LinkedIn starts with your LinkedIn profile. Although your aims are to use LinkedIn to grow your business, you have to remember that LinkedIn, like other social platforms, is a human-centred site. Without your personal profile, and the personal profiles of your employees, your LinkedIn business presence cannot flourish.
Write for the reader
Regardless of whether you’re starting a new profile or revisiting your old one, begin by considering the information you’re presenting. Sure, it’s your profile, but is it really about you? If you put yourself in your reader’s shoes, you’ll find that your profile is really about what you can do for them. Whether your reader is a potential customer, an industry connection or just someone interested in your brand, you’ll need to write your profile addressing what they can gain by linking in with you.
Look the part
If you’re going to have a LinkedIn profile, it needs to look professional in order to aid your business goals. Start by making sure you’ve got a clear headshot, ideally professionally taken. Once you’ve got this, you can then improve on your profile even further by changing your headline. LinkedIn pulls your job and company titles to create an automatic headline, but we recommended changing it to better articulate your professional role and specialties.
Use mixed media
Don’t be afraid to flesh out your profile with media. This can transform a dull dry profile into one that people truly want to read. It’ll also help you stand out from the crowd. Include things like photos or videos of your business at work, or perhaps professional talks you’ve given. Many people don’t realise that you can also add documents to your LinkedIn profile, if this is relevant to your business, such as guides or ebooks.
Be 100% complete
Finally, your LinkedIn profile should be as close to 100% complete as possible. This doesn’t mean you should include every single detail about every job you’ve ever worked in. You should only include previous jobs and education that are relevant to your current career, but a complete profile with all fields populated will look great to your audience. LinkedIn is also great for including things that don’t fit on your resume, and give a much more rounded impression of you as a person. Don’t forget, a complete profile include recommendations, so go to the effort to ask previous colleagues and employers to write one up for you.
