Mark Amtower - LinkedIn Power User (#5)

“The most important part of creating a LinkedIn profile is to intelligently flesh it out.“

“LinkedIn’s Summary and Specialties section allows you to use all the buzz words that are germane to your specific niche.“

“On LinkedIn, I get 15-20 profile visits a day from people I don’t know.“

“I’ve had dialogues with everyone that I’ve linked with before I’ve connected to them.“

“I would ask for recommendations [on LinkedIn] from the people you have worked for.“

“Some things are best left unaddressed, and I would not put them on a LinkedIn profile.“

“The more expertise you have in participating in Q&A, the more recommendations you have, all of these things tend to counteract any negative stuff.“

“If business publications are to survive, their websites will have to reflect certain aspects of Web 2.0“

John Lawlor, host of SocialMedialogy™ Conversations, interviews social media expert Mark Amtower, author of Government Marketing Best Practices and Why Epiphanies Never Occur To Couch Potatoes. Mr. Amtower has sat on the board of many companies, and is currently on the board of the American Small Business Coalition.  He has been called the “the godfather of government marketing” and he has a long history of entrepreneurial endeavors including being the host of radio shows and the publisher of newsletters.

Mr. Amtower has one of the longest profiles on LinkedIn and he has built a network of more than 800 people.  “The more detailed your profile,” he says, “the easier it is for anybody with any synergies with you to find you.”  He is a strong proponent of using the questions and answers functionality of LinkedIn.  If he sees an intelligent answer posted on the site, he will seek to connect with that individual and to start a dialogue with them offline.  This is an excellent way to market one’s expertise and knowledge on the site.

The recommendations functionality is another important feature on LinkedIn, according to Mr. Amtower.  He has personally recommended hundreds of people in many various industries, and he believes it is an underutilized feature of the social networking site.

Mr. Amtower believes that the most important part of creating an effective profile on LinkedIn is to “intelligently flesh it out.”  There are two sections that he specifically mentions:  the Summary and Specialties sections.  The Summary section is where you spell out what your strengths are.  It is a space for free-form text, and his summary is approaching 300 words.  The Specialties section is very important as this is where you will list the industry-specific phrases that describe something people are looking for.

Mr. Amtower notes that LinkedIn profiles will appear on Google, and it is especially important to keep your Summary and Specialties sections keyword-rich.