A few weeks ago I touched on the importance of LinkedIn. That’s right LinkedIn. Now I know you’re probably thinking that LinkedIn isn’t as sexy or exciting as Twitter, Blogging or Facebook and I’m not here to say otherwise. It isn’t as sexy and it’s not as exciting, nor has it had the type of updates and revamps like both Facebook and Twitter recently underwent. Nevertheless, LinkedIn should not be considered the ugly stepsister of social media. It is powerful and if used correctly and creatively can yield powerful results.

Still not convinced? Well how about this:

• LinkedIn has over 80 million members in over 200 countries.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Recently, I have been researching different ways to optimize a LinkedIn profile so that it truly stands out from the crowd. If you haven’t learned this already, when it comes to social media, creativity is key. But be careful because even creativity has its limits and boundaries. By all means, reach for the stars but do so in a realistic and practical manner. Reach too far and the results may not be the ones that you wanted or expected.

So there I sat, researching, wondering how to reach for the stars, successfully, when it comes to LinkedIn. After a few minutes of rewording my Google search terms, I stumbled across a blog post that jumped out at me. The title: “10 Ways To Increase Highly-Targeted Leads On LinkedIn” promised interesting content and as I read through I was happy to find that the title did not disappoint.

The point that I fell in love with was point #3 – Be Creative. The blogger offered a creative tip that I had not heard of before and that was to add video to your LinkedIn profile (here are easy steps to putting a video onto your LinkedIn profile). Immediately, my mind began racing with the possibilities of what that video content could include:

• Testimonial from a client telling people about the great experience they had and why they should consider contacting that realtor over all others.
• A video from the agent casually introducing him or her and telling consumers what he or she can offer.
• A video of a presentation that he or she may have given

Why is this beneficial? A video gives the consumer the human-to-human contact that a normal LinkedIn page cannot. It helps better tell your story of who you are and why someone should use you over another agent. So my task for you is to use it, play around with it and see what type of feedback you receive.