74.jpg)
During the last half of 2012 LinkedIn rolled out a series of updates to member Profiles, so if you haven’t visited your own profile since the changes, you’ll find it looks rather different when you do!
Here’s a quick tour of your Profile Page, starting at the top
Name Box – This shows your uploaded Photo (slightly larger than before), Name (in Bold), Location and Industry. Current Position(s), Previous Position(s), and Education. Contact details (depending on the visibility options you have chosen) are hidden in a drop down section and include Email, Phone, Address, IM. Visible to all are your Twitter handle(s) and Website(s)
Activity Box – This shows your status updates, with the most recent at the top. There’s an option to reveal or hide older updates.
Background Box – The most information is contained here, within several Sections, which can all be rearranged by dragging & dropping.
Sections include
Professional Summary – as before the changes, and now includes the option to add a visual ‘Gallery’ at the bottom by inserting a link to a video, photo, presentation, documents, etc.
Experience – includes excerpts from 2 recommendations for each position listed and shows a little photo/avatar of recommender. You can also add a ‘Gallery’ (see above) for each position listed.
Skills & Expertise – this now includes a feature called Endorsements where your connections can choose to click on one or more skill in which they feel you possess a level of expertise. LinkedIn reminds them to do this by presenting a selection of contacts & skills at the top of your profile page when they arrive to view it. The Top 10 endorsed skills show up in this section for all to see. There is a ‘Manage Endorsements’ feature and here’s an article from LinkedIn specialist Neal Schaffer: Make LinkedIn Endorsements Work for You and Your Network if you want to read about this in more depth.
Education – self-explanatory and as before.
Additional Info – Interests, Personal Details, Advice for People wanting to contact you
You can further personalise your Background information from an extended choice of Optional Sections, as appropriate for your own Experience. These sections include:
- Languages
- Certifications
- Courses
- Projects
- Publications
- Organizations
- Honors & Awards
- Test Scores
- Volunteering & Causes
- Patents
After the Background Box, the following Boxes appear on all profiles, in this order:
Recommendations - The first 5 are listed, showing the most recent at the top and with a ‘see more’ option. Photos of ‘recommenders’ are included, which makes each recommendation more personal, and somehow adds to the credibility of the words (known as social proof in marketing circles).
Connections - You can still customise who sees your Connections
Groups - you have always had the option to choose which of the Groups (max of 50) you belong to are displayed on your profile. When visiting other profiles, you will notice that any common groups you are both a member of are now shown.
Following - This displays News categories, from your LinkedIn Today customisation, as well as any Company Pages you follow.
There is also some useful information over in the Right Hand Column (which you can’t edit)
On your own profile page you’ll see:
- People You May Know (suggested by LinkedIn)
- An Ad
- People Also Viewed
- Profile Strength (based on how complete your details are)
- Who’s Viewed Your Profile (limited to 5 unless you upgrade membership)
- People You May Know (this seems to be a repetition of the top section)
- Ads by LinkedIn Members
When visiting a connection’s profile page you’ll see:
- People Similar to ………….(their name)
- An Ad
- People Also Viewed
- In Common With (a very useful graphic showing the number of Groups/Skills & Expertise/ Location/ Interests you both have in common)
- People Similar to ………….(their name) – again this seems to be a repetition
- Ads by LinkedIn Members
Gone are the Slideshare, Events and Amazon Reading List Apps. Automatic status updates with tweets from Twitter disappeared a few months back (thank goodness!), although you can still link Twitter accounts and tweet updates from LinkedIn.
You can no longer automate your status to update with new blog posts as they are published, so will need to do this manually from now on.
I hope this article has helped you to make sense of your new LinkedIn Profile page.
About Louise
Louise Barnes-Johnston has been working in social media marketing since 2007 after realising that it was a powerful marketing tool which would enable her clients to raise the profile of their businesses on the internet, even when working to a limited budget. Her specialism is in researching social media practices; trying out the most effective online tools and then sharing the best of them with her clients.
