Make It Public

LinkedIn is an important part of your overall social media and content marketing plans. Everything you say and do on LinkedIn can boost your online exposure and open new doors for you. A private LinkedIn profile only puts you in front of people you are connected to on LinkedIn. However, a public LinkedIn profile puts you in front of the world and allows anyone searching for people using keywords contained in your profile to find you.

WARNING

If your profile touts your strengths, you’re on your way to getting in front of the audience you need in order to reach your goals. Don’t hide behind a private LinkedIn profile. Instead, make it public by signing in to your LinkedIn account and clicking on your name in the upper-right corner of the page that opens. Next, click on the Settings link from the drop-down menu, then click on the Edit Your Public Profile link under the Helpful Links heading, as shown in the lower portion of Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: Click the Edit Your Profile link to access your LinkedIn profile.

As shown in Figure 3.2, you can click check boxes to select each part of your profile that you want to make publicly visible. Keep in mind, this is the profile that even people who are not logged in to LinkedIn can see.

Figure 3.2: Select the check boxes next to information you want the world to see in your LinkedIn profile.

The more parts of your profile that you make public, the more chances there are for people to find it via keyword searches on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and so on.