Stuart Fried
Stuart Fried is a career, business, and retirement coach. Stuart joined LinkedIn in 2006 as a recruiter and was concerned about putting his entire Rolodex online and share his contacts with the world. He was discovered by a coaching firm in 2008 and started career coaching their clients and one of those clients told him they were using LinkedIn to find contacts at places like Microsoft and Boeing. That client explained to Stuart the value of the service and he then began adding his connections to his profile. Stuart says he is visible there, but he doesn’t do any selling, people find him based off of recommendations. As a person who feels the same way about my facebook page, meaning not wanting to put my contacts online, I questioned why I had been selfish with not sharing my contacts. To me, being a business leader is about being visible, and being able to reach people with whatever your gift and area of expertise is.
Personally, LinkedIn has been an enigma to me. I hired Stuart to help me perfect my LinkedIn profile. Stuart says LinkedIn is as important as it is because it’s a database of over 350 million profiles. The difference between it and other business directories is that LinkedIn shows you connections you may already have to businesses, and essentially turns a cold call into a warm call when you find a person you want to connect to.
Stuart encourages clients who are comfortable making calls directly and for those who aren’t as comfortable, use the person who has the connection to you and the business. The networking helps you to skip the cold call, which does not usually have a great return or response rate.
Stuart has been working with my business with my profile and I wanted him to speak on how you really make your profile work for you. He says the key is to make your profile your online résumé instead of relying on people to go to your website and reading about you. He says it’s important to have a very robust summary, take advantage of the space provided, and really tell people about your business as well as what your value is. You need to have your profile state why the person looking should choose you out of the other thousands looking. He added that your profile should be your name, not your company name, and that your picture should be a professional headshot, not a caricature, or the logo of your company. The profile should also be written in first person because it warms up and it should include as much information as you can.
Stuart says if you’re currently employed, your summary is more like a resume summary. In that summary you can add files and links to work you’ve done, add color, and additional information to warm it up. The other important piece is to have recommendations; just like people reading hotel reviews like to hear the experience of others before they decide to book at that hotel.
What else can you do with LinkedIn?
Make sure you connect with everyone you know, not just business people. We all have connections through family and friends that we don’t even know. If you write or blog, post them on your profile because those are things that are giving, and not asking. You get a viral effect when people like, follow or share your content.
The more active you are, the more you will gain from using LinkedIn
Stuart can be reached at 818.577.1347
and has a 40 min webinar available on his LinkedIn profile.