Why do you need to make your LinkedIn profile stand out?
A number of people seem to be a little scared of, or unsure about LinkedIn. It’s not like other social media platforms. People tend to be worried about making mistakes because it can seem more grown up and business-like than the other platforms.
Well think about this – LinkedIn generates more leads for service based businesses than Facebook, Twitter, or standalone blogs and 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
So, it makes sense to get LinkedIn set up properly and to start to use it and engage. Here’s how you to get your LinkedIn profile working in 10 easy tricks
Before you start updating your LinkedIn profile
Like any social media platform, you are always going to get better results if you think about it strategically.
Have a look around your industry and do a little research.
You need to nail who your ideal client is. Take some time to think about who they are. You need to ensure that you are talking to your ideal clients. What sort of keywords are they likely to search on? What sort of subjects and information are they likely to relate to?
The best way to raise your visibility among your peers, your clients (or even recruiters) is by creating a cohesive, compelling personal brand for yourself on LinkedIn.
Here’s how to get your LinkedIn profile working:
1. Make sure you profile is public
OK, first things first. You need to make sure that your profile is visible and can be seen. You need to pop into your Profile and then click on the Edit public profile and URL. Under Edit visibility you should be able to see a toggle to toggle you public on and off for visibility. Toggle it on.
Below this is a list of all the elements of your profile and you can toggle these on and off depending on what you want to be seen.
2. Get a custom URL
This will get you a personalised URL for your LinkedIn profile. This will look much more professional on your business cards and is a much easier URL to give out to people rather than the random letters and numbers that LinkedIn allocates.
You find this under your Profile section and its called Edit URL. Ideally you want to try and get LinkedIn.com/FirstnameLastname
3. Choose a great photo
The general consensus on this is to choose a clear, friendly, and appropriately professional image. LinkedIn is primarily a professional network so choose the sort of photo that will resonate with your industry and your clients/customers. Professional photos are usually worth investing in.
A close up headshot usually works best but some say that if you have a good shot of you in action, doing what you do best, it can also work really well. If you’re creative, then choose something creative.
Don’t forget the profile photo can be the first impression that people have of you.
4. Create an eye catching headline
So many people are missing a trick here by just popping in a boring sounding job title. It doesn’t need to be your actual job title.
The words you use here are keywords can be found by people searching on LinkedIn or Google. So, this goes back to the initial groundwork in thinking about your clients and customers and what keywords they are likely to be searching for.
Don’t be tempted though to just stuff those 120 characters with a bunch of keywords. It’s a mini advertising slot so you need to make it eye-catching too.
5. Banner
So many people don’t change this and leave the bland coloured background there. What a waste of valuable space on your profile!
This is like free advertising space, so use it. There are so many options too on how you can utilise this prime space.
It can be as simple as company colours and maybe a logo, something you feel like you’ve accomplished, you or your business in action, or the city in which you’re located.
Now don’t forget you can change this as often as you want to. So, if you have an event coming up, a book launch, a new product, or you’ve won an award, this is a brilliant spot to highlight this.
It’s prime real estate, so use it!
6. Summary
This is the first part of your profile where you can start to go into detail and there are 2000 characters to do it with.
It is your opportunity to tell the LinkedIn world what you stand for and show them the good stuff about you. Don’t go for long monologues but try and keep it warm and welcoming and allow your personality to shine through.
Think of this a little like telling your story of where you came from, what you’ve accomplished along the way, and then the direction you are going.
7. Highlight your experience and skills
This is kind of like your CV but without the 2 page limit, but, and this is a big old BUT, don’t simply cut and paste your CV and think that’s the job done. Remember that when people read online they have a short attention span, and want to quickly get to the good bits.
Make sure that include relevant jobs for where you want your career to go, and use two to four interesting and impressive bullet points for each job you include. Use good action words to show not just what you did, but what you accomplished in each position.
Next add a few relevant skills. Apparently, LinkedIn members with 5 or more skills listed are 33x more likely to get messaged by recruiters and receive 17x more profile views. So, make sure these skills are relevant to the clients (or jobs) you are looking for.
8. Ask for recommendations and endorsements
This is one of LinkedIn’s best features. It is so easy to get endorsements and recommendations which are then visible for everyone to see. This makes getting validation for your expertise straightforward, and of course, the more buy-in you have from others, the easier it is to get new buy-in.
You just need to click on Ask for recommendation and choose what you’d like to be recommended for and a list of contacts you can ask.
For Endorsements, add in around 10 relevant skills. Choose those that best reflect the skills and experiences you want to be most known for. You can rearrange endorsements in an order that aligns with your brand and delete and off brand ones.
A good tip here is to give to receive – of you recommend and endorse, then your contacts are more likely to return the favour.
Having the right recommendations and endorsements can really make you stand out from the competition.
9. Regular and relevant posting
You need to be consistent for the algorithm to ‘warm’ to you. That’s regular posting and engagement. Your posts need to be relevant to your audience – remember that groundwork we did right at the start – so that they will engage and comment on and like your posts.
As with most social media platforms, video is doing very well. Documents also have good reach at the moment. LinkedIn is one of the few social media platforms where text only post do well too.
One thing LinkedIn doesn’t like is for you to shoot their users out of linkedIn, so the algorithm isn’t too keen on links (external URLs) in posts. There are a couple of ways to get around this. Some people will post the link to the external site in the comments, but this can look a little odd. Currently it is considered best to make you post live and then once live, edit the post and add in the URL.
10. Networking
It seems obvious, but this is what LinkedIn is really all about. You need to keep growing your connections as you meet people because of LinkedIn’s system of first, second, and third degree connections; having a lot of connections helps keep you visible to others.
It can be tempting connect with people you don’t know, but it’s preferable to connect with people whom you know personally, have worked with, or met in a professional capacity. Be careful because if they don’t know you they may refuse your connection and say they don’t know you, and if too many do, then LinkedIn isn’t too keen on that.
Need help building your LinkedIn profile?
You can contact us at Plumb.Digital for a chat about how we can help you build your profile and teach you the secret of success with LinkedIn!
We will never over-sell and we will be straight with you about which options are best for you, your business and your customers.