Creating a LinkedIn profile video blog

Setting up your LinkedIn account for social media marketing just got easier – and a whole lot more effective – thanks to our step-by-step video guide. Alexis Belle shows you how to complete your profile to maximise opportunities to make more contacts and build engagement.

Why we have created this video

How to create a LinkedIn profile (Part 1) is a practical step-by-step video tutorial showing you how to setup a brand new LinkedIn profile, so that you get the best out of the social network and reach 100% profile completeness. In this video we will show you how to: Fill out your Summary, Specialities, Experience, Skills & Expertise, Education, Recommendations, Additional Information, Personal Information, Contacts and Applications. An absolute must for anyone considering using LinkedIn for business or personal use, and a practical tutorial for people new to the world’s largest business orientated social network. If you found this tutorial helpful then please click the Like or Tweet button below or leave a comment. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of social media marketing video tutorials over the coming months.

Video Transcription

Hi there, everyone. I want to thank you ever so much for joining me for the first part of the Linkedin tutorial series. Now in this particular video I’m going to be taking you step by step through the process of how to create an set up your account, and then also how to populate it so you reach the 100% completion of your Linkedin profile. So I’m going to start by just giving you an overview of my particular profile on Linkedin, just so we get an understanding of what is required in each of the fields in order to get this over here, which is 100% profile completeness. Now if we go from the top, obviously you’ll need to attach some kind of image so people can see you. Fill out your name. It’s got your current position and also the industry in which you work. Now this box here is the “Tweet” box, that’s where I’ve posted. Then we have the current position, past positions, education, recommendation, the number of connections I have, and this is kind of like the number of friends or people that are in your network. Then we’ve got different websites, a Twitter account, and here’s where we start getting to the meat of the information. So we’ve got a summary and this is basically a brief breakdown of what you do and kind of your approach, and how you go about doing it. Followed by that, we’ve got “Specialities” and these are things that you very much specialise in. Then we have “Experience” so we’ve got the different job titles, followed by the dates and where that was located. And if you scroll all the way down, then we have “Skills and Expertise”. Now this is quite a new feature. It’s become a bit of a mandatory one though on Linkedin in order to get your 100%, so it has key words; things that you do, things that you specialise in. So you’ll want to put that in. Again it helps to make you searchable. Then we have “Education” so these are the colleges, universities, and “Recommendations”. Now these are really important. Like anything now on Web 2.0, it really much relies on what people say about you and how you’ve interacted, and the kind of jobs that you’ve done and how well you’ve done them. So this is kind of like social recommendations or social validation. Then we go below that and we’ve got additional information, so websites and interests. Then we’ve got a big, long list here of different groups that are either created or that I’m part of. Now we’ll get onto that a little bit later because they are really important. Also there’s a section for “Honours and Awards”, you can fill that in, that’s optional. Then we’ve got “Personal Information” and then we have “Contacts” for me. Now the “Contacts” are how you would like to be contacted. So preferably if you’re using Linkedin and you want to be contacted in a particular way, maybe via email, mobile phone, any particular preference, that’s where you put them down there. And just here is where you put your apps. Now Linkedin is really good because it allows you to integrate lots of different apps, things like Slide Chair, presentations, which are fantastic. Also we’ve got WordPress blogs, if you’ve got a few you an pop them there, and then you’ve got things like “Reading Lists by Amazon”. So if you’ve read any particular books for your business or personal books that you like to read, you can then recommend them to other people, and you can set up various functions with that. So that’s basically the overview of Linkedin and a general account in order to complete the 100% profile completeness. So now we’re going to go across to www.Linkedin.com and I’m going to show you how to create an account from scratch. So you’ll land on the page, if it hasn’t loaded up go “Join Today”, and fill out your first name and then you want to fill out a surname, pop in an email and also stick in some sort of password. Then we’ll click “Join Now”. So now we’re going to want to put in some of the details, so it’s asking where you live, then a postcode, and whether you are currently employed, job seeker or a student, and that will change some of the search criteria, then the job title and then the company. And what it’s going to do is actually bring up a list of companies that it thinks it could be using the search options within Linkedin, so we’ll just click on the one that’s appropriate. Then we’ll go to create “More Profile”. Now what it will do here, it’s going to try and look for contacts or connections, so these are people that are already on my email lists or on my email contacts, so we need to just put that detail in. So I’ll put in my password and click “Continue”. Because it’s a new email for the purpose of demonstrating this, there are no contacts there, but if you had contacts they’d come up and you’d click “Continue”. So for now I’ll just skip this step, and there it’s giving you an idea of what it’s going to look like at the top of the screen. So I’ve just joined and it’s going to ask me to “Share” that, so you can share those details on Facebook and Twitter, but I’m just going to skip this step also. Then it’s going to ask me what type do I want. Now there are a few different account types in Linkedin, so you’ve got the very basic, then you have the premium ones, and there are very different prices but it depends on what you need. So you can look at the criteria down there and make your decision. I’m going to go with the basic one, and that gives me all the options that I need.