Tonight's challenge: Rewriting my LinkedIn profile. I've been on LinkedIn for years, and think it's a super tool for highlighting my career and creating a personal brand. But there are two problems:
- It reads like a corporate résumé, as opposed to an entrepreneurship-focused resume
- Some of my career highlights -- including a slew of awards -- relate to expertise that has nothing to do with my current entrepreneurial ventures.
So, I'm going to rewrite it. One thing I've learned from past efforts is that it's very difficult to do a rewrite by looking at the existing entries -- if they're well-written, or highlight elements that are points of pride, it's very difficult to delete them and start from scratch.
Instead, I am going to really start from scratch, based on the things that I know I want to emphasize, and not even look at what I have up there now. I am also going to ignore LinkedIn's classic format, which is oriented toward chronologically ordered corporate careers. I've seen examples on LinkedIn in which entrepreneurs use the "summary" field to write their résumé the way they want, and this seems like a potential approach. Once I am ready to show my work of art, I'll leave a link here ... stay tuned!
Update: David Meerman Scott has written an excellent blog post about why he's not on LinkedIn. Another marketing pro, Seth Godin, also avoids LinkedIn ... and Facebook. There is a sound argument for avoiding LinkedIn for both -- their branding is tied up with their blogs, books, and speaking engagements, and having people turn to Linkedin to learn about them devalues their existing online resources, and by extension, their brands.
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