2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends

2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends The LinkedIn Profile and Usage trends for 2015 are still in effect, as it is still important to make your profile app friendly, capitalize on the multimedia features, start publishing on LinkedIn’s Pulse, and make your profile resume-like with personality. However, with the multitude of LinkedIn’s changes this year, it has cultivated a new crop of trends that will enable executive job seekers to get the most from their LinkedIn efforts. Here are the 6 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends we are seeing: 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #1: Mind the character count in your LinkedIn Summary. Pay attention to the first 170 characters and the first 363 characters in your LinkedIn Profile Summary. As evidenced by this screen shot of my own profile on a mobile device, only up to the first 170 characters of your profile show up on mobile app screens without having to open the profile. The first 363 characters are shown on your desktop profile. The profile has to be opened entirely to read the rest of the summary, making the first 170 characters (on mobile) or the first 363 characters (on desktop) the most important part of your LinkedIn Summary. 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #2: Market your company on your LinkedIn Profile. When you are working, use your profile to market your company to the outside world. First, this will squelch any thoughts that you are looking for a job, if after all, you are marketing your organization. Second, competitors will see this as a savvy use of one’s LinkedIn Profile and be intrigued to get this type of thinking on their executive team. Third, it makes your employees, vendors and clients learn more about you and be impressed by the care you take with your brand, if you have the talent and expertise to back it up. 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #3: Reorder your LinkedIn Profile sections. If you want to showcase one aspect of your background and downplay another part of your history, you can take advantage of reordering your profile sections to accomplish this. It is more common to bring what you want seen first to the eye of the reader. 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #4: Optimizing LinkedIn Group reach. You can now join up to 100 LinkedIn Groups, which maximizes your three degree reach even further with all of the group members of these 100 groups as part of the search results. Be strategic in how this feature is used to get the most out of generating job search leads. 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #5: Expand your search capacity naturally. Once you join the most relevant groups for your goals, you can perform searches more readily now in each group using the search function in the new LinkedIn Groups layout. These searches are not included in the search limits for advanced searches one can do with their LinkedIn membership. This is one way to naturally get around the search limit: search in groups! 2016 Executive LinkedIn Profile Trends #6: Make your name more useful. Make your name more powerful to you by putting what you do or your title at the end of your last name in your last name field. Check your LinkedIn Terms Conditions before doing this to see if it is in alignment with the most current version, but putting your function/title in your last name field after your last name helps with your profile’s keyword optimization and punctuates to users what you do on first glance without having to read anything else. Be Well! Lisa