TIPS FOR BUILDING A GOOD LINKED IN PROFILE

We’re big fans of LinkedIn, which we think it is an amazingly powerful networking tool. Unlike social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is designed exclusively for business. Its concept is excellent – you have a network of people you know, but each of those people has their own network of people, many of whom you don’t know but who can be helpful to you. LinkedIn provides a platform for identifying and reaching those people. And it allows you to do so easily, on line, without having to make an endless series of phone calls. Brilliant!

To get a lot out of LinkedIn, you don’t need to spend hours setting it up or using it on an ongoing basis, but you do have to devote some time to it, and you need to do it right. If you set up a strong profile, manage your settings and set a regular schedule for yourself to check and post to LinkedIn, it can be an extremely worthwhile investment of a minimum amount of time. And remember, it costs you nothing except time, probably less than an hour a month.

This is intended to be the first of several posts designed to help you capitalize from using LinkedIn. We’ll start at the beginning – creating a good profile.

The profile is critical. It is what people who are looking to connect with you will see and it is what people with whom you are trying to connect will view to assess you. Think of it as a resume or CV, but just pasting in your resume info isn’t going to get the job done. The LinkedIn profile offers you the opportunity to create a great first impression and broadcast your strengths.

But remember, the idea isn’t to load up your profile with filler. To the contrary, it is designed to allow you to convey important and relevant information (and only important and relevant information) to someone who may be able to help you professionally. You want your profile to have enough substance to impress, but not to be unduly long.

Here are some tips for putting together a strong LinkedIn profile.

Make sure to include a photo. When I see a profile without a photo, I see someone who is not serious about this. If you’re not serious about yourself, why would anyone else take you seriously? Moreover, your photo can give the viewer a sense of who you are – if they are looking for someone with experience, or someone with youthful energy, a photo conveys this without even having to look at any text.

And use a professional looking photo. It doesn’t have to be taken by a professional photographer (most aren’t), but it should be a dignified head shot, not a vacation photo with you in shorts and sunglasses holding a drink.

Make sure to include the header information – current title, current company, geographic location and industry. If you are a sole practitioner, using a title like “Owner” or “Principal” is fine and preferred over just “Attorney”. If you are a partner in a small firm, use “Partner” or “Owner.”

Complete the contact information section. Make it easy for someone to get in touch with you or save your contact information. Put in the information for the way in which you prefer to be contacted, which should normally be your business phone number, business e mail address, business mailing address. LinkedIn only allows you room for one phone number, so if you preferred to be called on your cell phone, use that one instead of your office number. You can add additional contact information elsewhere in the profile.

Include a concise Background summary. This is your 30 second elevator pitch – a short, concise synopsis of who you, what you do and your major strength. Something like “New York City litigation attorney with 15 years of experience. Concentrating on whistle blower claims, I’ve recovered over $800 billion for my clients.” And don’t use “specialist” or “specializing in” and the like unless you’ve been certified by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a recognized trial certifying organization or something similar; you’ll run afoul of the New York ethics rules. It is permissible, however, to use expressions like “concentrating in” or “practice limited to.” 

If you are certified as a specialist in some area, there is a separate section where you can include the particulars. Being AV rated on Martindale or getting a 10 on Avvo doesn’t qualify. Everyone knows these are specious; their only purpose is to get you to use their sites and to impress uninformed clients.

Complete the Experience section, but keep it short and concise. Fill in all your previous jobs, listing the firms and the job titles. Make sure the dates match up. Keep the descriptions to one paragraph that summarizes what you did there and how great you did it.

Make sure to include your educational information, but keep it relevant. Just the basics here – law school, undergraduate and any other graduate degree. If you graduated with honors, include that. If you were on Law Review, include that. If you have been practicing less than 7-8 years, you can include your law review article or other awards and accomplishments, but no one cares if you did an independent study in college on the health of hygiene in Botswana, even if you got an A+.

Include publications in your field, but only if they enhance your credentials. LinkedIn has a section, called “Publications,” where you can include any articles you’ve written. If you’re 20 years out of law school and a matrimonial attorney, your law school article for the Journal of Historical Jurisprudence on whether Plessy v. Ferguson was properly decided probably shouldn’t be included. On the other hand, if you’ve published something fairly recent in your field in a journal or for a CLE, put that in there.

It’s OK to include speaking engagements and other professional activities. Use either the “Projects” section or the “Honors and Awards” section for these. Again, make sure you include them only if they are germane. If you were a presenter at a CLE seminar, include the particulars. If you spoke at your kid’s career day, better to move along.

Be careful about listing areas of expertise and soliciting recommendations.  LinkedIn encourages you to list your areas of expertise, which it calls “Specialties.” Including a few important areas in which you concentrate, like “mesothelioma litigation,” “ERISA compliance” or “Section 501(c)(3) practice”, is fine. Again, keep the list limited and concise; just include those areas in which you really do concentrate and have a degree of real expertise.

Last year, LinkedIn introduced a feature that allows any of your first level connections to “endorse” you for the areas of expertise you have listed. This is similar to including a recommendation, expect that you have to request the recommendation and you can’t stop anyone from endorsing you. We skeptical about both; we just don’t see any value in having a laundry list of people “confirm” that you are good at drafting proxy statements or deposing expert witnesses. Rather, these types of features come across to us as something concocted by LinkedIn to get people to spend more time on the site, where they will be exposed to LinkedIn’s advertising and promotions.

Avoid the Additional Info section. No one really cares if you like to skydive or go spelunking. No one is going to send you a birthday card, so don’t bother including your birthday. The “Advice for Contacting” subsection is another waste of time. If you already have your contact information at the top of the profile, that will do it.

Join some groups. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn. Pick a few that are relevant to your practice; they can be a good source of information and a way to expand your network. There are many law-related groups. Find one or two in your area of concentration. Join your law school alumni group. In the beginning, there’s no downside to over-joining; you can always disconnect from a group.

Just be careful whenever you join a group. Make sure you read the notification settings closely or you will be getting e mails every day from every group. Updates once a week from a group are fine. And whenever you go onto LinkedIn, you can always check in on your groups by yourself.

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Once you’ve completed your profile, you’re ready to start using LinkedIn. Next time, we’ll talk about connecting with others and building your LinkedIn network.

The Omega Legal Marketing Blog is a service of Omega Legal Marketing, a dedicated law firm marketing company specializing in creating custom designed, comprehensive marketing programs for small law firms and solo practitioners. You can learn more about us at http://omegallegalmarketing.com; you can contact us at admin@omegalegalmarketing.com.