Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Katie Felten Speaks on UW-Whitewater Campus

Not to long ago I had the privilege to hear Katie Felten speak on campus. Her career as a networking entrepreneur was an inspiring accomplishment to be learn of. Her company MKELive is the means by which she has continued to build a career by being a connector of people and an expert in social media. Not only through frequent speaking engagements but training seminars too, Felten has been able to continue to do what she does best, connect people, while teaching people how to connect themselves.

The reason for her visit to campus was an extension of what Felten does every day. Her time spend speaking with students was meant to help enhance the knowledge of students in one of her many areas of social media expertise, Linked In. And without fail, that is exactly what she did!

Felten spoke of many of the benefits of Linked In and how it can be used to achieve all of those benefits at their utmost level of potential. Some of the no brainers included:
  • Completing your profile
  • Connecting with as many of your friends as possible
  • Studying and learning from the profiles of users who are finding success using Linked In
However the things that I found most helpful included:
  1. Your Linked In profile is Not a Regurgitation of Your Resume: Your profile is an expansion on the traditional resume. You can very easily upload your resume to the Linked In profile so it would be a waist to simply restate everything said on it. Your Linked In profile doesn't follow the same format as a resume either so take advantage of writing small paragraphs that can better explain what you have accomplished and what your skill set is. That includes in your summary and descriptions of previous/current positions held.
  2. Branding Yourself With Your Name Plate: The banner or name plate at the very top of your profile is your first impression on Linked In and should be perceived as you wish it to be perceived. Ultimately, this is similar to the tweeted version of resume and profile if you had to position yourself in 140 characters or less. So, the lesson to be learned is to make those few characters count. (While I'm thinking about it the name plate of your Twitter account should accomplish the same thing.)
Be sure to visit Felten's Linked In for a great example of all these things in action.

Simply put, I was very impressed with the information Felten had to share and grateful to have been able to sit in on here presentation. I encourage everyone to visit the the MKELive website to learn more about Felten and her company. Felten can be found on Twitter and of course on Linked In.

Have Fun!

Brendan

More Fun Links For Katie Felten:
http://twitter.com/KatieFelten
http://www.linkedin.com/in/katiefelten
http://www.youtube.com/katiefelten
http://mkelive.com

My Links:
http://www.youtube.com/GrowingUpBrendan
http://www.twitter.com/UWWBrendan
http://www.BrendanBarrett.weebly.com
http://www.StudentPaintersPalatine.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanabarrett

3 comments:

  1. I think that "your LinkedIn profile is not a regurgitation of your resume," pretty much sums up the uses for most social media. LinkedIn can be and do so much more than just be a resume or just a professional form of Facebook.

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  2. Your blog was very easy to follow. I like how you made bold the crucial keys of what was said. I wasn't able to see Katie Felten speak, but I'm able to walk away with the main points.
    I know I enjoyed the speakers I got to hear, I hope you too take away the key points that were said for the class you didn't attend.

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  3. This is a great summary of what Katie shared with us! She would be proud to see you representing her ideas well! I learned so much from her speaking to our class and definitely took a lot of her advice when looking at my LinkedIn. What a great opportunity!

    ReplyDelete