How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Professionals are now using LinkedIn to generate new business and find talent because it’s one of the most effective online networking and recruitment tools. But if it isn’t helping you make connections to advance your career or business, it’s time to discover how to optimize your LinkedIn profile.
That’s because if recruiters and businesses aren’t reaching out to you on your LinkedIn account, your profile may be failing to do its job. And that job is to reach the right people to let them know that you are the ideal candidate to help them achieve their business goals.
The good news is once you know how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, you will reach more people who would love to hire you and find more business opportunities.
What Is an Optimized LinkedIn Profile?
An optimized LinkedIn profile tells other LinkedIn members why they should be interested in connecting with you or hiring you. That means a comprehensive picture of who you are, what you do, and what you’ve accomplished and establishes your expertise, qualifications, and authority.
An optimized LinkedIn profile can help you:
- Rank higher in LinkedIn searches to reach more people
- Stand out from the competition
- Get more relevant recommendations from LinkedIn
- Build your network of employers, leads, and customers
- Nurture business relationships
- Find more relevant opportunities to get hired quicker
- Enjoy more success with cold outreach
Why Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile?
The labor market has changed dramatically in recent years, with increased mobility and more people finding jobs online. The recent pandemic has pushed those trends even further. Employees are more willing to jump ship, and they are using online tools to find their ideal jobs. Recruiters have responded too.
These changes have made LinkedIn, with 875 million subscribers, more important than ever for recruiters, businesses, and job seekers.
But to make it work for you, people must be able to find you, and you must stand out.
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile enables recruiters needing your skills and experience to find you among the millions of users. It will help you to stand out from the crowd of people with similar profiles.
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Think About Your Strategy
Planning how to optimize your LinkedIn profile will save you time and help you create a focused profile that works. Here’s what you need to do:
- Decide on Your Goals and Target Audience
Before updating or creating a new profile, consider what you want to achieve and who you want to target. Think about whether your principal goal is to:
- Find a job, leads, clients, or business partners
- Expand your network
- Promote your brand, product, or services
Your goals and target audience will determine your approach and what content to include in your profile.
- Keep It Professional
Keep in mind LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals, and your profile should be accurate and authentic. That means creating quality content that accurately describes who you are, what you do, and what you have accomplished
- Focus on Your Goals
Like a resume, simplicity is key.
Too much information can obscure your most relevant selling points. Providing only details that match your goals will allow people to easily pick out what’s most important to them.
So, be strategic when deciding what to include in your profile. Everything should be relevant, add value, and help you achieve your goal.
- Keep Your Profile Up-to-Date
Optimizing a LinkedIn profile isn’t a fix-it-and-forget-it exercise. So, to keep your profile relevant, update it regularly with job changes, new responsibilities, and your latest achievements.
- Optimize with Keywords
Scattering keywords throughout your profile will help clients and recruiters discover you.
Using keywords will also help your LinkedIn page rank higher in searches and improve recommendations for content and new connections.
When selecting keywords, put yourself in a recruiter’s shoes. Think about keywords they’d use for a search to hire you.
For more inspiration, you can search for relevant profiles and job postings and look for words that come up regularly and stand out.
- Engage, Engage, Engage!
Engaging with other LinkedIn users will help to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Each connection, comment, and account you interact with will help the algorithm improve search results and recommendations.
Creating informative blogs and videos in your area of expertise that help users in your industry will build goodwill and expand your social circle.
Showing your knowledge and engaging and providing value to others, will improve your traffic, visibility, and authority.
How to Complete Your Optimized LinkedIn Profile
Knowing how to optimize your LinkedIn profile involves editing the default information added to some profile sections by LinkedIn and adding new content of your own.
Fortunately, LinkedIn makes editing your profile easy. You’ll have to complete several sections but only need to fill out the relevant ones.
To complete each section, you can upload an image or fill out a form in a pop-up box that will appear. When there are more steps, LinkedIn walks you through them.
Some sections are listed on the profile page by default. To edit and add content, click on the camera, pencil, or plus sign on the relevant section.
You will need to click on Add Content under your profile photo for other sections. Then select the section from the drop-down menu or find them under Additional Sections.
Check the Up-to-Date Social Media Cheat Sheet to find the recommended resolutions for images and character lengths of text.
Here are some tips on optimizing your profile….
- Profile Photo
Your profile picture needs to make a favorable impression, especially since it’s one of the first things visitors to your page will see.
You don’t have to hire a professional photographer, though! Today’s smartphones are more than adequate.
The picture should be clear, but it should also be well-composed. Choose appropriate clothing for your position and industry and use a simple background.
- Background Photo
You can also replace the default background image with one that reflects your personality, industry, or company.
LinkedIn provides a gallery of background images you can use. If you don’t see something appealing, you can upload your own image.
The graphic design service, Canva, also offers editable templates specially formatted for LinkedIn content.
- Profile Headline
The profile headline is an at-a-glance summary that helps visitors decide whether to find out more about you. Therefore, it has to capture your target audience’s attention and encourage them to stay to discover more.
Using some keywords, let readers know why they should hire and connect with you. In addition to your job title, you can highlight how you contribute to your organization, your passions, and your goals.
- About
The About summary should complement and build on your profile headline. When considering how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, this section requires the most thought. You need to convince your target audience you have what they need.
You have up to 2,000 characters to show the reader who you are and tell your story with a sprinkling of relevant keywords.
Bear in mind a visitor to your page will initially see just a couple of lines of preview text. But you want page visitors to click “More” and dig deeper.
So, capture the reader’s attention in under 270 characters. Hit the highlights to give them an idea of your abilities, character, aspirations, and what drives you.
You will also want to…
- Summarize how you can add value to a team based on your strengths and experience
- Show one or two accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career
- List your area of expertise
After reading your summary, your visitor should have a good idea of who you are, what you do, your proficiencies, and how you can help them.
- Experience
Completing the Work Experience section requires more thought than just listing all your jobs, employers, dates, and duties.
For the description, focus on experience over the last decade for the position or opportunity that interests you. Recruiters are only interested in relevant experience to them.
Highlighting milestones, achievements, major responsibilities, and duties will show what you can deliver.
You can provide more background by adding videos, project files, and links to web pages.
- Skills and Endorsements
Increasingly, employers recognize the value of skills over education. To help you optimize your LinkedIn profile, list half a dozen or more skills most relevant to a prospective recruiter.
Skills could include job functions, technical skills, leadership skills, languages, and so forth.
You can ask your contacts to endorse the skills, which helps to validate them. Make sure to change your profile settings to allow endorsements.
LinkedIn also allows you to earn proficiency badges for technical skills by taking quick quizzes.
- Education
List appropriate qualifications, education, and credentials, including colleges, courses, and other skill-building activities.
- Recommendations
When thinking about how to optimize your LinkedIn profile further, you can request recommendations from previous bosses, co-workers, business partners, and clients. They should describe why they liked you and outline your strengths and skills they appreciated.
You can request a recommendation from your first-degree connections using your profile page or directly going to their account. Make sure to approve the recommendations you receive.
- Other Sections:
You can add more sections that show your responsibilities, achievements, and expertise, such as…
- Featured files and links to work and projects
- Licenses and certifications
- Volunteer experience
- Accomplishments such as honors and awards, test scores, and languages
Bonus Tips on How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
- Open to Work: Make sure to show recruiters you are Open to Work by clicking the toggle on your profile page.
- Set Up Job Alerts: Set up a job alert feed based on interests for job titles and keywords in your file.
- Edit your profile URL: Customize your default LinkedIn URL to make it more memorable. Go to Edit Public Profile and URL and follow the links to edit it.
- Cover Story: Create a 30-second Cover Story video introducing yourself using your mobile app—click the plus sign on the circle around your profile pic to record.
Takeaway
When you know how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, you will be able to reach more of the people you need to, stand out from the competition, build your professional network, and connect with the employer that offers your ideal job.
Once your profile is where you want it, it’s time to get active, build your network, and enjoy the results
If you need help optimizing your social media, we are here to help. Download your free All-In-One Social Medial Tool Kit here.
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