Is Your LinkedIn Profile Working for You? In this article, we discuss 6 tips to Optimize your LinkedIn Profile. Ideas that will help you get found the way people are searching for you online. The LinkedIn Profile Banner, LinkedIn Profile Picture, Profile keywords, Your LinkedIn Contact information, the Summary section, and LinkedIn PULSE.
The LinkedIn profile banner, located at the top of your profile above your profile picture, is an area of opportunity to build your business brand. Fun Enterprises gets their brand across by showing how they create fun in the corporate world.
TIP Strive for consistency across all your chosen social media platforms. The banner you use choose should be the same across all your social media; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and Instagram.
2. LinkedIn Profile Picture
Having a recent profile picture is important to your professional visibility and credibility. The choice between having one and not having one, choosing to have one.
Importance of Your LinkedIn Profile Picture
People want to connect with a face, not this grey-shaded image! Take the time to have a picture taken of you. It’s easy these days with our phones having some sharp image cameras.
TIP Remember, this is a business platform. Use an appropriate picture according to the industry you are in. “Joe the plumber” is not going to be in a suit and tie.
A profile image should be the most recent picture of you. Update your image every 1-2 years. Have you ever signed up for a seminar, looked at the presenter’s picture in their LinkedIn profile, when you meet them in person you find out they’re about 20 years older? Would you tend to trust someone who doesn’t reveal themselves as they are now? Time changes all of us. We want to see the real you.
3. Keywords Matter in Your LinkedIn Profile
Use keywords that describe what you do with the question in mind; How can people find you better? Tricia is thinking of how people search as well as revealing a little bit about herself, striving for transparency.
Keyword Sample Rather than VP of Social Media, Tricia, a title she has earned, chose to have fun and describe herself as Social Media Marketing | Brand Management | Speaker | Having FUN | Always in search of the BEST chocolate chip cookie!
Note: Keywords throughout your profile will help you get found for jobs if you are in the market. LinkedIn will highlight the keywords you match to a job description. The right keywords get you noticed.
6 Tips to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
4. Optimize Your LinkedIn Contact Information
LinkedIn has gone through some changes. Make sure your contact information is up-to-date and not missing. Check on your business phone number and your business email.
The Contact Info button will show up under the number of your connections. I went into mine the other day after Tricia’s seminar. My phone number and email were blank! If I was asked to refer a person in my network and they come up with a missing phone number and email, I’m moving on to the next person.
5. Optimize Your LinkedIn Summary Section
Your LinkedIn summary section should describe what you do. It should also describe where you are going. Interesting summary sections tell your story using text and images. You can add files, such as your resume, add links to your website, social media, and blog. Upload images to visually describe what you do. Even if you are a service business, get ideas of images to use by searching google images. You’ll get ideas using InfoGraphics to help tell your story.
Did you know you can blog on LinkedIn? Add blog articles in your LinkedIn Summary section. If your blog takes off, you receive likes and shares, PULSE picks you up giving you a top ranking. The most recent and most talked about news coming from writers on LinkedIn.
6. What is LinkedIn PULSE?
What is PULSE? PULSE is the news and insights you need to know. LinkedIn syndicates 3 areas: Your News, Top News, and Discover.
When your LinkedIn post shows activity such as Shares, Likes, Favorites of a couple hundred or more, LinkedIn will put your blog article to the top of PULSE. Pretty cool way to get more visibility of your blog articles.
6 Key areas that will Help You Get Your LinkedIn Profile Noticed
Ideas that will help you get found the way people are searching for you online. The LinkedIn Profile Banner, LinkedIn Profile Picture, Profile keywords, Your LinkedIn Contact information, the Summary section, and LinkedIn PULSE.
Have trouble figuring out what to write for your LinkedIn Profile? Maybe you don’t have time to think about it. We can help! Contact us about helping you with your linked-in profile.
Carol is the founder of Hit-the-Web Marketing since 2009. She's been building websites and marketing campaigns from scratch into something scalable and successful for over 20 years.
We build websites around lead generating strategies. Then, we go to work driving traffic to your website, converting visitors into customers, and nurturing and retaining your customers. Our main service is Google Ads. Because 92.07% of people searching on the web use Google as their search engine of choice.