Your LinkedIn Profile Mastered Book Release

Books

your-linkedin-profile-mastered

After editing and publishing five books for my father-in-law Douglas M. Curran, I decided to publish my first book: Your LinkedIn Profile Mastered: 14 expert tips for instant impact.

Why This Book?
After 27 years at my previous employer, I found myself unemployed for the first time. Like many, I hadn’t kept my LinkedIn profile up to date. During my job search, I realized how crucial it was to make a great first impression on hiring managers, recruiters, and everyone’s favorite, the ATS software.

What’s Inside?
This book is designed to save you time and reduce the overwhelm during your job search. Each of the 14 tips includes clear instructions, examples, and easy-to-follow steps. LinkedIn changes often, and this book reflects the latest updates, ensuring the steps and examples are as relevant and helpful as possible.

Your Feedback Matters
I want this book to save you time so you can focus on the more important things in your life. To improve and refine this book, I need your feedback. Please send your comments to davenelsonutah@gmail.com. If you’re willing to provide a five-star review on Amazon, email me the link to your review along with your Venmo name, and I’ll send you $1 as a token of appreciation.

14 tips covered in the book:
1. Tip #1 Your Profile URL
2. Tip #2 Professional Headshot
3. Tip #3 Custom Background Image
4. Tip #4 Headline / Intro Section
5. Tip #5 Summary / About Section
6. Tip #6 500+ Connections
7. Tip #7 Experience
8. Tip #8 Education
9. Tip #9 Skills and Endorsements
10. Tip #10 Groups
11. Tip #11 Custom Profile Section
12. Tip #12 Applicant Tracking System
13. Tip #13 Job Searching? Why Profile Views Matter
14. Tip #14 Settings

Ready to transform your LinkedIn profile? Grab your copy of Your LinkedIn Profile Mastered: 14 Expert Tips for Instant Impact today!

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Not This But That

General

There’s a quote I love from Bryan Duncan that says, “If there’s one thing you can count on, tbings are gonna change.” This rings especially true in marketing and business, where change is constant and often dizzying. Here are a few notes capturing this shift—from what we used to say, or some more humorous versions, to what’s now taking over.

  1. Not work/life balance, but work/life flexibility
  2. Not frankenstack or frankendatastack, but martech stack
  3. Not data swamp, but data lake
  4. Not data driven, but data influenced
  5. Not customer, but client
  6. Not single channel or multi-channel, but omni-channel
  7. Not get started for call to action, but try it
  8. Not account based marketing (ABM), but account based strategy
  9. Not tech debt, but data debt

Similarly, I have been keeping a list of business jargon that gets said in the office and often these phrases are said incorrectly.

  1. Not nip it in the butt, but nip it in the bud
  2. Not coming down the pipe, but coming down the pike
  3. Not a buttload, but a boatload
  4. Not flush it out, but flesh it out
  5. Not I couldn’t care less, but I could care less
  6. Not cuddle, but coddle
  7. Not escape goat, but scapegoat

What am I missing?

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Toastmasters Quote of the Day

Toastmasters

Within any Toastmasters meeting are a number of service and leadership opportunities. One of these is sharing an inspirational quote and with that assignment is tallying the votes for ribbons to be given out for the best speech, best table topic, and best evaluator. Here is a running list of those quotes I have shared in meetings:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

“When God closes one door, He opens another, but it’s hell in the hallway.”
Rev. Susan Gayle

“Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.”
Jim Rohn

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Best Martech for Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Audit

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I have used a lot of different search engine optimization (SEO) audit tools over the past two decades. That includes enterprise solutions like BrightEdge and Conductor to lifetime deals like like Ispionage, Serpstat, and Screpy. Hands down, the best tool I have used and continue using is the audit tool within the Semrush platform.

The following image by itself shows you how many things it is checking for which laps any competing solution. I also listed these items alphabeteically below the image so you can more easily see and compare them to what you are using today.

I find it helpful to run this audit on the first day of each month, typically at night to avoid impacting client traffic. You can compare the results with the previous audit to quickly spot major changes and address anything that stands out. Throughout the month, I tackle errors, warnings, and notices as time allows, then reset the process for the following month. This approach has helped me continue reducing the overall issues while also keeping the errors close to zero.

GENERAL
Pages crawled
Site Health
Total errors
Total issues
Total notices
Total warnings

ERRORS
4xx errors
5xx errors
Broken canonical URLs
Broken internal images
Broken internal JavaScript and CSS files
Broken internal links
Certificate Expiration
Certificate registered to incorrect name
DNS resolution issue
Duplicate content
Duplicate meta descriptions
Duplicate title tags
Here is the text from the image, sorted alphabetically:
Hreflang conflicts with incorrect hreflang tags
Hreflang conflicts within page source code
Incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml
Insecure encryption algorithms
Invalid robots.txt format
Invalid sitemap.xml format
Invalid structured data items
Issues with hreflang values
Issues with incorrect hreflang links
Issues with mixed content
Large HTML page size
Malformed links
Meta refresh redirects
Missing canonical tags in AMP pages
Missing canonical URL nor 301 redirect from HTTP homepage
Multiple canonical URLs
Neither canonical URL nor 301 redirect from HTTP homepage
Non-secure pages
Old security protocol version
Pages not crawled
Redirect chains and loops
Slow page (HTML) load speed
Too large sitemap.xml
Viewport not configured
Viewport not set
We couldn’t open the page’s URL
www resolve issues

WARNINGS
Blocked internal resources in robots.txt
Broken external images
Broken external links
Broken internal links
Doctype not declared
Duplicate content in h1 and title
Encoding not declared
Frames used
HTTPS encryption not used
HTTPS URLs in sitemap.xml for HTTPS site
Links lead to HTTP pages for HTTPS site
Long title element
Low text to HTML ratio
Low word count
Missing ALT attributes
Missing h1
Missing hreflang and lang attributes
Missing meta description
No SNI support
No SSL support
Nofollow attributes in outgoing internal links
Short title element
Sitemap.xml not found
Sitemap.xml not specified in robots.txt
Temporary redirects
Too large JavaScript and CSS total size
Too long JavaScript and CSS files
Too long title URLs
Too many JavaScript and CSS files
Too many on-page links
Too many URL parameters
Uncached JavaScript and CSS files
Uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files
Uncompressed pages
Underscores in URL
Unminified JavaScript and CSS files

NOTICES
Blocked by X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header
Blocked external resources in robots.txt
Blocked from crawling
Broken external JavaScript and CSS files
External pages or resources with 403 HTTP status code
Hreflang language mismatch issues
Links with descriptive anchor text
Links with no anchor text
Multiple h1 tags
No HSTS support
Nofollow attributes in outgoing external links
Orphaned pages (Google Analytics)
Orphaned sitemap pages
Page Crawl Depth more than 3 clicks
Pages with only one internal link
Permanent redirects
Resources formatted as page links
Robots.txt not found
URLs longer than 200 characters

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Amazon’s 16 Leadership Principles

Leadership

With all of the business and marketing books I have read, I was surprised that it took me so long to learn about these 16 leadership principles taught by Jeff Bezos. These are core to the Amazon’s culture and operational mindset along with guiding decision-making. Here they are:

  1. Customer Obsession
    Leaders start with the customer and work backward.
  2. Ownership
    Leaders act on behalf of the entire company, thinking long-term and never saying “that’s not my job.”
  3. Invent and Simplify
    Innovation and simplification are valued, and leaders seek out ways to simplify processes.
  4. Are Right, A Lot
    Leaders are expected to have strong judgment and good instincts.
  5. Learn and Be Curious
    Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves.
  6. Hire and Develop the Best
    Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and coach others to improve.
  7. Insist on the Highest Standards
    Leaders continuously raise the bar for high-quality products and services.
  8. Think Big
    Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results.
  9. Bias for Action
    Speed matters, and many decisions and actions are reversible.
  10. Frugality
    Accomplish more with less, focusing on resourcefulness rather than excessive spending.
  11. Earn Trust
    Leaders work to build trust with others by being transparent, self-critical, and objective.
  12. Dive Deep
    Leaders operate at all levels, paying attention to details and understanding all aspects of their work.
  13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
    Leaders are encouraged to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree but commit fully once a decision is made.
  14. Deliver Results
    Leaders focus on key inputs for the business and deliver them on time and with high quality.
  15. Strive to Be Earth’s Best Employer
    Leaders work to make the workplace inclusive, safe, and fulfilling for employees.
  16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
    Leaders consider the impact of their actions on the environment and society, taking responsibility for broader consequences.

These principles were implemented to ensure Amazon’s long-term success and have been integral to its corporate strategy.

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