Services/Profile Builder for Individuals

The Importance of Your LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn Profile is the cornerstone of your ability to attract qualified people and opportunities. It also projects your leadership among peers, colleagues, employees and other stakeholders. By default, parts of your Profile are visible to 60 million LinkedIn members (as of Q2 2010), a highly qualified audience. Moreover, if you decide to use the LinkedIn's "Public Profile" feature, LinkedIn will open up the parts of your Profile you select to search engines, so you can be accessible to over two billion Internet users.

During the past two years, the LinkedIn Profile has transformed itself from a relatively static form to a full-blown interactive executive platform. Moreover, quality of interaction will always trump content in its ability to attract people to you. Profile Builder addresses content (text) and interactivity (how you use your Profile's interactive features to discreetly attract attention from the right people).

The Elements of Excellent Profiles

Here are the core design principles we follow when building profiles for individuals, groups and companies. Profile components:

Are congruent with goals

• You undoubtedly run your business according to a strategy that emphasizes your unique selling proposition. Similarly, your LinkedIn Profile should reflect your uniqueness and professional goals.
• Compelling Profiles describe your past experience in terms of your immediate and future goals, so readers perceive that you are qualified for what you want to do—whether your goals reflect continuity or a change of direction. We find the pattern that connects your past with your future: there is always a link, even though it is more apparent in some cases than others.
• The EGLI helps you to crystallize your strategy, and we write all elements of your Profile to tie back to it. The strategy itself may be quite explicit or an undercurrent, depending on your personal style and approach.
• We write all major parts of your Profile in a collaborative process. We will suggest content but defer to your judgment for how the Profile reads. We focus on keywords to enhance your findability.

Balance promotion with privacy

We guide you in striking the balance between promoting yourself and utilizing discretion. Based on your strategy and style, we include information in the appropriate parts of the Profile, so you will have options with what information you show to what people.

Enhance search findability

LinkedIn is a community of highly professional, global leaders, and Profiles are searchable. Moreover, if you use the public Profile, you will be found by the world's search engines. EGLI provides two levels of search findability in your Profile as detailed below.

Leverage Account Settings

Synchronizing Account Settings with the components of your Profile is the basis of promoting yourself appropriately while maintaining the level of discretion you wish. The Account Settings give you granular control over what information is displayed under what circumstances and to what groups of LinkedIn members and people at large. We mentor you in how the controls work, and we suggest combinations that achieve the balance you wish.

Increase credibility with Recommendations

Recommendations also appear as part of your LinkedIn Profile. They are endorsements from other LinkedIn members. We do not write endorsements for our clients, but we do write Recommendation requests, and we mentor you in writing and using them. This service includes five requests and templates and techniques you can use to request others.

Using Interactive Features to Increase Stature and Network Quality

Now each LinkedIn member as an "Activity Stream" that integrates his/her interactions on LinkedIn, and broadcasts them to your network by default: whom you've connected to, your status visibilities, your trips, your presentations, groups activity, answers activity, etc. This is the foundation of generating opportunities for yourself, but few LinkedIn members know how to use the activity stream effectively. We guide you in creating a few simple templates that make it easy and are completely customized to your goals. This is can serve to make you more effective in your current role while increasing new opportunities.

Profile Builder Process

1. Complete the Profile Builder form—we will provide you with an online form that will guide and prompt you to provide the baseline of information.
2. Arrange an interview with us—using the form, one of our specialists will interview you over the phone to ensure his/her understanding of your strategy, approach and goals.  Together, you will evaluate each component of the Profile. After this call, our specialist will synthesize the information you included on the form with his/her notes, and s/he will complete the profile and notify you when the proof is done.
3. Proof the completed Profile—once you have reviewed the draft, you have a second phone discussion with your specialist.  Together, you will review and adjust the draft to your satisfaction.
4. Enter the Profile—you will cut and paste the information on the Profile form into your LinkedIn Profile itself.
5. Follow-up and Profile verification—after your Profile is entered, we will review it with you and answer any questions you have during a third phone call.  We will also discuss how to send Recommendations for best results.
6. Interactivity—separate interview to orient you to LinkedIn's interactive features and to create a content strategy that we use to create simple templates for each feature, including examples. Interactivity attracts the most attention and is very discreet.

Profile Preparation Service Options

Profile Builder Services currently have three levels of service, but we will be glad to customize them for teams or groups. Each higher level of service contains the services of prior level(s).

When designed well, your LinkedIn Profile becomes a magnet for the people and opportunities you want to attract

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