10 Tips on How to Create an Informative LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is a WONDERFUL place to connect, build referrals and build an interactive business card. Creating strong profiles; individual, group and company, are key differentiators in attracting the attention of important people who are searching for you, your company and your groups online.

Gather your professional experience, interests, and capabilities, and use the Top 10 Tips below to help you begin designing your profile.

1. Craft an informative profile headline

Your profile headline gives people a quick, short and memorable way to understand who you are in a professional context. Your headline becomes a slogan for your professional brand, such as “Conversations to Cash Creator” or “Automated Social Media Methods.” Check out the profiles of peers, competitors, thought leaders and recent alums you admire for ideas and inspiration.

5 Social Media Steps to Learn to Earn “C” Suite Buy-in

Take the following quiz to find out if you are on your way to earning your “C” Suite’s Buy-in for Social Media:

True or False:

1) Are you trying to educate your CEO on social media and convince him how wonderful social media is for business, prior to showing him you are trustworthy?

CEO’s don’t need to understand the finer points of social media any more than they need to know how to fly a chartered jet plane.  They need to understand how to board the chartered jet plane to get from point A to point B.

Lighten Up a Little!

If the heart-felt tirade and subsequent arrest of flight attendant Steven Slater teaches us anything, it’s that stress in the workplace is real, pervasive and potentially damaging if not channeled properly. In fact, if you cruise the Internet and talk with friends, it seems like most Americans are rallying behind Slater and see humor, and maybe a little bit of themselves, in his exasperation.

So in the spirit of blowing off some steam, here are some stories to make you laugh a bit.

Filtering Useless Info; Finding Useful Info

As I work at my computer, I marvel at how much information is right here with just a few strokes of the keyboard. Most of it is useless to me. However, it’s amazing that if I uncover the right combination of data, I can harness information that can translate into a new account and thousands of dollars for my firm! But where to look? It’s an impossibility to be able to drill down through every one of the 16-million company web sites in search of that pile of gold. I tried several search engine companies and found that they delivered some information, yet still required far too much time to get to the mission-critical company and contact information I needed. I found Broadlook (http://broadlook.com/b2bsales/?) to have the most powerful and user-friendly tools designed to get the real-time information from the massive, dynamic Internet.

WOW: Words of Wisdom from AA-ISP Leadership Summit

I love learning from my peers, and this week was inspiring.  As Olympic Gold Medalist, Jeff Blatnick states, “Success is no accident, it is earned and always expected!”  So how do you earn success?  Observe your peers, and mimic their success:

4/20/10: Getting Past the Gatekeeper

Download and listen to Marge Bieler’s interview on Gravity Free Radio on getting past the gatekeepers.

This week we were joined in-studio by Marge Bieler, CEO of RareAgent, an Atlanta metro-based firm that helps businesses with both phone-based and online sales and marketing initiatives.

How to Listen to Your Prospects via Social Networks

As CEO of RareAgent, I’m often asked, “How do you learn what is top of mind with your prospects and customers.  Social media is great, but there is so much information to sift through.”

Try these five tips to learn what is top of mind for your prospects.

Executive Thoughts on Knowing your Audience

Recently, I got to visit with some colleagues and shoot the breeze about the economy and how it is impacting sales and marketing organizations. My colleagues happen to be CEO’s and CFO’s of multi-billion dollar companies. Whenever I can tap into their business intellect, I do. I found it very interesting what they shared with me about how important driving lead demand is to their “C” suite.