If you brainstorm with others when updating your LinkedIn profile, you will come up with more ideas for improving your LinkedIn presence.

If you find it hard to get motivated to make updates, consider making it a collaborative process. You might get some terrific ideas from a friend or colleague. And you can give them suggestions that they may not have thought of on their own.

Recently, I conducted a two-hour training for the staff of a nonprofit organization here in the Denver area. The woman who selected me do to the training recommended that I add some interactive activities. So, I incorporated several short brainstorming sessions. In each session, the attendees paired up and brainstormed about whatever we had just been working on. The participants loved it, and you could really feel the energy in the room increasing each time they brainstormed.

 

Topics for Brainstorming:

  • Ways to expand your profile beyond your job title and the name of your employer. Consider adding words or phrases that describe your actual duties. Often, our job titles are very general and don’t really explain the actual nature of our work.
  • Types of people to ask to write a testimonial to include in your Summary section (now part of the About section). You can also add these testimonials to one or more position descriptions in the Experience section.
  • Volunteer leadership roles to add to the Experience section. If you serve on a board or have a leadership role in a volunteer organization, consider adding that position. Doing so will give your organization more prominence in your profile. In addition, your volunteer colleagues can write you recommendations.
  • Ideas for material to share via a post or an article. Maybe you have so many possible topics to write about that you don’t know where to start. Or perhaps you have the opposite problem – not being able to come up with any ideas at all. By talking with someone else, you might start get your creative juices flowing. In addition, you can get more clarity and focus on the topics most important to you.
  • Types of influencers and other leaders in your field whose posts you can share or comment on. Along with sharing your own posts and articles, find valuable information from others that you can share. When you write a comment on someone else’s post, LinkedIn notifies your network. Plus, LinkedIn also notifies that person, so they know you referenced them – but only if you use the @ sign when you mention their name. Another option is to share someone else’s post. Recent studies show that commenting it is better than sharing for increasing the reach of the post.

 

How About You?

Have you ever brainstormed ways to improve your LinkedIn profile with a friend or colleague? If so, what was your experience? What suggestions do you have for effective ways to do this?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 45 and up, become more effective using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. She provides social media tutoring and training to business owners, business development professionals, authors, speakers, coaches, business consultants, job seekers, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com