How to Create a Professional Profile for Online Networking
Today, everyone's into online networking. It does help to put your business out there, but you want to do so professionally. Here are some tips for creating an attention-getting and professional profile on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.
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Instructions
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Choose a network--or a few. Whether you hit up Ryze or LinkedIn, it's vital to explore the many options for social networking. I tend to find that MySpace isn't the most professional place to do business--it's more of a personal profile site.
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Create a business profile. If you have a profile that represents you as a person, you'll want to create a business profile as well. You don't have to do this, but it can help attract more business. The key to the business profile is to make it professional--write in third person, even if you're self-employed (although, you don't have to use third-person if you're self-employed!).
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List your business. Use the categories to help your business become more searchable. If you're a marketing company, you may also be able to get listed under press, journalism, public relations or advertising. The more categories, the better!
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Use your logo. Branding on the Web is easy with a visual image--and your logo says it best. If you can upload a photo, use your logo instead. You'll get visual recognition from prospective clients. And the site will look super professional!
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Proofread! This site is a reflection of your business, so make sure there are no typos and the writing sounds appropriate. Have a friend or colleague look it over before anything goes live!
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Tips & Warnings
Don't list any personal interests. Skip the "favorite TV show" categories and such.
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Is this it? This is all you have to offer in terms of advice for writing a professional business profile? I am shocked, actually. There really is little or no content to this article and I am surprised that not only has it been published with no content, but also it is in the top 10 Google search results. I started to list the things that you forgot to cover in this article, when I realized that the bulk of the content was actually listed in Tips & Warnings. Otherwise, signing in to LinkedIN or Ryze will force you to go through the steps you indicated to create a personal business profile. They don't let you create a sign-in business profile, that's another entire section that you can only have access to once you have signed up for your personal profile. So if this article is intended to explain the nuances or even to introduce a professional profile for a user that is business-oriented, the entire article could have been written in one line: http://www.linkedin.com and open a new account. Period. I was honestly hoping to get a valid look at the current trends in professional profiling? Like is it good to list jobs you had in College? What about jobs that you were only at for a month or two? Is it better to have a gap in employment of short-short term employment. Is there a standard for profile appearance outside of existing template profile sites like LinkedIN? What about honors for sports in college or high school? However, in my disbelief, I decided to read the article again and I still wasn't sure if you were talking about a profile for a business or for an individual. It is NOT a good idea to put your company logo for your photo if you are marketing yourself because you want to be open for a better position in the same industry, for example. This is not the only problem with the minimal content you have available here. I find it ironic that the sentence immediately preceding the completely inappropriate "Proofread!" exclamation is not actually a sentence--it's a conjuctive clause that should be attached to the sentence before it with a comma. Not only that, there is never a valid reason to include an exclamation mark in an article unless it is part of a business name or as part of a quoted exclamation. Exclamation marks are as childish and inappropriate as emoticons or 133t speak. Your opening paragraph indicates that you are going to explore a few ways to enhance the professionalism of your "business" profile using such sites as LinkedIN and Facebook. Neither of these sites allows you to create a profile for your business; they both have business pages, but that's different from creating a profile account. Furthermore, you don't ever even mention Facebook in the body of the article. And before I say anything more, please reconsider this article. It shouldn't be published like this--it impacts my decision to refer to e-how in the future. Also, please consider the simple fact, that just my comment alone is longer than your entire article. If I were e-How management, I would seriously reconsider this as publishable material. It is not my goal to insult the author, and I apologize if my comment is taken out of context. Jase
