LinkedIn Quick Tip: Monitoring Who’s Viewed My Profile

What “Who’s Viewed My Profile” Is:

Located about halfway down your LinkedIn homepage on the right-hand side is a box—”Who’s Viewed My Profile”—that gives you two statistics: how many times your profile has been viewed in the last seven days and how many times you have appeared in search results in the last seven days.

Clicking on this link will bring you to a page that displays vague statistics related to who has viewed your profile, such as “Someone at XYZ company,” “Someone in the technology/new media function in the Greater Boston Area” and “Vice President at XYZ company.” You’ll only view more-detailed descriptions of who’s viewed your profile if you are a paid LinkedIn member.

Why “Who’s Viewed My Profile” Is Important:

“Perhaps you’ve reached out to someone at a particular company to pursue a lead or applied for a job through LinkedIn,” says Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of Social Media Delivered, a social media consultancy. “You can use [this function] to see if someone from that company is checking out your profile and you can follow up accordingly,” she says.

Another way you can use “Who’s Viewed My Profile” is to gauge your reach on LinkedIn. “Right now, it might say that two people have looked at your profile and you have appeared in results 10 times in the last seven days,” Orsburn says. “Challenge yourself to get these numbers up so your message and profile is being exposed to more people,” she says (for example, by using Network Updates to broaden your reach).

How To Edit Your “Who’s Viewed My Profile” Setting:

LinkedIn gives you three settings that determine what’s shown when you view someone else’s profile: “show my name and headline,” “only show users my anonymous profile characteristics” (which is the default) and “don’t show users that I’ve viewed their profile.”

To change your settings, go to “Who’s Viewed My Profile” and click “Edit Visibility Settings.” This will bring you to your “Profile Views” page where you can make changes.

Staff Writer Kristin Burnham covers consumer Web and social technologies for CIO.com. She writes frequently on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. You can follow her on Twitter: @kmburnham.