As a LinkedIn profile writer, I am often the first to notice changes to LinkedIn. Just yesterday I was working on the profile of an IT Consultant specializing in the Dental industry, when I noticed a pretty big change to the Who’s Viewed Your Profile sidebar widget.
Please note, this change has not been rolled out across the board yet, in fact, I haven’t seen it on any other profile.
The one thing I have noticed helping professionals maximize their use of LinkedIn is that very few people EVER look at this awesome widget.
The Who’s Viewed Your Profile widget is a great way to benchmark the success of your LinkedIn profile. This widget appears on the right sidebar of both your LinkedIn Home page AND your Edit profile page. It shows you the stats for how many times your profile was viewed in 1 to 90 days and how many times your profile turned up in search results any time over the past 1 to 90 days.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that if your profile is not getting many views OR it’s simply not turning up in searches, you need to optimize your LinkedIn profile!
Who’s Viewed Your Profile?
Here’s how the widget has looked for pretty much forever:
The new look is much more artistic showing intersecting circles. Unfortunately, from what I can see, this new design lacks some of the detail of the old design.
The daily views and the number of times your profile appeared in search is missing. Here’s the thing, you can click on the widget and you are transported to the Profile Stats page where you can see more detail. The detail omits the daily number and instead shows you a graph where you can see how your profile is performing over a 90 day period. The other issue is the reporting is in arrears… it’s not your current numbers showing but rather the month before’s statistics.
As you can see in this screenshot I took JUST NOW, the date is March 10th but the last reported week of the graph is February 26th.
Perhaps LinkedIn is in the process of beefing up the Profile Stats page… or by forcing more people to that page, they are hoping that more people upgrade to a higher plan because that’s where you can see exactly who has viewed your profile. The basic, free plan only shows you the last 5 people. If you want to see the last 90 days of visitors to your profile, you have to pony up and upgrade to a paid plan.
Discounted LinkedIn Plan
My suggestion to my clients is to upgrade to LinkedIn’s Personal Plus plan. This LinkedIn plan is only $7.95 a month if paid annually! That’s less than $100 a year! The thing is, LinkedIn is sneaky. The only place you can find this cheap LinkedIn plan is on the Profile Stats page.
Regardless, the Personal Plus plan is nearly perfect for the casual LinkedIn user. You get to see viewers of your profile over the last 90 days… and that is awesome! Think of the possibilities! You also get to see the keywords people are using to find you in search. This means you can see how successfully optimized your profile is for your desired keywords.
I look forward to seeing how LinkedIn rolls out this improved widget. Hopefully we will see even more detail in the Profile Stats page!
The post LinkedIn Profile Views, New & Improved? appeared first on LinkedIn Makeover: LinkedIn Profile Optimization.
