Informative Essay Sample on Seamus Heaney

Informative Essay Sample on Seamus Heaney The religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland is a deep seeded, highly emotional issue. Put simplistically, it is a centuries old battle between the Native Irish Catholics and the Protestants, who are supported by the British government. Seamus Heaney, born into an Irish Catholic family, is well aware of the intricacies and emotion involved in this situation. By the nineteen sixties, through his poetry Heaney had become a well-known public figure. It was for this reason that his friends wanted Heaney to come out and show public support for the Republicans by writing for their cause. Heaney was often looked upon as a traitor for not showing allegiance to the Republicans and writing political poetry. Regardless of these pressures Heaney remained mute on these issues. He was determined to write more lasting poetry not just political poetry solely for the moment. It was not until he was introduced to P. V. Glob’s book The Bog People, written about the Pagan ritual murde rs of hundreds of years ago in Northern Europe, that Heaney was moved to comment on the conflict in his native Ireland. The images of Denmark’s ancient people entombed in the bog inspired Heaney to compare their plight to that of the Irish victims of violence of the time. P. V. Glob’s book The Bog People came out in 1969. It gave intricate details of how the Danish bog had preserved people and objects for hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years. Although Glob’s book gave a precise account of the victims in the Bog and their violent demise, it was the photos that most captivated Heaney. Heaney drew comparison between these photos and the many images of victims of the Northern Ireland conflict at the time. It was these comparisons that compelled him to write such poems as The Tollund Man, The Grauballe Man and Punishment. Glob’s book enhanced Heaney’s fixation with the Bog. He had already shown his fascination for it with his poem Bogland. He saw the Bog as a link to the past through its ability to remember everything that happened to it. In this poem Heaney speaks fondly of the Bog, the â€Å"ground itself is kind, black butter†. He tells of its preserving power, â€Å"they’ve taken the skeleton / of the great Irish elk / out of the peat†. And when digging the peat for fuel they are also uncovering Ireland’s past, â€Å"our pioneers keep striking / inwards and downwards, / every layer they strip / seems camped on before†. It is in The Tollund Man that Heaney intertwines P. V. Glob’s Bog People with his own Irish countrymen. He draws a parallel between the Danish ritual and sacrificial murders of centuries ago with religious and political murders of the Irish conflict. In the very first line of the poem Heaney shows his fascination with The Tollund Man. â€Å"Some day I will go to Aarhus†. This has a certain romance about it as if Heaney is so captivated by the image he must go and see it for himself. He seems compelled to go on some sort of pilgrimage or quest. It is also a romantic notion because The Tollund Man is actually housed at Silkeborg, not at Aarhus where he was found. With the line â€Å"The mild pods of his eye-lids†, we get the impression of pity on Heaney’s part. He sees The Tollund Man as a timid victim of circumstances and feels sorry for him and his plight. Heaney sees Tollund Man’s sacrifice to the earth as a ritual marriage. â€Å"I will stand a l ong time. / Bridegroom to the goddess†. The Bog goddess’ juices would keep him for hundreds of years to come. â€Å"Those dark juices working / Him to a saint’s kept body†, until he was found by the turf cutters. â€Å"Trove of the turfcutters’ / Honeycombed workings†. In part two of The Tollund Man Heaney moves from the ritual sacrifice of Tollund Man to the killings in Northern Ireland. He is comparing the Boglands of Denmark with those of Ireland and gives mention to the murder of four brothers from an earlier time in Ireland. The Danish pagan sacrifices were made in the hope of good crops the following season. Heaney sees the Irish religious killings, such as those of the four brothers, as sacrifices just at a different time in history. He wishes these murders would appease a god and bring about some good. In the third and final part of the poem Jutland (Denmark) and Ireland are bound together. â€Å"Out there in Jutland / In the old man-killing parishes†. Heaney makes the two countries as one by using the words Jutland, which is the home of the Bog people and then parish, which is a religious word and also how Ireland is divided up geographically. Here, â€Å"I will feel lost, / Unhappy and at home†. Heaney describes how he would feel in a foreign country such as Denmark. He would be lost in unfamiliar territory, but at the same time feel at home because of the similarities between the Bog of Denmark and the Bog of Ireland. Yet he would still be unhappy because the landscape is a reminder of the ancient Bog peoples killings and the murders still going on in Northern Ireland. Unlike The Tollund Man, The Grauballe Man does not draw such direct comparison between The Bog People and the violence in Ireland. In relation to The Grauballe Man, Heaney has taken particular care to describe in detail exactly what has so captured his imagination. Using simile, â€Å"His instep has shrunk / cold as a swan’s foot / or a wet swamp root† , and metaphor â€Å"his spine an eel arrested / under a glisten of mud† to convey to the reader the picture of The Grauballe Man as he sees him. Heaney translates to the reader the pity he feels for The Grauballe Man with such lines as, â€Å"seems to weep / the black river of himself †. The poem is enveloping, with intimate descriptions capturing the imagination and then suddenly these words â€Å"the vent / of his slashed throat† jar the senses back to the present. It is a stark reminder of the violence that brought this victim to his resting-place. These lines also reiterate what fascinates Heaney about the Bog people, their connection with the violence on Heaney’s doorstep in Ireland. Heaney ponders what dreadful events must have transpired to bring The Grauballe Mans demise, â€Å"The cured wound / opens inwards to a dark / elderberry place†. With these lines Heaney also asks questions of the ancient Pagans and the Irish at his time of writing. What pushes people to commit such murders? Did Grauballe Man’s death benefit the people of his time and will the deaths in Ireland advance anyone’s cause? Or will the victims of the Irish conflict, like Grauballe Man and Tollund Man, be consigned to the bog and to history? Heaney’s sympathy is further expressed as the poem continues, â€Å"bruised like a forceps baby†, and his infatuation is exemplified in the lines â€Å"but now he lies / perfected in my memory†. Heaney, throughout the poem shows his affinity to and feelings for, the victim. Although it is in the concluding lines â€Å"each hooded victim, / slashed and dumped† that Heaney reminds the reader of the horror of Grauballe Mans death. These lines also bring to light the vivid realities of what is taking place in Ireland at the time this poem was written. Punishment, as in The Tollund Man and The Grauballe Man, brings to light Heaney’s affection for the Bog people. The images of these victims draws Heaney in to what must have taken place at the time of their death. â€Å"I can feel the tug / of the halter at the nape / of her neck, the wind / on her naked front†. The lines â€Å"and your / tar-black face was beautiful. / My poor scapegoat, / I almost love you† show how infatuated Heaney is with Windeby Girl. In using the metaphor â€Å"would have cast, I know, / the stones of silence†, Heaney reveals his own reluctance to speak out about the violence in Ireland. â€Å"I who have stood dumb / when your betraying sisters, / cauled in tar, / wept by the railings†. These lines reiterate Heaney’s hesitancy to become involved publicly in the Northern Ireland conflict. They compare Windeby Girl with the young girls of Ireland in the 1970’s, being covered in tar and tied to the front railings o f their house. This was punishment for Catholic Irish girls who consorted with British troops, although Windeby Girl’s punishment for adultery was death. Even though Heaney expresses his attachment to and affection for Windeby Girl, and would be outwardly shocked by the tarring of the Irish girls, â€Å"would connive / in civilized outrage†, he shows how deep the feelings run in Ireland with the words â€Å"yet understand the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge†. This to shows a glimpse of Heaney’s dark side and his understanding of the depth of emotions and passion involved in the Irish conflict. Glob’s book The Bog People enabled Heaney to look at the violence in Northern Ireland from a different perspective. By giving a comparison between these ancient sacrificial murders and the killings and violence in Northern Ireland, Heaney could bring the issues of the day to light. Through this method he could avoid making political statements or lecturing to his readers about how he saw the situation. Heaney himself could stand aside from these volatile issues and give a broader, less tainted view of the events that were unfolding. This would enable his poetry to open people’s minds to these events, rather than force the issue onto the public. Heaney had been put under immense pressure to speak out for the Republican cause. Therefore writing these poems, The Tollund Man, The Grauballe Man and Punishment brought with it a great sense of relief and a cathartic effect. In conveying the story of the Irish conflict in such an articulate and compelling manner, Heaney was far more likely to elicit sympathy for the plight of the Irish. Just as the images of Tollund Man, Grauballe Man and Windeby Girl were able to evoke feelings of compassion from Heaney, so would his poems evoke these feelings in his readers. Heaney’s poems give a dignity to these ancient people who were sacrificed for the benefit of their society, and may help the many victims of the Irish conflict be afforded a similar stature. You can order a custom essay, term paper, research paper, thesis or dissertation on  Seamus Heaney topics at our professional custom essay writing service which provides students with custom papers written by highly qualified academic writers. High quality and no plagiarism guarantee! Get professional essay writing help at an affordable cost.

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn®

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn ® It’s July 2014! For me, The Essay Expert, this month marks the 2nd full year that How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile has been trending as #1 in Amazon’s Business Writing Category. I continue to be very excited about being a best-selling author- and I’m looking forward to my DreamBank presentation on how I got here, coming up on Thursday July 17! Part of what’s contributed to the success of How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile is that I keep updating it with new information and tips. In honor of the book’s anniversary as #1, I thought I’d let you in on some of the mistakes that even the most advanced LinkedIn ® users might be making. These are not the ones you see in all the Top 10 lists out on the internet! 1) Giving up on connecting with the right people What do you do when you do an Advanced search for people on LinkedIn ®, get the perfect result, and then run into something like this? With the above contact, I searched on the keyword venture capital, however, there was no connect button and no way to send him anything but InMail, and LinkedIn ® wanted me to upgrade in order to see his profile. Thankfully, when this happens to you, you have two top secret options  to view someones profile even if LinkedIn ® tries to block you. Option A: This  workaround will allow you to connect with anyone on LinkedIn ® as long as you can view their headline. First, copy the persons  first name, last initial and headline into a Google search box and the result that shows up in Google will include  the full name: Check it out! The LinkedIn ® member’s full name shows up and you dont have to upgrade! Clicked on the link and heres  what appears: Notice the  Connect button? By clicking on Connect, you  can write a brief note to the member and start up a conversation with an invitation request. If the person  accepts, you  will be able to see his or her  full profile – without purchasing a premium account. Option B: Another top secret trick for when all else fails is to share a persons  profile. Heres how: First, contact a friend or family member and tell them you will be sending them a message via LinkedIn ®. Then, select the People option from the search bar drop down menu: You will likely not have access to the individuals full name, so if you already know who you want to connect with, try typing their first name and job title into the search bar. Or if you just want to connect with several supply chain managers, type in supply chain manager and you will return a full list of people with the same identifying information. Then scroll to find your desired connection, hover over the drop down arrow to the right of the Send InMail button, and select Share: Send your message, then check your sent messages and youll see there is a link to the profile you just shared. Click on the link and you will be able to read the entire profile and contact the person! Yes it’s kind of like magic. 2) Leaving keywords out of your job titles Pretty much everyone knows that keywords are a must in your LinkedIn ® headline. But not everyone realizes the importance of keywords in your job titles. Don’t get limited in your job title fields by entering your actual job title and nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with a job title, but you have 100 characters to use in those fields. So use them! Any keywords you have identified for your headline will benefit you in the job title fields as well; you will get extra mileage by repeating your keywords as much as is appropriate. Example #1 Before: Vice President Human Resources After: Vice President Human Resources | Director of Human Resources | HR Generalist Example #2 Before: Director of Engineering After: Director of Engineering  ½ Technology Development Manager  ½Biomedical Engineer Example #3 Before: Health Wellness Educator After: Health Wellness Educator ? Corporate Wellness Program and Holistic Health Services Take a look at your job titles. Are yours optimized for LinkedIn ® SEO? If not, go add some keywords! 3) â€Å"Appending† your Specialties to your Summary when prompted If you are a long-time LinkedIn ® user, you might still have a separate Specialties section. You’ll know you have this section if you go to your Edit Summary page and it looks like this: If you see the message in blue prompting you to â€Å"Append specialties to summary,† DON’T CLICK! If you do, you will lose out on 500 characters’ worth of keywords or have to cut down your Summary section to add them; and once you delete your Specialties section you won’t be able to add it back. If you do not have a separate Specialties section, not to worry. You can still use your Summary section to include keywords for searchability in LinkedIn ®Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Advanced Search function. You can create a â€Å"mock† specialties section within the Summary simply by typing the word â€Å"Specialties† and following it with a keyword list; or you can integrate your keywords into your Summary paragraphs. 4) Ignoring the Jobs features LinkedIn ® is pretty much THE place to find a job in today’s marketplace. If you are a company, you need to be advertising job openings there. If you are a job seeker, you need to be looking for jobs there DAILY. The most obvious place way to post and seek jobs is through the Jobs tab. Just by clicking on Jobs, you’ll be given a list of jobs that match the keywords in your profile. But you’ll probably prefer to use the Advanced Search function to find jobs in the geographic area(s) and with the job title(s) that interest you. Here’s a sample search result: You can save your searches to make it easy to get the latest postings for the jobs you want. And you can apply right from the LinkedIn ® site. It costs $195 to post a job for 30 days on LinkedIn ®, and if you use this feature you are likely to get matched with very desirable candidates. If you don’t have the budget to post a job officially, consider posting it in the Jobs Discussions within LinkedIn ® groups. You won’t get the same exposure as you would if you posted to Jobs, but some savvy job seekers do look in the Jobs Discussions for openings. Be sure to post any Jobs Discussions in groups where your target market will be members. 5) Not leveraging the Find Alumni feature We humans get downright silly when it comes to Alumni connections. Perhaps the only thing we are more loyal to than our college is our sports teams. We just trust and love anyone who went to our own college way more than we do anyone else. Therefore, if you are not using the Find Alumni tool on LinkedIn ®, you are missing out on getting some seriously preferential treatment. The feature is located under the Network tab. Use it to find alumni from your own college or high school, or even from other schools. Then send some messages to these folks. They will want to help you! For more on how to leverage this great tool, see The Best Way to Network with Alumni on LinkedIn on the LinkedIn ® Official Blog. 6) Using symbols and formatting that doesn’t translate The symbols and formatting accepted by LinkedIn ® change every day. Pay attention! When you copy any text into your LinkedIn ® profile, check to see if it looks the way you want it to look before making it public! Hint: If you see a formatting trick or symbol you like in someone else’s profile, you can easily and reliably copy and paste it into yours. 7) Keeping it on line Too many people think that having a LinkedIn ® profile and having online conversations is sufficient to build a network and get results. It’s not. The people I’ve given and gotten the most value through LinkedIn ® are the people I’ve spoken with on the phone or met in person. Next time you make a new connection on LinkedIn ®, how about picking up the phone and talking to them? Or, if you’re traveling to any city, see who in your network you can meet for coffee. I have met LinkedIn ® connections when traveling to Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and more. These connections that have led to opportunities to make presentations and build my business in various ways. People like to meet people. Don’t forget that there is a human being behind every LinkedIn ® profile †¦ and chances are every one of them has a telephone and goes out for coffee dates. Go meet them! If you learned something from this article – or have another tip you want to share – please comment below! Category:Archived ArticlesBy Brenda BernsteinJuly 7, 2014 5 Comments Marina says: July 7, 2014 at 10:35 pm Thanks so much for the brilliant hints, Brenda! Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 7, 2014 at 10:42 pm Youre welcome Marina! Let me know if you implement any of them! Log in to Reply Jean B says: July 8, 2014 at 6:20 am Congrats, Brenda! Great information here Log in to Reply Scott says: July 8, 2014 at 11:24 am Brenda, it is an awesome and impressive achievement to be on Amazons best seller list for two years. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm Thanks Scott! You helped make it happen! Log in to Reply

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn®

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn ® It’s July 2014! For me, The Essay Expert, this month marks the 2nd full year that How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile has been trending as #1 in Amazon’s Business Writing Category. I continue to be very excited about being a best-selling author- and I’m looking forward to my DreamBank presentation on how I got here, coming up on Thursday July 17! Part of what’s contributed to the success of How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile is that I keep updating it with new information and tips. In honor of the book’s anniversary as #1, I thought I’d let you in on some of the mistakes that even the most advanced LinkedIn ® users might be making. These are not the ones you see in all the Top 10 lists out on the internet! 1) Giving up on connecting with the right people What do you do when you do an Advanced search for people on LinkedIn ®, get the perfect result, and then run into something like this? With the above contact, I searched on the keyword venture capital, however, there was no connect button and no way to send him anything but InMail, and LinkedIn ® wanted me to upgrade in order to see his profile. Thankfully, when this happens to you, you have two top secret options  to view someones profile even if LinkedIn ® tries to block you. Option A: This  workaround will allow you to connect with anyone on LinkedIn ® as long as you can view their headline. First, copy the persons  first name, last initial and headline into a Google search box and the result that shows up in Google will include  the full name: Check it out! The LinkedIn ® member’s full name shows up and you dont have to upgrade! Clicked on the link and heres  what appears: Notice the  Connect button? By clicking on Connect, you  can write a brief note to the member and start up a conversation with an invitation request. If the person  accepts, you  will be able to see his or her  full profile – without purchasing a premium account. Option B: Another top secret trick for when all else fails is to share a persons  profile. Heres how: First, contact a friend or family member and tell them you will be sending them a message via LinkedIn ®. Then, select the People option from the search bar drop down menu: You will likely not have access to the individuals full name, so if you already know who you want to connect with, try typing their first name and job title into the search bar. Or if you just want to connect with several supply chain managers, type in supply chain manager and you will return a full list of people with the same identifying information. Then scroll to find your desired connection, hover over the drop down arrow to the right of the Send InMail button, and select Share: Send your message, then check your sent messages and youll see there is a link to the profile you just shared. Click on the link and you will be able to read the entire profile and contact the person! Yes it’s kind of like magic. 2) Leaving keywords out of your job titles Pretty much everyone knows that keywords are a must in your LinkedIn ® headline. But not everyone realizes the importance of keywords in your job titles. Don’t get limited in your job title fields by entering your actual job title and nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with a job title, but you have 100 characters to use in those fields. So use them! Any keywords you have identified for your headline will benefit you in the job title fields as well; you will get extra mileage by repeating your keywords as much as is appropriate. Example #1 Before: Vice President Human Resources After: Vice President Human Resources | Director of Human Resources | HR Generalist Example #2 Before: Director of Engineering After: Director of Engineering  ½ Technology Development Manager  ½Biomedical Engineer Example #3 Before: Health Wellness Educator After: Health Wellness Educator ? Corporate Wellness Program and Holistic Health Services Take a look at your job titles. Are yours optimized for LinkedIn ® SEO? If not, go add some keywords! 3) â€Å"Appending† your Specialties to your Summary when prompted If you are a long-time LinkedIn ® user, you might still have a separate Specialties section. You’ll know you have this section if you go to your Edit Summary page and it looks like this: If you see the message in blue prompting you to â€Å"Append specialties to summary,† DON’T CLICK! If you do, you will lose out on 500 characters’ worth of keywords or have to cut down your Summary section to add them; and once you delete your Specialties section you won’t be able to add it back. If you do not have a separate Specialties section, not to worry. You can still use your Summary section to include keywords for searchability in LinkedIn ®Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Advanced Search function. You can create a â€Å"mock† specialties section within the Summary simply by typing the word â€Å"Specialties† and following it with a keyword list; or you can integrate your keywords into your Summary paragraphs. 4) Ignoring the Jobs features LinkedIn ® is pretty much THE place to find a job in today’s marketplace. If you are a company, you need to be advertising job openings there. If you are a job seeker, you need to be looking for jobs there DAILY. The most obvious place way to post and seek jobs is through the Jobs tab. Just by clicking on Jobs, you’ll be given a list of jobs that match the keywords in your profile. But you’ll probably prefer to use the Advanced Search function to find jobs in the geographic area(s) and with the job title(s) that interest you. Here’s a sample search result: You can save your searches to make it easy to get the latest postings for the jobs you want. And you can apply right from the LinkedIn ® site. It costs $195 to post a job for 30 days on LinkedIn ®, and if you use this feature you are likely to get matched with very desirable candidates. If you don’t have the budget to post a job officially, consider posting it in the Jobs Discussions within LinkedIn ® groups. You won’t get the same exposure as you would if you posted to Jobs, but some savvy job seekers do look in the Jobs Discussions for openings. Be sure to post any Jobs Discussions in groups where your target market will be members. 5) Not leveraging the Find Alumni feature We humans get downright silly when it comes to Alumni connections. Perhaps the only thing we are more loyal to than our college is our sports teams. We just trust and love anyone who went to our own college way more than we do anyone else. Therefore, if you are not using the Find Alumni tool on LinkedIn ®, you are missing out on getting some seriously preferential treatment. The feature is located under the Network tab. Use it to find alumni from your own college or high school, or even from other schools. Then send some messages to these folks. They will want to help you! For more on how to leverage this great tool, see The Best Way to Network with Alumni on LinkedIn on the LinkedIn ® Official Blog. 6) Using symbols and formatting that doesn’t translate The symbols and formatting accepted by LinkedIn ® change every day. Pay attention! When you copy any text into your LinkedIn ® profile, check to see if it looks the way you want it to look before making it public! Hint: If you see a formatting trick or symbol you like in someone else’s profile, you can easily and reliably copy and paste it into yours. 7) Keeping it on line Too many people think that having a LinkedIn ® profile and having online conversations is sufficient to build a network and get results. It’s not. The people I’ve given and gotten the most value through LinkedIn ® are the people I’ve spoken with on the phone or met in person. Next time you make a new connection on LinkedIn ®, how about picking up the phone and talking to them? Or, if you’re traveling to any city, see who in your network you can meet for coffee. I have met LinkedIn ® connections when traveling to Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and more. These connections that have led to opportunities to make presentations and build my business in various ways. People like to meet people. Don’t forget that there is a human being behind every LinkedIn ® profile †¦ and chances are every one of them has a telephone and goes out for coffee dates. Go meet them! If you learned something from this article – or have another tip you want to share – please comment below! Category:Archived ArticlesBy Brenda BernsteinJuly 7, 2014 5 Comments Marina says: July 7, 2014 at 10:35 pm Thanks so much for the brilliant hints, Brenda! Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 7, 2014 at 10:42 pm Youre welcome Marina! Let me know if you implement any of them! Log in to Reply Jean B says: July 8, 2014 at 6:20 am Congrats, Brenda! Great information here Log in to Reply Scott says: July 8, 2014 at 11:24 am Brenda, it is an awesome and impressive achievement to be on Amazons best seller list for two years. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm Thanks Scott! You helped make it happen! Log in to Reply

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn®

Top 7 Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making on LinkedIn ® It’s July 2014! For me, The Essay Expert, this month marks the 2nd full year that How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile has been trending as #1 in Amazon’s Business Writing Category. I continue to be very excited about being a best-selling author- and I’m looking forward to my DreamBank presentation on how I got here, coming up on Thursday July 17! Part of what’s contributed to the success of How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn ® Profile is that I keep updating it with new information and tips. In honor of the book’s anniversary as #1, I thought I’d let you in on some of the mistakes that even the most advanced LinkedIn ® users might be making. These are not the ones you see in all the Top 10 lists out on the internet! 1) Giving up on connecting with the right people What do you do when you do an Advanced search for people on LinkedIn ®, get the perfect result, and then run into something like this? With the above contact, I searched on the keyword venture capital, however, there was no connect button and no way to send him anything but InMail, and LinkedIn ® wanted me to upgrade in order to see his profile. Thankfully, when this happens to you, you have two top secret options  to view someones profile even if LinkedIn ® tries to block you. Option A: This  workaround will allow you to connect with anyone on LinkedIn ® as long as you can view their headline. First, copy the persons  first name, last initial and headline into a Google search box and the result that shows up in Google will include  the full name: Check it out! The LinkedIn ® member’s full name shows up and you dont have to upgrade! Clicked on the link and heres  what appears: Notice the  Connect button? By clicking on Connect, you  can write a brief note to the member and start up a conversation with an invitation request. If the person  accepts, you  will be able to see his or her  full profile – without purchasing a premium account. Option B: Another top secret trick for when all else fails is to share a persons  profile. Heres how: First, contact a friend or family member and tell them you will be sending them a message via LinkedIn ®. Then, select the People option from the search bar drop down menu: You will likely not have access to the individuals full name, so if you already know who you want to connect with, try typing their first name and job title into the search bar. Or if you just want to connect with several supply chain managers, type in supply chain manager and you will return a full list of people with the same identifying information. Then scroll to find your desired connection, hover over the drop down arrow to the right of the Send InMail button, and select Share: Send your message, then check your sent messages and youll see there is a link to the profile you just shared. Click on the link and you will be able to read the entire profile and contact the person! Yes it’s kind of like magic. 2) Leaving keywords out of your job titles Pretty much everyone knows that keywords are a must in your LinkedIn ® headline. But not everyone realizes the importance of keywords in your job titles. Don’t get limited in your job title fields by entering your actual job title and nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with a job title, but you have 100 characters to use in those fields. So use them! Any keywords you have identified for your headline will benefit you in the job title fields as well; you will get extra mileage by repeating your keywords as much as is appropriate. Example #1 Before: Vice President Human Resources After: Vice President Human Resources | Director of Human Resources | HR Generalist Example #2 Before: Director of Engineering After: Director of Engineering  ½ Technology Development Manager  ½Biomedical Engineer Example #3 Before: Health Wellness Educator After: Health Wellness Educator ? Corporate Wellness Program and Holistic Health Services Take a look at your job titles. Are yours optimized for LinkedIn ® SEO? If not, go add some keywords! 3) â€Å"Appending† your Specialties to your Summary when prompted If you are a long-time LinkedIn ® user, you might still have a separate Specialties section. You’ll know you have this section if you go to your Edit Summary page and it looks like this: If you see the message in blue prompting you to â€Å"Append specialties to summary,† DON’T CLICK! If you do, you will lose out on 500 characters’ worth of keywords or have to cut down your Summary section to add them; and once you delete your Specialties section you won’t be able to add it back. If you do not have a separate Specialties section, not to worry. You can still use your Summary section to include keywords for searchability in LinkedIn ®Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Advanced Search function. You can create a â€Å"mock† specialties section within the Summary simply by typing the word â€Å"Specialties† and following it with a keyword list; or you can integrate your keywords into your Summary paragraphs. 4) Ignoring the Jobs features LinkedIn ® is pretty much THE place to find a job in today’s marketplace. If you are a company, you need to be advertising job openings there. If you are a job seeker, you need to be looking for jobs there DAILY. The most obvious place way to post and seek jobs is through the Jobs tab. Just by clicking on Jobs, you’ll be given a list of jobs that match the keywords in your profile. But you’ll probably prefer to use the Advanced Search function to find jobs in the geographic area(s) and with the job title(s) that interest you. Here’s a sample search result: You can save your searches to make it easy to get the latest postings for the jobs you want. And you can apply right from the LinkedIn ® site. It costs $195 to post a job for 30 days on LinkedIn ®, and if you use this feature you are likely to get matched with very desirable candidates. If you don’t have the budget to post a job officially, consider posting it in the Jobs Discussions within LinkedIn ® groups. You won’t get the same exposure as you would if you posted to Jobs, but some savvy job seekers do look in the Jobs Discussions for openings. Be sure to post any Jobs Discussions in groups where your target market will be members. 5) Not leveraging the Find Alumni feature We humans get downright silly when it comes to Alumni connections. Perhaps the only thing we are more loyal to than our college is our sports teams. We just trust and love anyone who went to our own college way more than we do anyone else. Therefore, if you are not using the Find Alumni tool on LinkedIn ®, you are missing out on getting some seriously preferential treatment. The feature is located under the Network tab. Use it to find alumni from your own college or high school, or even from other schools. Then send some messages to these folks. They will want to help you! For more on how to leverage this great tool, see The Best Way to Network with Alumni on LinkedIn on the LinkedIn ® Official Blog. 6) Using symbols and formatting that doesn’t translate The symbols and formatting accepted by LinkedIn ® change every day. Pay attention! When you copy any text into your LinkedIn ® profile, check to see if it looks the way you want it to look before making it public! Hint: If you see a formatting trick or symbol you like in someone else’s profile, you can easily and reliably copy and paste it into yours. 7) Keeping it on line Too many people think that having a LinkedIn ® profile and having online conversations is sufficient to build a network and get results. It’s not. The people I’ve given and gotten the most value through LinkedIn ® are the people I’ve spoken with on the phone or met in person. Next time you make a new connection on LinkedIn ®, how about picking up the phone and talking to them? Or, if you’re traveling to any city, see who in your network you can meet for coffee. I have met LinkedIn ® connections when traveling to Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and more. These connections that have led to opportunities to make presentations and build my business in various ways. People like to meet people. Don’t forget that there is a human being behind every LinkedIn ® profile †¦ and chances are every one of them has a telephone and goes out for coffee dates. Go meet them! If you learned something from this article – or have another tip you want to share – please comment below! Category:Archived ArticlesBy Brenda BernsteinJuly 7, 2014 5 Comments Marina says: July 7, 2014 at 10:35 pm Thanks so much for the brilliant hints, Brenda! Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 7, 2014 at 10:42 pm Youre welcome Marina! Let me know if you implement any of them! Log in to Reply Jean B says: July 8, 2014 at 6:20 am Congrats, Brenda! Great information here Log in to Reply Scott says: July 8, 2014 at 11:24 am Brenda, it is an awesome and impressive achievement to be on Amazons best seller list for two years. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm Thanks Scott! You helped make it happen! Log in to Reply