Growing a professional network is hard.
Don’t make it harder than it needs to be with a sad profile.
The first, crucial step is to create or update your online bio—the profile the world needs to see after they meet you in person.
Work out what you want to say about yourself.
Make certain it is unique and personal.
Get it out there.
Everywhere.
- Where you blog (your site, Medium, Quora, etc)
- AngelList
- Other
The bio, or personal description, doesn’t have to be an exact copy on each site, but your profile should be your profile.
Make sure the bio summaries ring true everywhere.
It’s tempting to make your bio statement snarky or obtuse, but that kind of “unique” is not helpful.
You can be playful or serious or nerdy or all of the above…but be true to you.
Make sure it gives people a sense of who you are in a sentence or two.
Here’s mine (you’ll find a very close variant of this on Twitter, Medium, big publications, etc.)
“Andy is a 3x founder, who’s driven up to 40x returns and ~$2Bn in exits. He’s known as a product manager, tribe builder, gamer, mt. biker, guitarist (beginning drummer), and foodie. He has 3 kids stuck in perpetual Beta. https://andyrosic.com.”
I recommend that you make all the photo avatars the same.
It builds visual recognition.
Be certain to set your LinkedIn profile or any social network you’re on to public, not private. Otherwise, why bother?
Centralize on the same contact email for each of them.
Bonus:
Have Google re-index your profile pages after you update them.
Then, if someone searches for you they see the newest profile.
Here are three links to help you.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-google-to-index/
http://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-get-google-to-instantly-index-your-new-website/
Side note about social posts
There is much to discuss about posting, but the key summary is that every single social network prefers unique posts.
Period.
You want to maximize engagement, so:
- Don’t post external links
- Use unique photos
If you want the same post on three networks, then post it uniquely on each.
Don’t link back and forth.
More insights on business networking
My new book on networking is out. “FEAR – How To Overcome The One Thing Keeping You From Business Networking”
It’s an entire book full of insights, tips, and anecdotes from my own journeys in networking.
It’s a Kindle eBook #1 Best Seller!
Also published on Medium.
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