1. Make sure your profile is in your name.  Your profile should not be your company’s name but your own.  Not only is this in violation of LinkedIn’s rules but also bad branding.  LinkedIn have provided excellent Company Pages that can be individually followed, have status updates and receive your blog feeds.  Leaving your personal profile under your name means that people cannot form a connection with YOU and is poor online strategy and marketing.
2. Add your photo.  Profiles without photos seem distant and cold.  Social networking is about being social, not aloof.  People should be able to see who they are connecting with and it shouldn’t be a butterfly image, company logo or picture of your dog.  (Again, all things that LinkedIn frown on in their rules.)  Read here for more about this and then why you should add it.
3. Personalise your Website Names.  Don’t leave your websites with the anonymous “Company Website” tag, but edit them to reflect your own company or blog name.   This is essential for comprehensive branding of your page.  See here on our sister site about how to do this.
4. Ask and Give Recommendations.  Even when we claim that we get business from social media, we still know that so much of our business comes from word of mouth and personal recommendations.  Ensure that anyone reading your profile, knows that people who are connected to you appreciate your value by requesting some strategic recommendations.  And these can’t be faked or made up as we sometimes fear with other recommendations.   Be generous and offer recommendations to your connections where appropriate too.
5. Add your Blog feed.  Use the Applications option from the Menu to add either the WordPress application or BlogLink.  If you are writing about anything relating to your professional life, then it should be accessible to your LinkedIn contacts and not restricted to your website.  If you are not blogging, then we will address that soon.

One more …

If you have accidentally created more than one profile, here is how you go about correcting that situation.  Having more than one profile is messy and unprofessional and wastes the collective value of having your contacts in one place.