In Leverage LinkedIn: The Basics, we recommended two core strategies. Keep things simple and establish basic guidelines for yourself or your company.
Why do you need guidelines?
Guidelines will help you avoid or resolve these all too common problems:
- Wide variances in the company name, spelling and treatment
- Inappropriate personal content
- Poor quality or inappropriate personal photos
- Overly detailed or nearly incomplete profiles
- Job-seeking rather than company-promoting content
- Incorrect or outdated job titles and descriptions
- Outdated, personal or missing contact information
- Blatant grammar and spelling mistakes
Let’s run through a few criteria we’ve helped clients establish and implement, to ensure your LinkedIn profiles focus on business promotion, not personal whim.
In general, every employee’s profile should include accurate and current information for:
- The preferred company name or acronym
- The company website
- The company blog if you have one
- Job titles, dates and descriptions
- Business phone numbers (office and cell)
- Business email addresses (not personal ones)
- Business mail address (if appropriate)
- Business and professional awards, including company awards if appropriate
- Business and professional associations
Decide what type of image you want to present and stick with it. If you expect every employee to create a LinkedIn profile, issue simple written guidelines and assign someone to fix existing and monitor new content. Make creating a profile and getting a professional headshot part of your new-hire process.
LinkedIn is a business tool, so it needs to be treated as such. Use Facebook or other personal networking sites for personal, non-business content.
Check to be sure all employee profiles are generally consistent and accurate. The information should complement rather than conflict with employee profiles on your company website.
When we help clients reshape their LinkedIn profiles, we regularly find poor grammar, misspelled words (including the company name), broken website links, contradictory information, too little professional content, and too much information about personal goals, philosophies and activities.
LinkedIn profiles are part of your online marketing image and contribute to your online findability. Keep things simple, set basic guidelines, and plan to build your company’s image and networking presence one step at a time.
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