The world has changed, and it’s shifting us. We are using our devices to unlock experiences. We can tour places on our phones. We are more connected than ever before. Our clients and our customers are just as connected, so if we want to connect with them, we have to connect with their internal and external brands.

I want you to tweak your LinkedIn profile for maximum effect. To pop up in more search results on LinkedIn, we need to make sure that we have our keywords — those are the words or terms that we want to be found for — located on our profile. Many of us are familiar with the term “keywords” because we use it in our website building for search engine optimization. However, LinkedIn runs on keywords as well, so you, your employees or team members, and your company cannot pop up for any search term if those words are not somewhere in that profile. Think about all the words or terms you want to be found for, and make sure those are included in those company pages, profiles and team member profiles. Get those in there.

I want you to join groups consisting of your target market. On LinkedIn, with people whom you share groups, you pop up higher in their search results than the others. So, once you add those keywords in there, if you are already sharing a group with them, you pop up higher in their search results. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. I want you to join as many groups as you can that attract your target market. Do I want you to be active in 50 groups? No. I don’t care if you are active in one of them. But we want to up the chances of you being found for the people who are already looking for you. That’s the low-hanging fruit, all right?

Now, to get an idea of where you can put some of these keywords, go ahead and put those in your headline. Your headline is the area that pops up under your name. You might want to get some of those words that you are most likely to be found for. At the end of my headline, I have an email address. I suggest that people put an email address or a phone number because when someone finds you for those keywords we talked about, you are going to pop up on a page at some point with nine other people. They are going to see your picture, which you hopefully made visible if we are talking about the actual personal profiles. They are going to see your name and your headline. If they want to connect with you, they have to click through to your profile, and, depending on how close a connection you are or aren’t, they are going to try to send you a connection request. They may or may not be able to. But if your contact information is right there in your headline, you are already making their lives easier and showing them that you are thinking ahead to make it easy to contact you. Again, email address or phone number, whichever you prefer.

Customization is the key for the future. I want you to leverage social media and apps like Glassdoor and Indeed to lovingly spy on your clients’ prospects and referral partners. Let’s say that you are trying to find group plan managers. Go into that company’s account on Glassdoor or Indeed, and you’ll notice that employees and past employees put reviews. But they also talk about their benefits. So now you can see where the holes are. You can see what people say they do or don’t like about that particular company, and you might be able to use that as your in. When you are having that initial meeting to talk to them about working with you, you can even use some of the language of their own people as a way to bolster your position.

Master using your CRM, and integrate social media and research activities into your notes. So, as you are finding out things about them, as you are seeing this information, use your CRM. I know everyone in here isn’t necessarily using the same one, but add each and every note you can in there because it’s going to help you and your team present a unified front. We want to do business with people who see us, who understand us, and so all those notes make a difference in the end.

Use Google Alerts to track your juiciest connections. Google Alerts is a free service from Google that allows you to track words or terms that you find of interest online. A few years ago, I was speaking at a conference for people in marketing in the building industry. I knew that one of the people in the audience did big sales training events for her team, and I wanted her to work with me. So, I did a Google Alert for her name. Two weeks after the conference, I got an email, a Google Alert, that let me know she had just won this prestigious lifetime award that was basically the Emmy of marketing for the building industry. I sent her a quick email and said, “Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.” And I put a link to the article. She emailed me back immediately and said, “I won?” How many of you know you can’t put a price on that? But I did because she hired me for sales training.

So, use this to track the organizations, the individuals and to see what people are saying about them. You can set it up to get updates as they happen, once a day, once a week. It only takes about 30 seconds to set a Google Alert. And if you don’t know how to set a Google Alert, just Google “Google Alerts.” It’ll take you there.

As a technology strategist and certified futurist, Crystal Washington, CSP, makes complex social media, app and web topics easy to understand and accessible for everyday people, while also working with organizations to leverage technology to increase profits and productivity. She has appeared in numerous publications including Entrepreneur, Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes, and is a tech expert regularly called upon by major television networks. Washington is the author of the books “One Tech Action: An Efficiency Guide for Busy Non-techie Professionals to get More Done, Build Better Relationships, and Enjoy More Free Time” and “The Social Media Why: A Busy Professional’s Practical Guide to Using Social Media Including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and Blogs for Business.”