LinkedIn is a valuable tool that is often overlooked. It is not simply a platform for displaying your CV, or a professional social media site – it can be used for so many more purposes, including:
- Lead generation and finding new clients
- Job-searching and recruitment
- Increasing brand awareness
- Networking
- Advertising
- Getting your content seen
That’s why it’s important to make sure your LinkedIn profile is the best it can possibly be – which means filling out as much of it as possible!
Here are some useful tips and tricks to help you optimise some of the most important sections of your LinkedIn profile.
1. Include an engaging profile picture
For your LinkedIn profile, it is essential that you include a profile picture. This enables you to stand out from the crowd, show some personality, and present your business persona to the world.
After all, people buy from people.
It can be easy to take an effective profile picture – even a smartphone will do the job, although hiring a professional headshot photographer is great if you want to go down this route.
Some key points for taking a photo for your profile are:
- Make sure the photo is in colour and of good quality – not pixelated or blurred.
- Smile – with teeth! This will make you appear friendly and approachable.
- Wear whatever clothes you wear for work – whether this is a suit and tie or a uniform, remember that you are representing your business or employer.
- You only need your head and shoulders in the photo.
- Remember this isn’t Instagram or Facebook – keep it professional.
For more guidance on taking the best profile picture, check out our blog on this topic! How to take the perfect profile picture
2. Stand out with a custom banner
Many people don’t include a banner in their LinkedIn profile – but it is actually an excellent way of getting across your brand in just a few seconds, and of making people want to scroll and read more. It is essentially the landing page of your profile – so make it count.
Your banner should represent your brand – whether that’s your employer, your own business, or your personal professional identity. To achieve this, your banner might include:
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Your logo
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Your brand’s colour scheme
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Your tagline
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A branded graphic element
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Your name and job role
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An eye-catching photo related to your job or company – for example your team working on a project
It’s important to choose which elements you want to include carefully, as too much going on will create a busy and unprofessional effect. It is also worth remembering that on the LinkedIn desktop site, your profile photo will partially cover your banner on the left-hand side – make sure it’s not covering up anything important!
A banner can be really simple to create yourself using websites like Canva, or you could hire a professional graphic designer to make a showstopping banner for you.
3. LinkedIn Creator Mode
LinkedIn Creator mode is one of the newest features on LinkedIn, which opens up certain options for users who enable this setting.
The most significant change is that Creator Mode changes the ‘Connect’ button on your profile to a ‘Follow’ button. It also displays the number of followers you have to anyone visiting your profile.
This can be a really useful feature if you are a content creator who wants to grow their following and expand their reach, and most LinkedIn influencers that you see will have this feature enabled.
Creator Mode also lets you list topics that you post about in your profile header, as hashtags. Additionally, your original posts will be featured higher up in your profile, and you may be recommended to other users as a suggested profile to follow, allowing you to reach a larger audience.
4. Write an informative heading that reflects your role
Your heading is one of the first things that people see in your profile, and can be a determining factor in whether they decide to look at your content, follow you, or connect with you. It’s important to get it right.
The default heading is your current job role and employer. However, it is actually much more customisable than this, and could include:
- Multiple job roles or companies
- Any awards that you have won
- Emojis, which can be eye-catching and add personality
- Sectors you work in or services that you offer
- Your tagline
- A summary of what you do
It can be useful to include keywords in the heading, as it can aid your SEO ranking and make it easier for people to find you.
This is also something that people will see as a thumbnail, for example in the suggested connections tab or in the search function, so it needs to concisely give an accurate and clear description of what you do. Even people outside your own industry should be able to understand it.
5. Write an appealing ‘About Me’ section
This can be the most difficult section to get right, but is arguably the most important, so it’s worth spending some time on. The ‘About Me’ section is the most personal part of your profile, and can include:
- Your motivations and inspirations
- Your ambitions
- What services you can offer
- Your specialisms
- Why you work in the field/role that you do
- Your career journey
- Your particular skills
Although there is a lot of space for this section, you should still try and keep it concise, as most people will only skim it. This means that a bullet point format can be useful, as it is easier to glean the most important information quickly.
It is also worth thinking about what you want to achieve from your profile. If your aim is lead generation and gaining more business, you could focus on what you can offer a potential client. If your aim is to expand your reach, you might prefer to focus on what makes you unique or your story so far. It could be sales-oriented or more personal – it’s up to you!
6. Making the most of your experience and volunteering
This is the part of LinkedIn that is most often described as being like a virtual CV – but it doesn’t have to be. Although this section describes your work history and previous job roles, it can be tailored depending on what you want your profile to achieve. It is an opportunity to tell a story, and can be a chance to showcase:
- Your key achievements at work
- Your career journey and story
- What you can offer a client or employer
- What you have learnt from different jobs
Another element to consider is your volunteering experience, which is a separate section to your work experience. Here, it allows you to give an insight into your values and interests outside of work, and your contribution to your community. This is a subtle way of demonstrating your personality to anyone visiting your profile.
7. Using recommendations to give credibility
Recommendations are the equivalent of reviews or testimonial quotes on your website. If your services have been rated highly, others are more likely to consider employing you.
You can request recommendations from anyone in your network, including:
- Current or former employers
- Current or former colleagues
- Ongoing or previous clients
Recommendations can be very useful in giving some credibility to your LinkedIn presence, and are especially helpful if you can get recommendations from high-profile companies.
Recommendations could talk about:
- What are you like to work with
- The quality of the service you provide
- What they gained from working with you
Remember, you must request that someone write a recommendation for you through LinkedIn, and ideally you should discuss it with them first. You may want to write some questions for them to answer, or ask to check the recommendation before they post it – this way you can proactively ensure that the recommendation reflects well on you.
8. Get people to find out more with featured content
If you’ve been lucky enough to have a post go viral, this is the place to showcase it! Your ‘Featured Content’ section is a really useful feature that lets you decide the front-page headlines of your LinkedIn profile.
This could be any of the following:
- Your most popular/viral posts
- Posts about the things you are most proud of, such as awards
- Articles that you have written, or that have been written about you
- A Linktree with directions to your website or other social media accounts
- Your most recent achievements
Think about what you want people to know about you, and what kind of content you want to highlight. This could be a deciding factor in whether somebody wants to follow you or connect with you!