Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Hello, LinkedIn. Let's Be Friends.

Remember when I talked about this being the year where I said 'yes' a lot more? Well, I've noticed that without the right tools, I haven't had the chance to say yes to anything yet, because no one's asking the question.

I've had a LinkedIn profile for a couple of years, but I've never really found a way to utilize it as a freelance writer. I find it much easier to use other social media platforms to discover clients and publications that I am interested in working with. But I've made this a year of radical change, so I went back to my LinkedIn profile and realized that I've been doing it all wrong.

The one piece of advice from career experts talking about LinkedIn is that your profile shouldn't look like your resume. Mine totally does, so I'm making the point to fix it. I started with the headline, which once I changed it to better describe my wide range of freelancing skills (without being too jack-of-all-trades, of course), I noticed that it just looked better. It fit my personality. It was right.

Now I just have to put the work in on each of the sections. I still feel like the whole thing is one giant humble brag. I have to get over that attitude and be confident when I tell people I have accomplishments. And like in the world of independent publishing, if something isn't doing the job--change it. That's what I intend to do.

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