Are you a LinkedIn user? You should be if you are involved in any kind of business. LinkedIn is a great way to display your talents, network, and show the business community that you mean, well, business. Today, LinkedIn has also rolled out some new changes to user profiles. Take a look.
Creating Images In LinkedIn
Right now, the LinkedIn 'Professional Gallery' comes with a bit of a learning curve. The idea is simple enough, though: instead of writing about your accomplishments, post photos of your stuff to your LinkedIn profile.
Example: if you happen to be a writer, you can now post images (with links) to work that you've completed across the web. How? It's really simple enough - the trick is figuring out where to put those samples.
How to Use the Professional Gallery
Head to your own LinkedIn profile.
Look for the 'Edit Profile' button underneath your name and photograph.
You'll notice new upload symbols that look like little recycle squares.
to add a new link and photo to your profile, click on the square and choose either 'upload file' or 'add link.' The choice is yours depending on where your file is currently stored.
From there, simply choose the file that you want to display on your profile, and it will appear on your LinkedIn profile once the file has been uploaded.
After going through and testing this new feature, there are just a few things that are worthy of note.
Some Possible Complications
It's obvious that LinkedIn is trying to make profiles more visual because that's where the Internet is headed. However, it's really important that you place your visuals in the right spot on your profile. It does take some time to get used to figuring out where to place those photo links. I also found that some of the links did not work, and sometimes a photograph wasn't attached to a link (this doesn't look great).
You can also now move around section of your profile to make the whole thing look better. This is worth your time if you use LinkedIn a lot. I now have a ton of photographs and links accompanying my LinkedIn profile, but I'm not sure that these photos make my profile look better - I'll have to see how it goes in a few weeks. It's easy to clutter a profile with photographs and links if you have a lot of information to share!
One More Tip
While you are updating your profile, I strongly recommend turning off profile notifications. Otherwise, everyone on your connections list will see the updates that you have made - one by one. This can, and will, get annoying to those that are currently looking at a LinkedIn news feed. You can change these settings by logging into your profile and altering settings.
LinkedIn always seems to be the social network that lags slightly behind, but these new changes do seem to be beneficial. If you have a lot to show people, make sure to upload a file or two to your profile.