Smart professionals recognize that having a healthy personal brand and strong online presence starts with a great LinkedIn profile. Like your own virtual billboard, it lets prospects and potential vendor partners get a quick snapshot of your experience, the services you offer, and how they can best get in touch with you. It offers quick, easy branding… and it’s free.
Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of professionals out there who either A) aren’t using LinkedIn at all, or B) aren’t leveraging their profiles effectively. Building a great LinkedIn profile isn’t hard. You just need to think critically about what prospects will want to see and how to display that information in a way that’s eye-catching, differentiating, and easy to absorb. In this article, we’ll talk about how to maximize your LinkedIn profile to attract the widest audiences of professional connections and interested prospects.
Getting Started: The Basics of How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Leave a powerful visual impression with the right profile picture and banner photo.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but starting off your profile on the right foot begins with having a great profile photo. The LinkedIn profile photo should look and feel professional (candid snapshots simply won’t cut it). Rely on a high-quality headshot that’s well-lit and at least 200 x 200 pixels (any picture with dimensions smaller than this will appear pixelated and blurry). For great LinkedIn profile picture examples, check out Pinterest. There are loads of great ideas on Pinterest for how to style yourself and arrange lighting to take a dynamite picture. You can also follow major companies on LinkedIn like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, and observe how their executive teams’ profile pictures look (because you know they’ll be great).
Banner photos are also important but are oftentimes overlooked as irrelevant. Trust us: they’re not. Because the banner photo is large, its color scheme and visual impact will set the tone for the entire profile. Banner photos don’t have to depict yourself, your company or its logo (and in fact, they shouldn’t — that’s overkill). Instead, use a visual that depicts some aspect of your personality, the services you offer, or your company’s brand values. This is a place to think creatively about how you want your profile viewers to feel when they assess you or your business, so keep that in mind when you choose your banner photo.
Customize your profile LinkedIn URL.
Did you know that your LinkedIn profile URL was customizable? Many people don’t know, but having a catchy or easy-to-remember profile URL makes it that much easier for prospects to find you or share your profile with others. Here’s how to edit a LinkedIn URL:
At the top of your LinkedIn homepage you’ll see a “Me” icon. Click it, then select “View Profile.” Look for the “Edit Public Profile & URL” button on the right-hand side of the page. Under “Edit URL,” find and click on the “Edit” icon that’s just next to your public profile URL.
Here’s where you get to personalize. While you have free reign on LinkedIn to give yourself whatever URL you choose (provided it’s not already taken), ideally, you’d choose a URL that is your name (without spaces). This will be the easiest URL for prospects or potential vendor partners to find, so it’s a pretty solid choice. Don’t forget to click “Save” when finished.
Optimize your LinkedIn profile headline.
Optimizing your LinkedIn headline is critical because it’s a highly visible space on the profile: visitors to your profile will read it immediately after your name, so it’s hard to miss. Headlines are also searchable (another reason you should ensure you have a good one). The headline must be written within 120 characters, and ideally you’d keep it as short, sweet, and catchy as possible so that it’s memorable to prospects. If you’re SEO-savvy, try your best to use valuable keywords in your headline that are relevant and likely to be searched by your target audience.
To edit your headline (or add one, if you don’t already have one), click the “Me” icon that’s located at the top of the LinkedIn homepage; then select the “View Profile” button. You’ll be taken to your profile page, at which point you’ll click the “Edit” icon. An “Edit Intro” dialogue box will appear where you’ll be prompted to type in a new headline. Again, make sure to click “Save” once you’ve hit upon the perfect profile headline.
Regarding headline content: a lot of LinkedIn users are prompted to fill this space with their job title. Avoid that temptation. The headline is not a place to report job titles: that occurs within the “Experience” section (later on in the profile). Instead, use the headline as a place to show creativity, garner attention, and distinguish yourself from the crowd. In one short clause or phrase, tell prospects exactly who you are and how you’ll help them. They’ll be much more likely to talk to someone who is “developing creative technology for memorable user experiences” rather than just another “software developer.” (See the distinction?)
Ensure contact information is complete and current.
Having complete and up-to-date contact information is critical when you’re considering how to improve your LinkedIn profile. It’s of little use to create a stellar profile if interested prospects aren’t able to reach you once your profile has them intrigued. So be thorough in updating your contact information, and re-check it often to ensure information remains relevant (domain names, phone numbers, and email addresses change, and when they do, your profile should change in kind). But the other aspect of contact information that’s important to note is that LinkedIn will reward you for having completed this section thoroughly by granting you greater visibility on the platform. The more contact information you provide, the higher you’ll rank in the LinkedIn search engine. That’s why it’s doubly vital that this section is filled out entirely.
To further optimize the contact information section, update the default contact labels that LinkedIn provides (like “personal website,” or “company blog” for example) to better reflect the keywords that your target audiences are mostly likely to use when searching for your business or services. So, for example, instead of using the tried-and-true “personal website” label, you might instead call this area “Bay Area Digital Marketing” (if that’s your business and your geographic region).
Now it’s time to include your contact information. To add contact information to your now customized contact information labels, simply click the “Me” icon that’s located near the top of your LinkedIn homepage. Then, select “View Profile.” On the right-hand side, select the “Edit” button that’s next to “Contact and Personal Info” (it’s the button that looks like a little stylus).
An “Edit Contact Info” dialog box will appear; click the “Add Website” button and copy and paste your website URL into that corresponding field (that’s also how to add a personal website to LinkedIn, in case you were wondering). Then, choose the “Other” button from the drop-down list of options so that you can input your own description in the “Type (Other)” field. As always, make sure to click “Save” when finished.
You’ll follow a similar process when you add other contact information (your Twitter handle, personal email address, and/or a company phone number). Adding contact information is a fairly straightforward process, but it’s vital. Give prospects a quick and easy way to reach you and your profile will generate new business and vendor relationships (so don’t shirk on it!).
Congratulations! You’ve designed for yourself a pretty solid (albeit basic) LinkedIn profile. But there’s lots more to learn if you want to take your profile from good to great and really make it work for you as a marketing tool. Let’s cover some of the more in-depth aspects of the LinkedIn profile that will really help you stand out from the crowd.
Time to Personalize: Taking Your LinkedIn Profile Beyond The Basics
Use video to introduce (and differentiate) yourself.
It’s an infrequently used feature, yet LinkedIn allows users to post video introductions of themselves that reside immediately at the top of their LinkedIn profiles. This is an awesome way to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. You can use the video introduction as a place to share client testimonials, introduce the history of your company and/or brand, or simply share the story of how you came to be where you are. Keep it short, memorable and professional. The mere presence of a well-made introductory video will work wonders in helping you stand out from the crowd and garner attention.
Currently LinkedIn does not allow videos to be uploaded directly onto the platform. However, you can upload your video to another hosting site and post the link to that site on LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows videos to be shared from any of the following sites:
Vimeo
Youtube
Ustream
Brightcove
Facebook
SlideShare
To include an introductory video link, go to the top of your LinkedIn profile homepage and click the “Me” icon; then select “View Profile.” Towards the right-hand side, you’ll see the “Edit” icon (that looks like a stylus) next to your profile picture: click it. Then scroll down until you see a “Media” section. Select the “Link” button, then paste your video URL into the open content box. Finish by clicking “Add.” An “Edit Media” dialogue box will appear - this is the place for you to type in a title and description of your video (keep them short and sweet, and keep SEO in mind). When you’ve finished, click “Apply,” and then click “Save.”
Show yourself off with education, awards, and certifications.
You’ve accomplished a lot. Once prospects are sufficiently intrigued by your introductory information, they’ll want to see these credentials to ensure that you know what you’re talking about. So don’t skimp here: be sure to include all career-relevant awards and certifications that you have… you can even include certifications that may not be germane to your current career, but that demonstrate an aptitude for acquiring new skills, for leading, for organizing, or whatever else shows you stand apart.
When you first create your LinkedIn profile, you’ll be prompted to fill out the “Education” section (it’s considered core criterion on LinkedIn, so it’s likely that you’ve already completed this section thoroughly). If you didn’t attend a university or college, don’t stress: just include your high school. You should also be sure to include any trade schools or junior colleges that you may have attended (even if you did not complete your programs or get any degrees).
To add further information about your education on your LinkedIn profile, click on the “+” sign located in the upper right-hand corner of the “Education” section. A dialogue box will appear; when it does, enter the necessary details about your education including the name of the school, any degrees you earned, relevant courses of study, programs, research endeavors, and any extra-curricular activities in which you may have participated. LinkedIn even allows you to include a link to a video in this section, so if there’s one that’s relevant (video of you directing a seminar or introducing a dissertation, for example), go ahead and include those here.
Use the “Experience” section of the profile to list your work history. If you’re wondering how to add multiple titles in LinkedIn, simply treat each individual title as its own employment experience. LinkedIn has smartened up and recognized that repeating the same company does not equate to multiple different employment experiences, so it won’t duplicate them even if you’ve got multiple titles to report. LinkedIn does not, however, auto-order your employment history, so be sure to present your employment history from most recent to most distant.
Display Endorsements and Recommendations.
There’s an entire section on your LinkedIn profile that’s entirely for bragging (or for your colleagues and friends to brag about you). It’s called the “Skills and Endorsements” section. This is a great place to sprinkle in as many keywords as you can think of. Start creating this section by making a list of all of your relevant skills. Begin with those most relevant to your current job or industry, and end with those that are less relevant, but still interesting or noteworthy. When you type skills into the open box they will auto-populate based on keyword, so use those which populate first (those are the high-volume search terms). For example, “data analyst” is more friendly in terms of LinkedIn search optimization than “numbers guru,” so use the former, not the latter.
Skills
To add these keyword-based skills, first click on the “Me” icon at the top of your homepage, and then select “View Profile.” Scroll down until you see the “Skills & Endorsements” section; then click the “Add a New Skill” button. Type in the name of your chosen skill (favoring the high-volume keywords as discussed), and then click “Add.” Continue this way until you’ve added a solid list of relevant skills (and don’t fret if you forget a few. You can always come back and add more later). You can also reorder your skills once added. Simply hover your cursor over the little three-line icon located on the right-hand side. You’ll see the cursor change to a “Move” icon: click and drag that skill in the skills list to reorder it. As always, “Save” when finished.
Skills allow you to brag about yourself. Endorsements let others brag about you. When you’re looking at someone else’s profile — not your own — scroll down to their “Skills” section. You’ll see a little “Plus” icon adjacent to each of their skills. When you click on that icon, a button pops up prompting you to select the person’s level of expertise with that skill, as well as how you know that person. Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not offer an easy way to “request” skill endorsements like it does recommendations (more on that later). But you can also zip a quick message to your LinkedIn connections asking them to endorse you to give your profile and listed skills that added level of credibility. This is the easiest way for how to add accomplishments on LinkedIn that are endorsed by your connections.
Recommendations
LinkedIn does, however, allow you to solicit recommendations from your other connections. Recommendations are a must-have for the seasoned LinkedIn user. They demonstrate to prospects that you have a reputation and that there’s credibility behind what you’re putting forth on your profile. Soliciting the recommendations of past clients helps future clients build faith and trust in what you’re offering, so make that a priority when you end a contract or work relationship with a happy client. To make those requests, simply click the “Ask to be Recommended” link that’s found at the top right corner of the “Recommendations” section. Then, walk through the on-screen prompts in order to fill out and solicit your request.
Congratulations! Let’s take a step back and look at all that you’ve accomplished. You’ve got great visuals on your profile, a snappy headline, and complete contact information so prospects can reach you easily. You’ve introduced yourself with a fun video and have shown off your expertise and education with the Education, Skills and Endorsements, and Recommendations sections. But there’s still more you can do with your profile to really stand apart from the crowd. Let’s dive a little deeper into how to edit a LinkedIn profile by enhancing content and establishing connections.
Content that Counts
How to hone profile content to speak directly to your target audiences
So many are tempted to treat their LinkedIn profiles like a virtual resume or cover letter. But they’re so much more than that. The profile is an exceptional marketing tool that you can use to connect with like-minded professionals, so write it in a way that’s personable and inviting. Write content from a first-person perspective, and shoot for a professional tone (while still conveying your personality and values). Speak directly to prospects; tell them how you’ll help them solve their business challenges in a way that’s both memorable and succinct. This rule of thumb should apply to how to edit a LinkedIn summary, as well as your headline, and any other content that gets included on your profile (such as video introductions or links to personal websites).
Be active on the platform.
Posting regularly on LinkedIn is a great way to optimize your profile and keep in front of prospects. Your activity will appear on your connections’ news feeds, so anything you share, like, or comment on could be seen by prospects with whom you’ve connected (unless your privacy settings dictate otherwise). Therefore, consistent activity on the platform is paramount. Try to share original content (white papers, informational slide decks, or promotional videos) on a bi-weekly basis if possible. In the interim, comment on and “like” the posts of colleagues, vendor partners, or potential prospects. The more active you are, the more you’ll be seen, so try to make visiting LinkedIn a daily habit.
You can also increase your visibility on the platform by writing long-form articles directly on LinkedIn with the LinkedIn publishing tool. Simply click “Write an Article” at the top of your daily feed. You can also edit past drafts; just click the “Me” icon, then choose “Posts and Activity.” Select “Your Drafts” under your profile photo on the left-hand side, and then you’ll be able to see all past drafts and select the one you’d like to work on.
Few know, but LinkedIn actually rewards its most active users. When you share content frequently in a variety of mediums, LinkedIn will float you higher and higher up the totem pole of connections’ LinkedIn news feed. You might even get featured by LinkedIn’s “Daily Rundown,” which is shared by the LinkedIn company page itself, as well as through other mediums such as Twitter. It’s an amazing way to get seen by connections as well as those with whom you are not connected. But only those who are avid content creators will ever get that honor, so get busy!
Start Growing that LinkedIn Network
How to connect with other LinkedIn users
LinkedIn rewards networking. The closer your connections and the more of them you have, the easier it’ll be for others to find you. First-degree connections are those that are most likely to come up in searches, then second-degree, then so on. As a result, you expand your reach when you expand your network (it’s really that simple). So how do you grow?
Start by reaching out to previous employers, teachers, mentors, work colleagues, past and current clients, users with whom you’ve volunteered, or even fellow students from your alma mater. Include a link to connect on LinkedIn in your email signature, on your blogs, and on your company and personal websites, so that it’s easy for prospects to become connections. You can also just use the search feature in LinkedIn to find prospects that are connections of your connections.
Importing email lists to LinkedIn
If you maintain an email database, LinkedIn will allow you to import those emails to synchronize your email contacts. This is an easy way to establish a great foundation with which to reach out to LinkedIn users who share mutual connections. Start by clicking on the “My Network” icon. Click “More Options” along the left-hand side in the “Your Connections” section. Now you can enter email addresses by hand if you so choose.
To upload lists automatically, click on the “Upload a File” icon; then choose the type of file you’d like to import. Browse for the file that’s saved to your hard drive; then click “Add Connections.” You’ll be shown a list of your contacts that are not yet LinkedIn users. Click the “Skip” link that’s adjacent to each name on this list to avoid sending them an invitation to join the platform. If they're not yet on LinkedIn, it’s unlikely that your prompting will tip the scales for them.
Join relevant LinkedIn groups.
Another great way to network on LinkedIn is by joining professional groups. There’s a professional LinkedIn group for every industry vertical and professional circle under the sun. To find them, simply search for them in the search bar on your homepage. When your search results are pulled up, filter by “Groups” in the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner. Find the page of the group you want to join, and then select the “Request to Join” button in the middle of their homepage. LinkedIn may also recommend professional groups for you. These recommendations will appear periodically on your homepage upon login, but of course you’re under no obligation to join.
Develop good inbound marketing by knowing how to link to a LinkedIn profile.
The content of your LinkedIn profile alone should not do all the heavy-lifting when it comes to attracting prospects. You need to help it along with strong inbound linking. The more inbound linking you can drum up from elsewhere on the internet, the higher your profile will rank in search engines (so from an SEO perspective, this is vital). Start by linking to your profile from all of your other social media profile pages. Include links to your profile on your personal website and company website, and in all of your email signatures. Finally, if you’re an avid content creator on sites like Medium, be sure to attach links to your profile to the end of any content that you personally write. (If you’re wondering how to get your LinkedIn profile link, you can simply copy the URL directly from the URL bar when you’re in your profile).
In Conclusion
Whether you’re brand new to LinkedIn or have been on the platform previously, it’s likely time you optimized your profile. Keeping information up-to-date and relevant, content personal, and links plentiful will ensure that you’re easy to find and that your profile attracts all of the right audiences. Sharp companies like Salesflowinc.com can help you with that. They’re LinkedIn gurus who’ve turned prospecting on LinkedIn into a science. They can help you make sure that your LinkedIn profile is ideally optimized to speak to the right audiences and drum up those sales conversations you’ve been looking for.