LinkedIn could be a great platform to sell your expertise, skill, or product. The world’s largest professional network has 810 million members, with 44% are active every month! The platform has High-level influencers and decision-makers to young professionals and students.
With such impressive reach, it is almost impossible for any professional to ignore LinkedIn now. On the other hand, one can actually leverage the strength of the platform to benefit most from the network one can build.
Creating your profile seems very basic and simple, isn’t it? But not so much really. Your profile needs much more attention than what you think it deserves. Remember you are one of the 810 million members that LinkedIn has. Your profile should reflect your story and personal brand. And for this perfect positioning, you need to create a differentiator factor for yourself. This profile should be that perfect window to your career journey, experience, skills, and qualifications with future employers. If you are an entrepreneur, it should reflect your vision, insight, and the problem your organization is solving.
Here are seven tips on how to go about strengthening your Linkedin Profile:
1. Headline of your profile:
You have 220 characters to explain yourself, and that needs to be impactful. That must tell who you are and what is your expertise. The words must be simple and straight, no jargon, please. If you’re unemployed or retired, please do not hesitate to add that to the profile.
The process as detailed by LinkedIn to edit your professional headline:
- Click the Me icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Click View Profile.
- Click the Edit icon in your introduction section.
- In the Edit intro pop-up window, make your changes in the Headline field.
- Click Save.
Mobile steps
Notes:
- If your professional headline and current position are the same, your current position won’t be displayed in the top section of your profile.
- Editing the headline doesn’t change what’s listed in the Current, Previous, and Education lines in the top section of your profile.
- If the changes to your headline aren’t reflected on your LinkedIn homepage, make sure you’re editing the correct language profile.
2.Use Keywords
Keywords that are relevant to your skillsets and experience. Don’t use too many keywords – they might confuse your audience. At the same time, the search mechanism of LinkedIn might filter out and that might negatively impact your appearance in search results.
Read what LinkedIn advises:
More keywords aren’t always better – Our advice would be to avoid overfilling your profile with keywords and only include the keywords that best reflect your expertise and experience. If you integrate an extended list of keywords into your profile, it’s likely that your profile will be filtered out by our spam detection algorithms, which will negatively impact your appearance in search results.
3. Name pronunciation
Since we function now in a global ecosystem, we need to keep in mind that potential recruiters or customers might belong to another geography, and with or without any clue to our culture. So it is always a good idea to use the ‘Name Prounciation’ feature.
This feature is only available on the LinkedIn iOS/Android mobile app. Currently, one can’t record or edit your name pronunciation on the LinkedIn desktop site.
How to add the name pronunciation?
On your mobile, go to LinkedIn App, click your picture on the top left corner, go to your profile page and click the Edit Intro button available below the cover pic. The Name pronunciation will be below the Name section, right after the Additional Name.
Click the record button and hold it to start recording. Ensure you are recording it in a silent room.
Mobile Steps
While recording:
- Make sure that the total recording time is within 10 seconds.
- Limit background noise.
- Speak slowly and pronounce each syllable clearly.
- Hold the phone four inches from your mouth.
To delete your name pronunciation on your profile from your desktop:
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Click View profile.
- Click the Edit icon in your introduction section.
- Click the Delete icon next to your Name pronunciation
- In the confirmation pop-up window, click Delete.
4. Profile Picture
Surveys have found out that LinkedIn profiles with a photo get 21x more visitors and 36x more messages. Hence a good profile photo can enhance your profile and visibility. The picture you use should be clear and must showcase you as a professional.
The ideal size for your LinkedIn profile picture is 400 x 400 pixels. Larger file sizes are also fine (although 8MB is the max), but try to avoid small, low-resolution images.
For more information on Picking the Right LinkedIn Profile Picture, click here.
And a new trend has set in – people who endorse blockchain technology, NFT, and crypto, flaunt their NFT as the profile picture.
5. Adding frames to pictures
Currently, LinkedIn has two options – Open to work and Hiring. Linkedin is a professional networking platform and one can use the platform to let recruiters know you’re open to work or share that you’re hiring on LinkedIn so that the best talents reach out to you.
12M+
Members taking advantage of the #OpenToWork photo frame
Following are the steps suggested by LinkedIn:
You can easily edit or delete profile #OpenToWork or #hiring photo frames that you’ve added to your profile photo.
To change your profile photo frame:
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Click View profile.
- Click on your profile photo near the top of the page.
- Click Frames.
- Select the photo frame that you want to use or if you want to revert to the Original photo.
- Click Apply.
From the Remove existing frame select (options vary depending on the existing frame):
Remove ‘Open to Work’ from profile to remove this feature completely from your profile.
Share ‘Open to Work’ with recruiter only to share that you’re open to work with recruiters only. It won’t be visible to all LinkedIn members.
Remove this frame and the jobs you have showcased on profile.
Click Save/Remove.
Mobile steps
To change your profile photo frame:
- Tap your profile picture > View Profile.
- On your profile, tap your profile photo on the upper left.
- Tap Frames.
- Select the photo frame that you want to use or if you want to revert to the Originalphoto.
- Tap Apply on the upper right and follow prompts (options vary depending on the existing frame).
- From the Remove existing frame select (options vary depending on the existing frame):
- Remove ‘Open to Work’ from profile to remove this feature completely from your profile.
- Share ‘Open to Work’ with recruiter only to share that you’re open to work with recruiters only. It won’t be visible to all LinkedIn members.
- Remove this frame and the jobs you have showcased on profile.
- Tap Remove
6. Your Experience
This is where you have to be smarter than the other sections because it highlights your career journey and experience. To add credibility, link your job to the company. Try to be as clear and transparent in describing your roles and responsibilities. Remember, your managers and colleagues are on the same platform and any discrepancy in your actual role and what you have mentioned can lead to loss of credibility and impact your image.
For more tips, please read this blog from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has recently added one more feature where members can now spotlight Career Breaks on their Profiles.
7. Adding files to your roles
One can add supporting information to specific jobs in the Experience section. You may upload images, PowerPoint presentations, and pdf documents. These can be used to support what you have written in your job description.
To be able to add any media file:
- Go to that specific role where you want to add the media file
- Cluck edit button
- In the ‘Edit Experience’ box, it the last item – Add Media
- Click the Add Media to ‘add a link’ or ‘upload a media.’
The file formats of media samples could be PDF, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, pictures (.jpg/.jpeg/.png /.gif). Please note .gif isn’t supported on the profile or background photos.
