Stepping Up Your Image on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has done a lot to step up their image already in 2017. With their new look and feel now rolled out to all users, what does your profile say about you? Here are a five tips and tricks that you can use to optimize your presence on this business platform.

1. Create a Theme – Your profile needs a theme, or a picture you want to paint to those who visit. Are you a job seeker or a salesperson looking for leads. One of the most common mistakes that I see is that people’s profiles are scattered. If you are using your profile to generate leads for your business, then every piece of text on the profile should work towards that goal. Update your headline, summary, job descriptions and endorsements so that they all portray you as the perfect person with whom to do business.
2. Be Visual– Put your best foot forward visually. Update your profile and background photos. Your profile picture needs to be a headshot of you. You don’t need to go and have a professional headshot taken by a pricey photographer (unless this is your business). Lighting is always just about perfect outside. Try finding a cool exposed brick wall and taking a photo in front of it. Or even some foliage. You should also update your background photo. Use something that contributes to the theme of your profile. Some experts have recommended including your phone number in that graphic.
3. Optimize Your Summary – Spend some time on your profile summary. Use keywords in the first sentence. For mine, I included my areas of experience between pipes in all caps. It looks very neat and communicates very quickly and effectively why a potential customer should consider working with me. Follow the lessons learned from the web and go beyond words. Incorporate graphics, links, published documents, podcasts or videos. This gives you a way to showcase your creativity to either potential customers or employers.
4. Update Your Experience – Fill in your experience according to the theme of your profile. If you are looking for a job in a specific industry, go through your jobs and list the relevant experiences in that field. If you are looking for customers, show the prospects that you have a had a successful path of experience that people have counted on over the years.
5. Publish something. We have all spend a lot of time either learning our industries or gaining practical experience. There is a lot of power in LinkedIn’s publishing platform. Use it. Write a few articles so that people can see that they are making a wise decision in choosing to work with you. At the same time, fill your activity feed with shared articles in your area of expertise. If you are applying for a position in finance, share some articles from thought leaders in that industry. If you are positioning yourself as an expert in marketing, share some posts that you believe are important to fellow marketers.

These are five quick tips and tricks that you can use to be more successful on LinkedIn. If you are interested in learning more, consider our LinkedIn Workshop in June. Details for this free eduicational opportunity are available at www.boxlessworkshops.com.