How to make a stellar LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn has become that annoying essential parts of being in business.
While at times it tries to act like Facebook, with its long threads begging for likes and obnoxiously uncooperative newsfeed, it does serve its purpose as a way for organizations to post jobs, recruiters to find potential new hires, and singular opportunity for marketers to find their next client or job opportunity.
You’ll probably notice in my tone that I have a love-hate situation with LinkedIn.
Look, LinkedIn serves a decent purpose. If you ignore the spammy invites, unannounced B2B solicitations, exhausting hustle porn, non-business related newsfeed posts that still go viral somehow, auto-generated commenting (puke), and the never-ended cesspool of unread LinkedIn email notifications in my inbox, it’s not that bad.
If you wipe away everything unpalatable about LinkedIn and focus on using it to find work - it’s pretty good.
In today’s Substack, we’re going to highlight a few important additions you’ll need to add to your LinkedIn profile to make it stand out.
Use a professional headshot
Reminder: it’s 2021. That phone next to you (or you’re reading on right now) has a camera on it that has 5,000x more pixels than the last digital camera you owned. There’s apps you can download to touch up photos that would’ve cost hundreds from your local graphic designer just 10 years ago. Heck, you can generate random faces of non-existing people using AI that look more professional than 90% of LinkedIn profile photos.
Get a friend or use a tripod. Set up proper lighting indoors, or outside on a sunny or overcast day. Wash your face. Put on something decent for God’s sake. Snap a photo that is either waist up, or chest up (better yet, both so that you’ll have options). Upload.
If you’re advanced, consider picking up a green screen and photography lightning. You can get both on Amazon. We used them for our most recent shoot, which allowed us to insert a blurred background image downloaded from FreePik. We had a Canon DSL to take the shots, but oddly enough, the set up was solid enough to to use our smartphones.
Choose a sparkling headline
Your headline can be 120 character max. It should your current job title. It’s also a great opportunity to mention other things you do: writer, speaker, author. If you can fit it, it’s worth including the industry you specialize in.
As an example, mine is: Senior Growth Hacker | Startup Marketing Consultant & Speaker | Fintech & Cryptocurrency
Your title ✓
Your roles ✓
Your industry ✓
It’s also important to think about SEO. A lot of recruiters will find you either in LinkedIn search or on Google search, so consider using keywords that they can find. Also, make sure your profile is set to public for maximize visibility.
Write a healthy professional summary
Think about this as an expanded headline. It’s your opportunity to paint a picture of your professional career, while highlighting your achievements, your professional beliefs, and most importantly, your charisma. If you have growth numbers or data to support why you rock at your job, this is also the place to showcase one or two of ‘em.
This is again a great opportunity for SEO. Load up those keywords.
If you can’t write for the life of your, just hire someone to do it for you. Why not, right?
The most dreaded part of your LinkedIn profile - your work experience
Ughhhhhhh. I know, it sucks. It’s like updating a resume.
However you need to consider that this is how employers and hiring managers best understand the work you’ve accomplished thus far. It allows them to paint a visual picture about your journey, and the super cool things you’ve experienced.
If you’ve worked traditional, full-time roles, it’s easy. Just plug in your employers, the length of time you’ve worked for them
If you’re working as a consultant for your business, it’s a little tricky. You have two primary options
Add clients as an employer and under Employment Type, choose Contract Part-time or Full-time. I wouldn’t consider adding it as Freelance as that may appear as unimportant to hiring managers.
Add clients as a subcontracted role under your business. First, you’ll need to create a separate business page, add yourself as principal or owner of the business, then under Title, add your role and client name while setting Company to your business.
While this may all seem easy, we haven’t covered the time consuming part.
You’ll also want to make sure you’ve highlighted your role details and accomplishments in the description area for each work item. That includes: 1) inserting the type of responsibilities you had in your role, and 2) the outcomes it made for the business. Each responsibility should mention an outcome. “Managing the community” should follow up with “to increase brand awareness and allow the organization to stay top of mind”. If you can include figures, I highly recommend doing so.
Offer proof of your work with testimonials
Chances are you’ve worked with other people up until this point. Nudge your old bosses, your clients, or your colleagues who have worked for you and ask them for a recommendation. Be a nice person and offer one to them as well. It would be quite rude not to.
Aim to have at least two good testimonials.
Show your smarts by publishing your work
If you’ve been invited onto podcasts, published articles, spoken on webinars or conferences, had an article published about you - you’ll want to make sure your content lives on LinkedIn too.
You can load them into the Featured or Accomplishment sections by clicking Add Section at the top of your profile.
Last but not least - set your profile open to work
Now that your profile is optimized to the max, it’s time to put your profile to life. Click Open To at the top of your profile and choose the job titles and services you’re providing. If you’re concerned for your personal brand, or your current employer may be irked by the sight of seeing you’re open to work, set your profile to only viewable by recruiters. That way hiring managers can still find you and pitch opportunities to you.
Sheesh - now it’s time to take my own advice and boost my profile!
A huge number of jobs that are filled are never advertised to the public, or if they are, they’re filled by people who have a connection to the employer.
― Melanie Pinola, author of LinkedIn In 30 Minutes: How to create a rock-solid LinkedIn profile and build connections that matter
Handpicked Remote Marketing Jobs 👨💻
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This article took me from hot coffee to cold coffee. Time for a top up!
Reggie