Gold Mobile LinkedIn Best Practices

Gold Mobile | LinkedIn Best Practices | Version 1.0

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Introduction to LinkedIn Best Practices:
In this report you will find a compilation of the best practices for creating and maintaining your LinkedIn
profile. Making the most out of your LinkedIn profile will not only help you build your own professional
brand but also help us in representing Gold Mobile’s greatest asset and that’s our people.

The website relaunch was just the first step in improving how we highlight our products and now it is
time to take the second step, to show that you, us, are what make Gold Mobile the premier company to
work with.

The Best Practices of LinkedIn:
LinkedIn’s profiles may seem pretty straight forward; you have a picture, name, headline, summary,
experiences, education, connections, and recommendations. That’s eight different aspects of your
profile alone that you can take advantage of. But wait that’s not all! LinkedIn also incorporates a robust
search and prospecting tool, a messaging service, tool and app platform, and a dizzying array of industry
and interest specific networking groups.

So the first best practice of LinkedIn is not to think of it as a social media site, but rather it is a
networking platform. And the second best practice is that your profile is never “complete”; it needs to
be continually updated and maintained, weekly if not daily.

Your Profile Picture:

The profile picture on any social media site is the first thing
people look at, study after study confirms this. Since
LinkedIn is a site for professional networking, your picture
should represent the professional in you, not the goof ball
your friends know.

 A picture doesn’t have to be professionally taken
but it helps
 You should be dressed business casual or business professional
 Your demeanor should be inviting, friendly, and amiable
 Take special note of the shape of a photo as well, the picture to the right
might look more professional but would have to be cropped into a square to use with
LinkedIn which then wouldn’t look as good as the one on the left

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Your Name and Headline:

The best practices here are to correctly spell your name and use proper capitalization. It happens and
you’ll see it fairly often, some may not take LinkedIn’s opportunities seriously enough or are rushing just
to get their profile complete. Your name should also include your name and any titles or salutations
you’ve earned. Examples might include Dr., Ph.D., M.B.A., J.D., etc… Proper use of your name and
salutations helps prospects in locating your
profile, especially if you have a common name.

The headline is just below your name is often
considered a place for your current job title, but
that’s not correct it can be so much more. The
headline has 120 characters available for your
use and should be a space for you to leverage
your personal brand as well as a place to target
keywords.

Examples of Fully Utilized Headlines:

 Web and Social Media Manager |SEO, SEM, & Content Management |Social Media Marketing
Blogger
 Product & Project Manager | Team Lead | Mobile Marketing Implementation and Mobile CMS
Expert
 Sr. Sales Representative | Specializing in Food Service Mobile Transactions and Enterprise
Loyalty Rewards
For Sales Representative we would like you to focus your headline on your sales vertical and key product
offerings that loyalty decision makers or expertise-seekers might search for. A well worded and properly
organized LinkedIn profile could very well put you in the spotlight where individuals will reach out to you
for your expertise.

For our Support people we would like you to also focus your headline on your title, function, and area of
particular expertise. Again people that are active in groups, have a well organized profile, and regularly
update are often asked for their thoughts on various subjects related to their background.

LinkedIn Connections:

There are two theories on which are the best way to have connections on LinkedIn, Quality or Quantity.
LinkedIn’s philosophy is Quality connections are better than having a plethora of connections, and even
goes so far as to limit the number of connections a person may have. Ultimately however this depends

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on your strategy and your personality, if you’re trying to build a large connection of people that will see
your updates and which you can contact later without using one of the paid for plans; quantity may be
the way you want to go. Or maybe you want to develop a pool of people that you know in your industry,
and who know you. People that you believe when you ask them for an introduction or a
recommendation they will reliably provide you with a good reference.

A few other best practices to use with your connections:

LinkedIn has a 3,000 connection soft cap to reduce spam and unwanted connections. What this means is
that when you send out a connection request to another user you can do that 3,000 times until LinkedIn
stops you from sending out more. However this is a soft cap, once you reach the 3,000 you can send
LinkedIn Support a message explaining your situation and need for additional connections. They then
will most likely lift your cap for another 500-1,000 people. Each time you reach this new cap you can
send another request to raise the cap but LinkedIn will consider each request based on your profile,
feedback scores, and connection ratio (which is not clearly defined).

Leading LinkedIn marketers believe that you should end emails with a prospect stating that you will send
them an invitation to connect on LinkedIn shortly. The thought being that this provides you with another
way to communicate with the prospect and with that prospect’s connections within the company. It also
helps make your information readily available to them should they need it.

Another best practice of LinkedIn connections is to review a person’s profile for a few minutes prior to a
meeting or call. Assuming they have filled out their LinkedIn profile you should be able to remember a
few key details about them so that you have something in common to better relate to them and their
company.

And finally the last recommendation is not to SPAM your connections with messages or constant status
updates about Gold Mobile products and services. Occasionally mentioning in a comment on another’s
status is acceptable as long as it is applicable to the subject at hand. Don’t be afraid to share outside
articles regularly and often, but vary the content so that your connections are interested in what you are
sharing.

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The Summary don’t Underutilize it:

Many people neglect their personal summary, fill it
directly from their resume, or worse don’t use it at
all. Develop your professional brand and
incorporate the Gold Mobile brand. This area is not
only great for you to summarize your specialties
and strengths but it is also a great area to use
keywords to help your LinkedIn search ranking. A
well thought out and properly organized
professional summary will go a long way to
demonstrate the understanding, insight, and
unique abilities that you bring to your industry.

Within the summary there is also a section for
Specialties which you focus on. This differs from
Skills and Expertise, which appears separately in your profile. When selecting your specialties you should
only pick 6-8 areas which you specifically specialize in. Examples of this could be, Loyalty Marketing,
Mobile Marketing Implementation, Food Service Mobile Transactions, Social Media Management, etc. It
is common and acceptable to see keywords listed both Specialties and Skills and Experience; however
Skills and Expertise should be a much more robust list. The second difference is that while Specialties are
keyword rich, they are not linked to keyword search like with Skills and Expertise.

Recommendations

Matthew Levy a Senior HR Director for Johnson & Johnson and President of Corner Office Career
Coaching stresses the idea of being a Go-giver, as outlined in the book called “The Go-Giver” by Bob
Burg as the key behind gathering great LinkedIn recommendations.

To the book’s author the key to success in business is giving rather than trying to receive and that you
will achieve more as a Go-giver than a Go-getter. In this case rather than soliciting LinkedIn
recommendations’, offer them and send them out to your connections. Following the template below
will help you create references that are organized and which show thorough thought in the
recommendation. Often your connections will return the favor with the same time and consideration
that you demonstrated in your recommendation. Matthew also suggests that if you are in the middle of
your career you should have 10 or more recommendations to stand out in the minds of your prospects.

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When creating a recommendation consider the following questions:

 What makes this person unique?
 What project did they work on which exceeded your expectations?
 Why do you like working/would you want to work with this person again?
 What hard skills and soft skills did they bring to the project?
 What accomplishments are notable from this project?
Applications

LinkedIn like Facebook and Twitter is not just a
website; it is a social media platform. LinkedIn
can be used on many sites as a Single-Sign-On
(SSO) solution and has opened its platform and
API’s to other third-party sites so that you can
incorporate their offerings into your LinkedIn
profile. Notable applications to use are, SlideShare, Amazon’s Reading list, WordPress, Box.net, and for
our coders GitHub. SlideShare in particular is a great site (and LinkedIn application) where you can
upload our Gold Mobile takeaways and PowerPoint presentations to have publically shareable and
indexed by search engines like Google. We would like everyone to create either a Box.net or SlideShare
account and upload our documents for easy sharing and distribution on your LinkedIn profiles.

Experience and Education:

You should follow many of the resume writing best practices in this section; however unlike on a resume
you can and should consider listing all of your previous work history and education. This will help fill out
your career and experience pool in the eyes of your visitors, and at the same time also gives you more
opportunities for keywords.

Don’t be afraid to list your accomplishments at prior companies and your accomplishments at Gold
Mobile. However your accomplishments at Gold Mobile might be better framed in the terms of
accomplishments you helped your customers achieve. Reduced transaction costs, promotion successes,
and increased CRM data are some examples.

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Groups for your Industry and Associations:

Join groups that share your history, interests, associations, and
industry topics. Examples of groups to join would be Alumni
groups, Mobile Marketing Association, Loyalty360, Healthcare,
Food Services, etc. There is a max of 50 groups that any one
person can join so don’t necessarily join every group under the
sun. Instead pick 10-20 which you know you can devote time to.
The best practice with LinkedIn Groups is to be an active
member, and that doesn’t mean pushing Gold Mobile and our
products regularly. The best practice with LinkedIn groups would
be to be an active participate, providing insight on questions
raised within the group. Start engaging conversations with group
members by sharing content that is applicable to the people
within the group.

Within group pages there is a section which highlights Top Influencers for the Week. To get highlighted
in this way you have to start a conversation that receives both likes and comments from members. This
will put your name and picture in the sidebar of every discussion raised within that group.

Another advantage of LinkedIn groups is that you can reach out to anyone within that group to
communicate with them directly. This does not require an inMail or a 2nd degree connection. When
messaging people of course be sure to address them correctly and with information that they will find
helpful or relevant to a discussion which they were a part of.

Your Last Cannot Miss Points:

 Claim your identity by making sure you select your vanity URL rather than the generic long URL
 List Gold-Mobile.com in your website sections, whether you post to it or not, it helps with our
SEO
 Use the correct Title and Company name. If you have Gold Group in your company name it will
not direct people to Gold Mobile’s LinkedIn page and will cause confusion
 Updating your LinkedIn status weekly or even daily by sharing articles and interesting
information can show that you’re aware of the current trends in your industry
 Finally never send the standard invitation to a new connection, always personalize the
invitation request.

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LinkedIn’s Premium Services
LinkedIn like all job board sites offers premium
services, but as I pointed out earlier it is not just a
job board. LinkedIn is a networking platform, on it
you can connect with old colleagues, friends,
family, alumni, and potential prospects. Potential
prospects can be those that extend your career or
that help you develop business leads. LinkedIn
caters to both ideas whether for career
advancement or new sales leads LinkedIn offers
differing services at various price points.

The Included Features Explained:

InMail- InMail is the ability to directly message
someone that is not in your network. Meaning
they are three or more degrees of people
separated from you and don’t share a group with you. Every month depending on your plan you accrue
additional InMails which add to any unused InMails you might already have. Keep in mind however that
if you don’t thoroughly review and target your InMails’ they may be wasted or worse result in a poor
rating for you. Any time you send someone an InMail message they have the ability to rate you and
anyone else that receives an InMail message from you will see your rating. Additionally repeated poor
ratings will garner the attention of LinkedIn’s anti-spam monitors.

Lead Builder and Profile Organizer- Allows you to save your searches of a company for prospects by
seniority and functions. Profile Organizer helps you sort your connections and prospects into folders
where you can see message history and notes that you have added to them.

Premium Search Filters- The additional filtering options are nice because if you want to reach out to just
the CXO’s of a particular vertical these allow you to do that. The four filters included in the basic plans
are, Seniority level, Interested in, Company Size, and Fortune 1000. The 4 additional ones for the higher
tier plans are Function, Years of Experience, Shared Groups, and Newness to LinkedIn.

Getting Introduced- Allows you to leverage a connection you have in a company to communicate with
another person in that company. This is great if you’re able to connect to one of their Quanity over
Quality LinkedIn connectors.

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Viewed Your Profile- People who have viewed your profile can be exceptionally useful. If you have
arranged a demo with a company for example you’ll be able to see who specifically has looked at your
profile. There is an exception however; if the person that visited your profile is browsing anonymously
you will not see any information about them.

OpenLink- Allows you to send a message to any other OpenLink member without them having to be in
your network and without an InMail Message. This is a way for sales people and job hunters to
communicate across an entire industry quickly and easily. If you use a premium service, you should be
using OpenLink.

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Sources and Suggested Further Readings:

Matthew Levy, Johnson & Johnson (www.linkedin.com/in/matthewflevy)
Powerpoint on Slideshare: http://slidesha.re/MU3zmD

Ken Krogue, InsideSales.com (www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue)
Forbes: 27 LinkedIn Tips: LinkedIn Best Practices for Entrepreneurs
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2012/06/29/27-linkedin-tips-linkedin-best-practices-for-
entrepreneurs/

Scott Armstrong, BrainRider (ca.linkedin.com/in/rscottarmstrong)
LinkedIn for B2B Marketing: 8 Best Practice Tips To Get Customers
http://blog.brainrider.com/better-programs/linkedin-for-b2b-marketing-8-best-practice-tips-to-get-
customers/
Powerpoint on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/BrainRider/10-linkedin-best-practices-for-b2b-
sales-and-marketing

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