Summary: Why would you misspell your last name in your LinkedIn profile?  Because other people might misspell it when they look for you.
  When old friends and colleagues look for me in LinkedIn, I knew a lot of them would use the misspelling O'Mally (without the "e") even though my last name is spelled O'Malley, but I still wanted them to find me.
  I discovered a trick that will do it, and I'll show you in this article.
   Details:   I have done many seminars and workshops on LinkedIn, and I see that about 30-40% of people have names that are commonly misspelled.
  If you are one of them, people might search for you and not find you, since the LinkedIn search engine won't find an exact match between their misspelling and your actual spelling.
  If they look once, and they don't find you, they probably won't look again.
  This is a real shame if that person respects your work and would work with you again.
  Here is how you solve the problem.
  Put common misspellings of your name in the "Summary" field of your LinkedIn profile as follows:

• Go to your LinkedIn Home page
• Expand the Profile button
• Click Edit My Profile
• Click the word Edit beside Summary
• Note that the Summary field is a "free form text" field, so you can put in anything that you want in there.
    Put in any common misspellings for your last name.
    In my LinkedIn profile, I actually say "Common misspellings" so that people know why I do it (and so my mother knows I can spell my own name).
  
• Click Save changes.
  

Now look up Patrick O'Malley in the "Search People" box in the upper right hand corner of a LinkedIn page, and my profile should be the first match (out of about 60 matches).
  If you then look up Patrick O'Mally (without the "e"), and I'm the only match.
  Since a lot of people misspell my last name, I'm happy that they can still find me.
  In conclusion, this could be your best LinkedIn tip of the month if you 

• have a last name that is misspelled a lot
• have a friend with a last name that is misspelled a lot.
    (Pass it on to them)

Cool, huh?  Pass it on to your friends!   Some good news:

• You can also use this technique with maiden names, first names, and nicknames, which I will discuss in the future
• I have a video that shows how to do this at LinkedIn training tip 

Some bad news:

• After you make the change, you may have to wait, since it may take the LinkedIn search engine a little while to find the new words that you put there.
  
• This only works when people use the standard search in the upper right hand corner.
    If someone uses advanced search and puts in the first and last name separately, this technique won't work, but very few people do that.