Letting prospects know your location is an important part of winning new business, especially if your new client will want to work with you face-to-face or visit your premises. However, with recent LinkedIn changes, a new spanner has been thrown in the works and it affects those whose most recent education took place at an institute with the location within the name.

Here are some quick examples:

Example 1

Yesterday I was on the phone to Neil for 30 minutes. His profile was open in front of me and I wanted to comment on his location being Western-Super-Mare. When discussing working together I was evaluating in my mind the logistics of this and how it would work. Only he isn’t in Western-Super-Mare, he is in Wolverhampton. Even after I corrected myself, my mind kept forgetting this because W-S-M was so must more prominent on the profile.

Example 2:

Speaking with a prospect on the phone today, I invited him to open Chris’s profile as an example of my work. His instant response was “Oh yes I’ve found him. He’s in Southampton”. Well actually No. He is in Southsea, Portsmouth. About 20 miles away.

Take a look at why he thought this:

This person thought Chris was in Portsmouth because it was the most prominent item on his profile. ‘Kaplan -Southampton’ is actually his most recent entry in the education section of his profile.

How do we solve it?

If your most recent entry in your Education starts with ‘University of….’ you won’t have much of a problem since the first word defines the context of the conversation. However if your most recent entry does not show like this and has a location within the name, you’re going to need to change it.

It’s a tricky one.

For Chris it is easily solved by simply removing ‘Southampton’ or changing the title to reflect the actual qualification achieved. I would recommend the latter, as Kaplan means very little to most people and could lead people to think his company is called ‘Kaplan’.

In Neil’s case, there is no real way to change the name other than putting the actual qualification in the title instead. However, for a person 25+ you certainly doesn’t want school or early college level education as a prominent part of your profile when you are now an established expert in your field. For Neil, his life experience far exceeds his professional qualifications, something that anyone with just a high school education will attest too. In this instance it might be worth while removing the education section all together so the field isn’t utilised.

To see how you profile is showing up, all you need to do is click on the ‘Me’ drop down and ‘View Profile’. 

If you’re curious how your LinkedIn profile is reflecting your personal brand and helping/hindering you win new business leads, why not use our LinkedIn Profile Assessment?