Sell yourself!

With LinkedIn, people are potentially exposed to hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people who have never heard from them. So the first impression is important.

Yet most people just create a profile without properly thinking about the UNIQUE impression they want to leave in the reader's mind. Some people put too much detail on their professional background , which somehow dilutes the message since it isn't clear what their career is all about.

Others don't put any detail at all on their professional background, which somehow sends the message that they either don't care or don't know self-marketing.

The danger, of course, is to project the impression that you don't have a clear goal in life, and that you just joined LinkedIn because of its novelty (or due to peer pressure from friends, colleagues, the boss, etc.).

In a future post, you can learn about how to create a Brand You (as Tom Peters has talked about).