LinkedIn Advantages

If you followed Linda's LinkedIn article last week, you now have a LinkedIn profile and you may be anxious to connect to friends and potential clients or employees. In this article, Linda shows how you can add some punch to your LinkedIn profile as you begin to search for colleagues and others who can help promote your design or programming skills.

Add Your Company

LinkedIn allows users to add company profiles. If you work for a company that isn't listed, you may be able to add a company profile (or suggest to your company to add one). Additionally, if you own your company (such as a freelance designer or programmer), you can add your business. It's simple. To add a Company Profile take the following steps:

1. Click on 'Companies' found in the top navigation bar of your home or profile page.

2. You'll come to a search page where you can search for the company (if you're a freelance artist, designer or programmer, type in your name).

3. If you don't fine a page for your company (or for yourself, which would be highly unlikely), then you can create a Company Profile.

4. Click on the 'Add a Company' link found in the upper right area of the page.

5. Type in your company's official name and your email address at the company on the 'Company Name and Email' page. If your email address is already tied to an email domain for an existing Company Profile, you will be prompted to click on the existing Company name to edit the Profile.

6. If your company email address is not a confirmed email address on your LinkedIn account, a confirmation email will be sent to the company email address. The email text will give you a link to log into your LinkedIn account. Be sure to log in to LinkedIn with your current primary email address. This will confirm your email address and add the email address to your account.

7. If your email address is confirmed you will be taken to the 'Create a Company' page that will allow you to enter information about your company.

8. Click on 'Create a Company' once you have completed the required fields.

Here is the company search page:

Here is the Company Profile creation page:

The image above is interesting – I mentioned in the previous article that I had two LinkedIn profiles, and I also said that this probably wasn't a good thing. Here's why: when I tried to create a company profile for Appomattox News from my Linda Goin account, it wouldn't allow me. The note at the top of the image above says, "The email address publisher@ was already claimed."

Now I'll need to head to my Appomattox News account to build a company page. In the meantime, if I want to build a company page for myself as Linda Goin, I would need an email address that was not generic. In other words, LinkedIn will not accept a Gmail account as a legitimate company address. So, I could use another email address for a site that I use as representative of my business.

If you have a Web site that displays your work, use that email address to create your company page. Once you've added that email, you see this page, which allows you to confirm the email and to continue building your company page:

Once you get the 'ok' to create that company page, you can add such items as related companies, key statistics, employees and more. If you feel your business is too small for all this attention, then don't hesitate to NOT create a company page. The LinkedIn profile can provide all the information anyone might need to make the decision to hire you based upon your information and your choice and usage of applications.