What an ICA profile can do for you

If you already have a website, a profile on LinkedIn, or some other online presence, you may think, why would you want yet another profile? What will that do for you?
 

1. Your ICA profile can drive traffic to your other website(s).
2. Your ICA profile can help with the search engine optimization of your other website(s)—having pages link to your site can boost your page rank.
3. People who come to the ICA website looking for professionals will not even have to go to your website. They will have a complete profile and contact information right here, including a spam-protected email address and or a captcha-protected contact form.*
4. Of course, if you don't have a website, an ICA profile gives you an online presence that you can use as a web address on your business cards or correspondence.

*Captcha protection is removed for ICA members, but not for registered site users. Anonymous users cannot use the contact form—unfortunately that is how our software (drupal) is configured; it may change in the future.)

How the ICA Membership Directory profiles work

When you first come to the home page at icatriangle.org, there are two ways of accessing the member directory: clicking the "Member Directory" link in the navigation, or using the "Find a Communications Professional" search function in the sidebar.

The Member Directory main page lists the following information:

• First and Last Name
• Title
• Company Name
• Tagline

It's important that you fill out the Title and Tagline fields, because these will tell people what about the kind of work you do. Of course, as independents, our titles are whatever we want them to be: "Writer", "Freelance Writer", "Marketing Writer", "Writer and Journalist", etc. Be as specific as you can, and think of terms that people might use if they were using google to find someone with your expertise.

If you don't have a tag line that you regularly use, write something to further describe your expertise. For instance, you might add "I specialize in med/pharma marketing copy", "Fast, accurate, reliable and reasonably priced" or "Award-winning writing that gets results".  There is a 360 character limit on the tagline.

The title and tagline should tell enough about you that an interested party will be inspired to click on your name and view your full profile.

A note about your user name

Most people sign up for this and other websites by using a compressed version of their name (I often use cdragin) or some less personally identifiable handle, such as momwrites247. Unlike a lot of websites, the ICA site allows you to use spaces, so it is possible to use your actual name as your user name—and there are advantages to doing so.

Your user profile, by default, will be in the format profile/username. Likewise, your ICA blog is in the format blogs/username. So it behooves you to have a user name that is actually your name. Not only does this seem more personal and professional—people know you as Jane Doe, not jdoe—but it is also helpful if people google you on your name. Of course you could also use your company name if you are known professionally more by your company than by your given name.

If you would like to change your user name, email your request to cla...@redberetdesign.com with what your name is currently and what you want it changed to. You can also change your profile link manually (see below), but not your blog link.

How to set up your ICA profile

1. Log in to icatriangle.org

2. In the left sidebar, click “create content”

3. In the either the left sidebar or the center area, click “Profile”
OR
Click on your name in the Member Directory. Click on the "Edit" tab.

4. Specialties and Industries:
Click on the items that best describe your areas of expertise. This is important!
This is how people who visit our website will find you if they use the "Find a Communications Professional" search.

5. ICA Member Info
This should be the user name that you use when you log in. (See "a note about your user name", above)

6. Tagline: 360 character limit. (see " How the ICA Membership Directory profiles work", above).

7. First Name and Last Name

8. Company Name: You can leave this blank if you prefer.

9. Member Profile
This is your opportunity to explain what you do in greater depth.

10. LinkedIn Profile: optional

11. ICA blog:
This is in the form http://icatriangle.org/drupal/blogs/username. See notes on user name, above.

12. Website (optional, can add up to three)

13. Twitter profile
If you are on twitter, this will appear as "Follow Me on Twitter" and link to your twitter profile.

14. *Don’t forget to include the http:// on all of the above

15. Contact info: should be self-explanatory. The email address is spam-protected.

16. View profile of:
Skip this the first time you enter your content...HOWEVER it's important to come back to this! See below.

17. File attachments:
Attach any work samples you would like to have available on your profile. At some point in the future we hope to replace this option with a more elegant way of presenting samples.

18. URL Path Settings:
If you open this, you will see that "Automatic Alias" is checked off, and that the URL is in the form profile/username. If you would like to change it manually, you can uncheck this and manually change it to profile/my-preferred-profile-name.

19. Hit SAVE. BUT WAIT! YOU'RE NOT DONE!!!

20. Scroll back to the top

21. Click the “Edit” tab

22. Click the “Profile” link just below it

23. Scroll down to that “View full profile of” pulldown
Pull this down to your name. This is what will link your member directory profile to your Full profile.

24. Hit "Save" and you're done!