LinkedIn was set up in 2002 and is now the largest professional networking site across the world. With many different benefits and uses for anybody and everybody to use, this site can help your business grow or help you find your new job. But have you optimised your profile to its full potential?
If You Have Optimised Your LinkedIn Profile, You Will Stand Out
If you have optimised your LinkedIn profile, it will help you stand out from other users. Whether you are using your profile as a business owner, or you are looking for a new job, your profile is what they will generate many first impressions of you.
There are many different steps in which you can take to optimise your LinkedIn profile, to give yourself that extra shine. The following steps will cover the general ground you need to cover in order to be optimised for the 2022 LinkedIn landscape.
1: Having A Strong Profile Picture And Background Photo
When somebody goes on to your profile, the first thing which will catch their eye is your profile picture and background photo.
Your profile picture needs to be clear and sharp as well as your face being visible and recognisable. A professional headshot will help you stand out and will optimise your account better than a lower quality photo taken off a phone or a selfie.
Never use a selfie with filters either as this looks very unprofessional and deceiving. Unfortunately, you are unable to walk around in public with a filter on.
In your photo, you want to look clean, organised, and tidy. Make sure you have neat hair, clean and ironed clothes, and you are looking happy. Nobody wants to hire or work for somebody who is unhappy and unable to crack a smile.
You can use websites like findaphotographer.com to help you connect with professional photographers in your area, or even just for a portrait studio.
Alongside your profile photo, your background image needs to represent you and your interests. Or if you have a business, the image needs to represent your business and their logo.
Again, this photo needs to be precise, clear, and appropriate. Make it stand out and represent you. If you are job searching, this background image needs to show what you are passionate about and the job you are searching for.
We recommend allowing your profile picture to be seen by everybody on the site instead of being restricted to just your contacts or members. This makes it much easier for people to search and find your profile.
2: All About The Location
You need to have your location on your profile. If you don’t have your location on your page, you will not come up in peoples search engines if they are searching for your business speciality.
For example, if somebody is to search for an Engineer in Lincolnshire and you have Lincolnshire on your profile, you will come up in their search history.
For business owners this will offer more opportunity and for standard accounts it will help you connect with likeminded individuals geographically close to you in the same field, or in one which interests you.
3: All About You
This is where you can start to sell yourself and tell people all about yourself or your business.
The first section is the profile heading where you have 220 characters to add important and relevant keywords to describe yourself, your business, and your expertise.
Within this heading, you want to keep it precise and to the point. You need to remember that you only have 220 characters to use so you don’t want to waste these.
Your summary also needs to be brief and kept to the point. By doing this, you will keep the readers interested and wanting to find out more about yourself.
Again, you need to use relative keywords to yourself or your business. Once you have done your summary once, you want to keep updating it regularly to keep up to date with yourself and any changes which have occurred.
The way you word your summary is very important when it comes down to optimising your profile. This is because LinkedIn only shows the first three lines of your summary, so all the important and relevant information needs to be in these first three lines.
There is a button, however, which allows them to see more. So, if you want them to read all your summary, write your first three lines to catch their eye and make them read more.
4: Skills Set And Previous Experience
By adding all of your relevant skills, qualifications, and past experiences to your profile, it will help by putting you out there and increase the chances of being found. This will show to other users what skills and experience you have and what you can offer them.
Don’t just list your jobs on there where you have worked in the past. Include any work experience, volunteering, or freelancing jobs you have undertaken.
This will be a great addition to your profile and show that you are committed and willing to work. If you include all this information, your profile is more likely to be viewed and taken notice of and this is what you want!
Although, try to avoid listing all your previous jobs if you have a long history!
This will invite prospective employers to question why you have worked in so many places – they may gain the impression that you are constantly jumping between employers due to negative attitude or to gain experience and move on again. An employer would be averse to the idea that they would merely be a steppingstone in your career.
Keep all of the information relevant to your field and don’t waffle on duties which have little to no impact on your occupation. If you have had a number of previous jobs, then only include the ones which will help you in acquiring a new job or impress fellow work colleagues.
Finally, look at your employment timeline and make sure that there are no glaring spaces of unemployment if possible. This may mean that you will need to remove one previous job entry which was years removed from your more recent employments.
5: Interact With Others
Once your profile is up and running and you are ready to get started, you want to start engaging with other users and get noticed.
Start sharing, liking, and commenting on users post what you are interested in and what is relevant to you.
Alongside engaging in other users’ posts, start creating your own posts by sharing useful tips which have helped you, sharing your business posts, and promote your LinkedIn profile to other social medias.
Your LinkedIn profile is a key aspect to your business or your search for a job, so it is important to optimise your profile the best you can.
There are nearly 800 million members registered to LinkedIn, so it is more crucial than ever to have a good profile to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Afterall, there is a very big crowd to stand out from!
LinkedIn is constantly growing and becoming more and more popular with updates regularly, and new ways to promote yourself and your business.
With these helpful tips, we hope you have optimised your LinkedIn profile and achieved what you set out to do.
Whether that be growing your business, allowing your business to be noticed, or finding the job you have been searching for.
