3 tips to improve your LinkedIn profile

With several thousand connections, I can tell you from firsthand experience, the right technology can generate leads for your firm. And with over 200 million users and growing, LinkedIn seems to be the primary gateway that most advisers can use to display their profile on the Internet. Financial advisers use the popular social-media site to link to clients, prospects and center of influences of all types to grow their presence within their community. However, most advisers' profiles look more like a stale resume from 1988 filled with two paragraph sentences on their history and a photo nothing short of a high school yearbook. How can you integrate technology into your LinkedIn profile to start driving more activity and results? Use the picture and video buttons When you click the 'edit profile' button, you'll notice in each section that a small button that looks like a television will be in the upper right hand corner. If you wave over the button, it will display the words, 'add a video, image, document, presentation, etc. ' This is an important feature within LinkedIn. Why? Because users are going to be more apt to look at pictures than they are to read the written word. Consequently, the images or videos that you post in each section of your history, education, etc., can actually take a viewer away from Linked In and move them in whatever direction you point them. A case in point: Ideally, you'd like to get most people to go to your home page or an article that was written about you in a widely read publication. By clicking the image that you place in Linked In, it will allow you to take that prospect to your website without you even having a conversation. Use The company page There is no extra cost to set up your company profile page in LinkedIn. You can easily write descriptions of the services that your firm provides, but the real trick is to insert both quality banners and quality videos so that someone who stumbles onto the page can get back to your website for a more complete picture of your firm. If you can get your other advisers or staff members at your firm to get viewers to follow your company page, you can add additional social-media commentary that can get your company followers to learn more about your company before they are ready to make a buying decision. Download the LinkedIn mobile app If you haven't downloaded the LinkedIn mobile app, it is probably a good idea to add that your phone. Most advisers don't realize how important it is to stay active in adding contacts. This is important because LinkedIn Mobile will display the pictures of the people (usually about 10) that have made a new connection. This means if you do a good job of adding LinkedIn connections, your picture will constantly come up on the phone of others who also have installed the app. There is a huge difference in understanding what social media is, how to use it, and then really how to make the technology create additional leads and branding for your firm. Ted Jenkin is co-chief executive and founder of oXYGen Financial Inc.