Your profile is the first impression you make on recruiters, business partners, vendors and maybe even a future spouse. Yes, LinkedIn gets used that way, too.

Profiles are based on your resume. Pull out the latest edition of your resume now.

Start by signing up for an account on LinkedIn from the home page at www.LinkedIn.com.

Register with the email address you check most frequently. Be sure this email address is suitable for professional use, too. This is not the place to use silly or nonsensical names. Ideally use your first and last name at a common email service provider, such as “Tom.Moses@GMail.com.”

If your email is currently not set up this way, take a moment to sign up for a free account with Google or Yahoo. They are the most commonly used email sites.

Many people still use AOL but some regard it as dated. Save the AOL address for family and friends. For career, appear current by using the popular services.

LinkedIn will email you a confirmation email to verify your identity. Follow the steps in the email, and your account is created.

Adding Your Name, Professional Headline, Location, and Industry

Enter the name you use professionally. If your name is a common one, differentiate yourself by including a middle initial, suffix, or other distinction.

Your “Professional Headline” is a clever recycling of your present or desired job title.

For example, if Human Resources says your job title is “Data/Financial Systems Analyst III” that means little to the outside world. Instead, consider the Professional Headline as a tag line or slogan similar to a product. Use “Expert Financial Systems Analyst” as a more approachable title in this example.

One concept that has emerged during the current economic situation is “personal branding.” Similar to an elevator pitch, personal branding entails building an idea of who you are in the minds of others. One aspect of personal branding includes defining your profession.

This is where personal branding is important. Write down five key traits you want associated with your name. Experiment with adding those to your headline.

If you have eight or more years in your field, preface your headline with “Experienced” or “Seasoned” or other term that conveys a solid history. Do not include the number of years if you are concerned about age discrimination – a common trend in the current economy, by the way.

Include your ZIP code – an important way that local search results are narrowed only to people in a given area.

Select an Industry from the pull-down list. Again, this puts you into the right search results of other people.

Choose the industry with which you want to be associated. That may not be the industry where you work now. If you are looking to enter a different field, associate your name with the crowd you want to join.

Finally, remember that LinkedIn also supports German, French, and Spanish if you want profiles in languages besides English. Create an additional profile in those languages if that is pertinent to your needs.

Here is how mine looks:

You must enter info in these fields at the least

Include thorough, well-written descriptions

Status Update

Regularly updating your status keeps your network posted on your latest activities.

This spotlights the events you are attending, interesting projects or organizations you support, and generally providing good, useful information.

Since LinkedIn provides users a choice of daily or weekly email updates to members, your Status Update should be refreshed at least one to two times a week. Doing so ensures your name appears in every update members of your network receive about their connections.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, the pace of your status updates is not a constant, all-day stream of what you are doing at any given moment. Think in broader strokes (days and weeks) versus short, impulsive ones (minute to hour).

Employment History

Assuming your resume employment history is current, the easiest way to enter it is to copy it from your resume and paste it into LinkedIn.

After pasting, clean up the formatting in the paste field. Format it so that bullets are aligned, quotations are in the right place and no odd spacing occurs. A clean visual appearance adds to your first impression.

Your “Current” position is where you work now. For the job seeker (employed or unemployed), this requires more finesse. Your LinkedIn profile is not the place to scream desperation.

Many people treat LinkedIn as a billboard to announce their employment status – employed or unemployed. Begging, sounding overly needy and being a downer will not get you the right kind of attention.

If you are in job search mode, focus on clearly communicating what you want. Do not write, “Looking for the next great opportunity with a terrific company.” That is generic, bland, and will keep you looking for a very long time.

Write a concise, targeted statement that shows a potential employer who you are and how you will benefit their company.

Search LinkedIn for people in your field of interest and examine what they wrote. If writing is not your strong suit, note the ones that catch your eye, and mimic the formula.

Good examples are:

• Dynamic, seasoned Fortune 500 business development executive grows revenues 10% in six months through 500+ extensive nationwide network
• Targeted email marketing manager generates visually appealing, weekly newsletters on-time and within budget; digital strategies to dominate your market

Education

Credentials matter. They are how we quickly measure other people. Whether we admit it or not, a person’s education signals value assumptions we make about their worth. That is why we reward college degree holders higher than high school diplomas, without regard to the actual societal value the person contributes. There’s an inherent assumption that a four-year degree denotes greater intelligence or talent. Regardless of your position on the subject, be aware that it factors unconsciously into estimations we make of one another.

Include your education history starting with college or university.

Enter the name of the institution from which you graduated, the degree achieved, any honors or citations, and graduation year. Include all institutions that conferred an accredited degree to you.

If you do not have a degree but you completed a portion of its coursework, omit the degree and graduation year. Use the name of the program instead.

For example:

• Completed coursework Accounting
• Marketing Management, Senior year
• Systems Analysis

This shows you have made efforts at higher education. Address it tactfully and respectfully if it comes up in conversation.

If you are in school now, enter “Anticipated graduation” followed by the month and year you expect to finish.

If you have no higher education, but you have completed certification programs, include those. Omit the year achieved unless in the last 36 months to keep it fresh.

Recommendations

Know that if people have written Recommendations for you, and you approve what they wrote, only the number of them you have received will be shown here.

Read Chris Brogan’s post for details about Recommendations and best practices.

Connections, Connecting with LIONs

Networking can be a numbers game for some. However, don’t focus on how high that number is. Develop a quality network who will help you when you need it, and who you can help in return.

Your network should be a curated corps of allies, where there is a mutual exchange of value and benefit among all members.

Studies have shown that we can actually, at best, know about 150 people. Much more than that, our relationships become tenuous, less meaningful. There are simply too many connections to maintain with any vitality.

If you see a person with hundreds, if not thousands, of connections, don’t be intimidated – or overly impressed. The person may be a frequent linker for the sake of connecting; or in sales or recruiting. These roles need large numbers of connections as a job function.

In my own practice, I do not accept LinkedIn Connections from people I have not met in real life or connected with through another. Why? Because I want to validate that the connection is legitimate; is not linking to me for the sake of connecting; and is a real person (not spam).

Decide on a personal policy that makes your comfortable but meets your needs. Strike a balance between privacy and need.

There are members on LinkedIn known as LIONs: LinkedIn Open Networkers. LIONs will accept Connections from literally anyone.

LIONs serve one very good purpose. Let’s say you want to connect with a second- or third-degree connection. You can ask for an introduction to the person through a second-degree connection. But what if you have no one in common?

You need a connection point so that LinkedIn will grant your Connection request.

If you don’t have a person in common – save for the LION – then you still have a direct pathway to the person you need to reach.

By connecting to LIONs, you may find that is your only link to the person you want to reach.

Connecting with Web Sites and Twitter

If you have a blog or personal web site, include the link in the field for this. This significantly boosts your ranking in search engine results.

This is a good time to review your blog or personal site to ensure that the content is safe for work. If it’s overly personal, or doesn’t put you in your best light, don’t promote it until you can update the content. First impressions count only once.

Since the search engines regard LinkedIn as a high ranking site, links coming from it to your site receive higher scoring; thus, boosting your name higher in the first few pages of search results.

For search results, the goal is that you always appear first in any searches for your name.

Google yourself now and see where you appear. It’s very enlightening.

If you find others with your name in the list, consider how you can differentiate yourself from them.

For me, there are other men with my name in England, South Africa, and Australia. Luckily, we are all in different professions so people don’t get us confused. The different locations help, too.

As of November, 2009, LinkedIn connects to Twitter. Remember that when you update your status on LinkedIn, it can optionally update your Twitter account simultaneously by adding “#in” to your tweet. Don’t worry if those words mean nothing to you. Pop over to the Twitter section for details on hashtags and other social media jargon.

Public Profile

Your Public Profile contains a generic link that LinkedIn generates for your account. It uses random letters and numbers. Edit this link to use your actual name instead.

You may have to test different entries to get one that not already used. Experiment with your full first name (“William” instead of “Bill”), or add your middle name or maiden name. Each link is unique and the Bill Johnson’s and Mary Smith’s of the world claimed theirs long ago.

The goal is to assist the search engines in returning your name further up the page in search results. It also simplifies how people can locate you manually on LinkedIn.

Include the personalized link:

• On your business card
• In the footer of your resume
• As a part of your email signature

Finishing the Basics

Once you have entered this information, click the View Profile button to see how your Profile appears to the world.

If you’re satisfied, save the changes. If not, save the changes but return and edit some more. Once you’re satisfied, you’re done!

But wait, there’s more.

This is the bare minimum you should do in building a profile. The next steps will walk you through optimizing your profile so you achieve a score of 100% and begin using LinkedIn as not just a fancy business card, but also a tool to expand your network and find what you need.

Be Au Courant, Not Stale and Pale

Did you find a great profile? Share it here. Ready to road test your profile? Post the link below for constructive feedback and to share the tips and tricks you know.