of U.S. sales, Andy Saperstein, proclaimed:

MSSB is committed to continue leading our competition in innovation.  This will be a significant competitive advantage.

So where did Morgan Stanley break this bold announcement?  Well, ah, it didn’t….That announcement came in an internal memo that was leaked to the press and whizzed through the corridors of social media until Morgan Stanley finally acknowledged that the memo was genuine.  Social media moves in real time.  Not having a presence in social media assures that you will be chasing the story rather than telling it.

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Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups ~ #MMchat with Viveka von Rosen

For our ninth MarketerMonday Chat #MMchat our SPECIAL guest was Viveka von Rosen, The @LinkedInExpert. As CEO of Linked Into Business, Viveka enables business professionals to make personal connections in a professional manner and our topic for the evening was Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups. To get an idea of where Viveka is comng from, check out her first post on @TheSocialCMO Using LinkedIn Groups for Better Relationships and More Business!

This is only the ninth #MMchat we’ve held and see #MMchat for more details on MarketerMonday Chat our previous SPECIAL guests, transcripts and our upcoming schedule.

Thanks again to Viveka as well as all of you AWESOME #MMchat tweeps who joined us and participated in this vivacious and very interactive chat!

Check out the full transcript of the chat at http://bit.ly/VivekavonRosen and please join us next week as Cd Vann, @ThatWoman_Is joins us! Cd is the Founder of unGEEKED Retreats and a member of the @TheSocialCMO Crew and will be joining us October 4th at 8:00 pm EST to discuss Issues Surrounding Brand Authenticity vs Personal Integrity!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO