My friend Jefre Outlaw shared with me a great LinkedIn anecdote about the importance of keeping your profile up-to-date.
Jefre is a many of many talents, with a diverse array of business interests and experience. Among other things, after more than 20 years as a real estate investor and developer, he decided to actually go get his own real estate license and join his cousin Blake’s agency.
“At first I completely forgot about updating my LinkedIn profile,” he said. “But I got a request to forward an introduction and it reminded me that I should probably go update my profile to include my new gig as a realtor.”
Good thing he did!
Just a couple of weeks later, one of his extended network found him in a search on LinkedIn for realtors and contacted him about listing his home for sale. Well, they did end up listing with Jefre’s agency, who got the home sold pretty quickly. $170,000 home x 3% commission = about $5,000 to the brokerage.
Now, Jefre was careful to say, “Let’s not overstate what happened. Being on LinkedIn didn’t get me the business. We were one of several realtors the client talked to, and I brought in my cousin, who’s a great closer and more experienced than I, to meet with the client. But the fact that I was in there, that my profile was up-to-date, that I have over 20 really good recommendations on my profile — all that put us on the short list.”
Is your profile up to date on everything you’re doing? If not, plan to update it right away — no telling how much it’s costing you in missed opportunity if you don’t.
Excellent post! This is exactly the reason I use LinkedIn. It’s a subtle, constant advertisement – much like email signatures, etc.
I’m now going to revisit my profile and see what changes I can make to it, to make my LinkedIn profile a “$5,000 profile”.
Regards,
Mary Stewart McGovern
President
Stewart McGovern Enterprises
http://www.stewartmcgovern.com/
Are we “Linked”? If not, please send me an invite at http://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartmcgovern!
*****Check out Mary’s new ebook, I’ve Graduated from College. Now What? Or, How to Go About Starting Your Career and Not Finding Just Another JOB. Now available for purchase on our website, http://www.stewartmcgovern.com/!
Nice story.
If you were looking for someone who’s an expert at what you do, would you bother to investigate yourself based on the profile and recommendations you see on LinkedIn?-)
steve