3 Tips for a great LinkedIn profile
For professionals and B2B companies, LinkedIn is the one of the greatest networking tools available to the market. For those who need convincing: 62 percent of B2B marketers say LinkedIn successfully generates leads for their company (which is more than double any other platform).
While creating content helps you stand out as I go over in How content marketing builds brand loyalty, your LinkedIn profile should be stellar first. A half-baked LinkedIn is like showing up to a job interview disheveled. You can be the best candidate in the world, wow them with your personality and ideas, but you are probably not getting the job because you do not look the part.
The first step an interested prospect will take in the buyer’s journey is a quick glance at your LinkedIn. To ensure they take another step, here are three easy ways to clean up your LinkedIn profile:
Summarize succinctly
The LinkedIn summary explains who you are with no structured format beyond a 2,000 character limit. If prospects are searching for services, they most likely scrolled through dozens of LinkedIn profiles before they finally reached yours. The summary may be the only part of your profile they read before moving on, so make it count.
Treat the LinkedIn summary like a digital elevator pitch.
The mere seconds you have to pitch on an elevator is the same tight timeframe you get with prospects on LinkedIn. To optimize your summary, begin with a high-level description of who you are, what you do and how long you have done it. LinkedIn shows the first three lines before you must click to read more, so prioritize the first 250-300 characters. Wrap it up with a call to action to visit your company’s website or send you an email. Here’s my LinkedIn summary to see what I mean:
From enterprising individuals to Fortune 500 companies, I create content that raises brand awareness, positions clients as industry thought leaders, and generates sales leads and conversions. My specialties include real estate, technology companies, retail brands and professional service firms.
How can I help? Email me at julianne@contentbyjulianne.com.
Turn job descriptions into case studies
Stumbling out of college, a resume reviewer offered a tip that stuck with me ever since:
Stop writing what you did and start showing what you’ve done.
To elaborate, writing what you did means listing your day-to-day tasks without specificity. Showing what you have done, on the other hand, dives into projects and their resulting accomplishments. Prospective clients want a clear understanding of what they get if they hire you.
This applies to a LinkedIn profile too. Use numbers, statistics, case studies and awards won to explain what you did in any given job. Tasks are important, especially for keyword optimization, but those should be interwoven throughout.
For example, one metric my past employer cared about was the company’s number of Instagram followers. By leveraging original content and a balanced social media calendar, the following increased by 150 percent during my tenure. As a social media and content marketer, that is a huge win! Prospective clients visualize what I can do for them with a stat like that on my profile.
Count on keywords
Skills are more than just a popularity contest to see who can get the most endorsements. They are a keyword stronghold. Recruiters, prospects and clients use keywords in LinkedIn’s search tool to find people who match their needs.
Choose deliberate keywords that you would use if you were searching for yourself. Don’t go overboard though. LinkedIn punishes profiles with too many keywords because the algorithm starts to think it is a spam profile.
While endorsements may feel tedious, high numbers next to skills is akin to a positive review of your work and expertise. To increase endorsements, endorse people within your network and many are bound to reciprocate.
For more tips and tricks, I can provide a comprehensive list of facts, statistics and suggestions so you can create an all-star profile. Email julianne@contentbyjulianne.com for more details about social media profile auditing.