Lessons From Las Vegas: Are You Happy With Your LinkedIn Profile?

January 24, 2011 / in LinkedIn, Social Media / by Mic Johnson

Recently, I was fortunate enough to have been selected as one of the speakers at the Professional Convention Management Association’s (PCMA) Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, NV (Stay tuned…future blog posts will highlight some of my key takeaways from the experience).

This annual event is a gathering of a fabulous group of people and personalities in an industry that is critical to the economies of cities all across the the U.S. and beyond. Meeting planners, event planners, audio visual companies, hotel representatives, and a wide variety of vendors made up the collection of some 3,500 people in attendance. 

I was in the Social Media section of an area coined “The Learning Lounge“, which was a high-energy, multi-purpose, flurry of activity that kicked off each day of the convention. There were mini-breakout areas (mine was called Social4U) with rapid 15-minute presentations one after another. There was speed networking. There was PCMA365, which allowed people who weren’t in Vegas to experience the convention virtually. The Learning Lounge was a great success and generated a flurry of buzz and activity to kick off each day.

My presentations focused on giving the audience some key tips about building LinkedIn profiles and how to incorporate the tool into one’s weekly schedule. One of the first questions I asked was:

“How many people here have LinkedIn profiles?”

Nearly everyone (guessing maybe 30 or so people) listening to my presentation raised their hands. “Awesome”, I thought to myself. But I knew I had to ask the even more important follow up question:

“How many of you are happy with your LinkedIn profile?”

Can you guess how many people raised their hand? Seriously…just take a guess. Ok, I’ll tell you. NO ONE. Not. One. Single. Person.

Jason and I talk to people every day that know they should be using LinkedIn to connect to people, to deepen relationsh