Times are changing, spotlight on LinkedIn and BCM turns 5

Brand Career Management Newsletter – July 2020

As some places start the recovery process from COVID and unrest stirs throughout the US and the world, many people are trying to determine how they can be a part of the solution.  I urge you to read one of the most powerful blog posts I have read lately from Daisy Wright, a career professional based in Canada. Her thoughts and insights should give us all good reason to pause and rethink.

For this issue, I am focusing on LinkedIn because it was a top hit on the results of our 2019 reader survey and recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this professionally focused website. Therefore, all of the content shared will be tied to LinkedIn, not just the Tip of the Month.  

On a celebratory note, Brand Career Management (BCM) turned 5 years old in June. To mark the occasion, I interviewed two insightful colleagues who share advice on starting a business and created a tip sheet for those thinking of entrepreneurship. Many thanks for all of your support. Without you, BCM wouldn’t be a success.  

Warm regards,

Paula

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Claim your “vanity URL” for your LinkedIn profile. For an effective online presence, it’s important to edit your LinkedIn URL and personalize it. I’ve shared this tip many times before, but LinkedIn often changes the exact steps so I’m re-visiting this topic. I recently posted an updated blog post on why you should do this, and I created my first explainer video walking you through the steps on the desktop version. The video is less than five minutes and you can execute the task in a few short minutes too. Also, this link to the LinkedIn Help Center explains how to do it on desktop and mobile (but I have to admit that I tried to follow the mobile directions and couldn’t get it to work). 

NEW LinkedIn Index: We’re excited to announce that a LinkedIn Tip Index is now available on the BCM website. If you go to this page, you can access all of the LinkedIn Tips without having to dig into archived newsletters. Please let us know if you find this resource useful.

The posts below will provide insights and advice on ways to use LinkedIn to enhance your career management efforts.

Let’s start with two posts from the pioneer of personal branding and LinkedIn expert William Arruda. In this post, he shares nine fundamentals that effective profiles include, and in this post, he focuses on how LinkedIn can help women with their career path and networking. 

The keywords in your LinkedIn headline (right under your name) are the most critical aspect of being found.  Chris Kulbaba shares advice on how to develop a great headline.

My trusted colleague, Hannah Morgan, provides seven tips to get noticed on LinkedIn.  Some of these are out-of-the-box ideas (i.e. creating a SlideShare deck to tell your career story) and some are things you should always be doing (like personalizing your invitations). These are all great ideas and I fully endorse her suggestions.

If you haven’t heard, LinkedIn is pushing a new section called Featured.  It’s a re-purpose of the older Media section that allowed you to add links, videos, and PDFs to your profile.  The Featured section is visible toward the top of your profile (and quite large in size). What makes it new is that now you can also pull in content from your past LinkedIn updates and articles. This post by Matt Southern in searchenginejournal.com explains more about this new feature and the steps to use it. 

Finally, with COVID affecting many jobs, here’s a post by Kelsey Ogletree in fastcompany.com addressing how to update your LinkedIn profile if you’ve been laid off.