Update Your LinkedIn Profile with These 8 Creative LinkedIn Profile Tips

by Neal Schaffer

Isn’t it time that you update your LinkedIn Profile?
Considering that LinkedIn profiles are the most viewed pages on LinkedIn, and your profile page really is every professional’s starting place to claim and create their own professional brand, you should be regularly reviewing your LinkedIn profile to see how you can optimize it with every user interface change. With that in mind, here are the key areas in which you should focus your optimization efforts on:

2.) Make Your Profile More Discoverable

Unless you try to edit your profile you won’t see it, but LinkedIn has created more granular ways for you to decide which specific profile content you want to make more visible. Assuming that you are on LinkedIn to be found, it makes sense that you would want your entire profile visible to the public search engines. However, even though my profile has always been set to be as publicly on display as possible, I noticed that the new LinkedIn settings meant that certain sections were NOT being exposed to search engines. Below is the screenshot of what my settings looked like when I first saw them. You’ll want to make sure that you check off every box like I ended up doing.

 

3.) Get Active!

In the world of online marketing, what appears “above the fold” on your website is critical in that this is the content a viewer will see without having to scroll down. What features prominently in the new profile is your “Activity,” or status updates as well as other actions that you perform on LinkedIn, which wipes out all but the title of your professional summary. This makes your most recent LinkedIn status update all the more crucial as it will be featured rather prominently above the fold and visible to all who view your profile. LinkedIn’s decision to prevent you from automating publishing every tweet as a status update was a welcome move to make your network updates more professional, but you still need to ask yourself before posting any status update if they are truly 1) professional and 2) aligned with your branding. You also want to make sure you post at a certain frequency, say a minimum of once a week, so that your latest update doesn’t seem stale and out of date. You can easily use LinkedIn Today to curate relevant content to share with your network, so now’s the time to make that feature part of your LinkedIn routine.

8.) Increasing your Connectivity and Commonalities

My final LinkedIn profile tip is a general one about increasing both your connectivity as well as commonalities on LinkedIn. Why? Because you want to create as many data points as possible to allow relevant people you are trying to easily reach out and start a conversation with you. All of this information is being displayed in the righthand side of anyone who visits your profile, so maximize this functionality by increasing your connectivity and commonalities as follows:

Connections:

Every additional connection you make gives you the ability to find, and be found, by many more people. Although this doesn’t appear on all profiles yet, the below image gives you a feel for how prominently your connectivity status with a 2nd degree connection will be shown:

Increase your LinkedIn connections to increase your connectivity to any given user.

If you haven’t added any new LinkedIn connections for awhile, see my video below for how many LinkedIn connections I recommend you should have!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXegeRJkvu0&w=480&h=360]

Groups:

Being a member of the maximum 50 groups will increase your connectivity AND commonality with any given profile by not only showing the common groups that you are both a member of, but also by allowing that 2nd degree or beyond connection the ability to easily message you by going to that common group.

Skills:

Imagine if you’re trying to attract CMOs to your profile, yet your Skills and theirs don’t overlap. Wouldn’t that be strange? Showcasing commonality in skills with those who you are trying to attract to your profile should be another priority in helping you increase your thread of commonalities. Of course, if you’re trying to attract an audience that has nothing in common with you it is one thing, but just by looking at the skills that a representative sampling of the audience you want to attract have and aligning a few of your skills where appropriate could make a positive impression by showing off your commonality in this area. As LinkedIn continues to roll out the new user interface to its user base (I only got mine this week), I am sure that we will see more changes as they continue to implement their vision for their platform. However, the above profile tips are the things that you can do immediately to truly maximize the potential for the new personal profile page user interface. Any other profile tips that you would add? Please chime in!

See all 8 tips and the complete NealShaffer post

Stop Ignoring Your LinkedIn Profile. Best Ways To Update It Now

Robin Ryan

Today I worked with Susan, 59, an IT Manager working in the healthcare field. She has been working in her company for over 20 years. She has ignored LinkedIn as she likes her job, that is, until awhile ago. Her manager changed, and a promised promotion went to someone else. Her husband encouraged her to job hunt, and she contacted me to help her write her LinkedIn Profile. 

Susan didn’t have a profile. No connections, no professional experiences, no skills, — she had nothing. As a career counselor who writes 4 or 5 LinkedIn profiles a week, I haven’t had anyone recently who had no LinkedIn presence at all. Then, today I worked with Dominick, 60, and he just lost his job. He has decided to go ahead and formally launch his consulting business and wanted help creating his LinkedIn profile. He also didn’t have anything written on his LinkedIn Profile page, confessing he didn’t think he needed it before.

Last week, I had two people who had Profiles with nothing really on them besides their current job title and a photo. I thought, “Could this be a baby boomer trend from the coronavirus? Are people who have no profiles deciding to join the world’s largest professional network?” You have to wonder. We hear so much about the importance of a well written and up-to-date LinkedIn profile; I question how people are missing that career message. I can’t stress enough that you need a well-composed LinkedIn Profile. Ask any career counselor, and they will agree with that statement. 

Whether it’s because you lost your job, or are taking a new career path, or want a better position, your LinkedIn Profile is crucial to your job search. There are still some companies hiring. There are still recruiters searching for candidates on LinkedIn every day. You don’t want to be embarrassed when a recruiter, hiring manager, or a colleague comes to look at your profile. You want to be proud of who you are and what you have accomplished. Since 90% of America is stuck at home, now is the right time to make an effort to update your LinkedIn Profile. 

Making More Connections

You won’t automatically start getting all kinds of action if you don’t have any connections. LinkedIn says that having connections with people you know is vital. It is also how the algorithm works. You want to try to connect with 300 or more people. You need that many to make LinkedIn effective in noticing you. Who makes good connections? Current and past bosses, coworkers, professional colleagues, association and club officers, friends, college classmates, and business owners. Start making requests. Just note that you are limited and can only send 30 individual invitations per day.

Here is a much faster way to get connections. LinkedIn has made it easier to add your email contacts to build your social network....  Read the full Forbes article to find out how and more tips and tricks.

 

Here's How You Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile to Strengthen Your Personal Brand

By Amy George

Here's a question I get asked a lot: Do you do SEO on clients' LinkedIn profiles? The answer: Yes.

There are steps I take to increase the chances that profiles I work on turn up in Internet searches and LinkedIn searches, too. And you can use these strategies to optimize your own professional profile.  

1. Sprinkle keywords throughout your profile.

Think about the terms people would use to search for someone with your expertise. These are your keywords, and you should sprinkle them throughout your profile, starting with your headline.

With your headline think of the words that prospective clients and recruiters would use to find someone like you. Think job function, specialty and career tenure. For example, Marketing Director and Senior Communications Strategist conveys long established marketing and communications expertise. Marketing Director and Senior Financial Communications strategist adds another layer, specific industry experience. 

Make sure current and past titles and job descriptions -- those in the Experience section -- are likewise optimized.

In the About section, which is the bio section, I recommend using keywords but only to the degree that they don't interfere with telling a story. This section is less about stringing together industry words and more about telling a story that makes you stand out. Think of it as your "why" -- why you do what you do and how you got here -- versus a listing of accomplishments, which is what the Experience section is for.

3. Use hashtags in your posts.

When you post to LinkedIn, use hashtags that correspond to your keywords. For example, when I share stories that I've read or written about LinkedIn or public relations, I include hashtags like #linkedin #linkedmakeover #publicrelations #PR.

I recently asked a LinkedIn makeover client who lives in New York how she found me. It was simple. She was searching on LinkedIn. This happens a lot. It works.

See all the steps and the complete Inc. article