How To – A Professional LinkedIn Profile
It should come as no surprise that there are many different social networks out there today. One of these networks is LinkedIn, and is used by over 400 million people, and growing each day. If you are working to brand yourself it is very important to have a professional styled LinkedIn profile. Here are my recommendations to help you create a professional looking LinkedIn profile.
The Basics
Before you start making changes to your profile there are two things that you need to do.
- Turn off Share Profile Edits
- Turn off “Who can see your activity feed”
Why? Anytime that you make a change to your LinkedIn Profile the default is for LinkedIn to broadcast those changes to everyone in your network. To prevent everyone from seeing every single change you make right away, turn these settings off.
Improve Searchability
People are on LinkedIn for a variety of reasons. One of them is to look for talent to fill a position. Little things make a huge difference in the searchability of your profile. For example, “Director Of Marketing” has a nice sound to it but may not be the best choice. Why? A recruiter is more likely to type “Marketing Director” when looking to fill a position. Yes, you and I both know they mean the same thing. However to a computer these are different things, and could limit your rankings in the internal LinkedIn search engine.
When writing your professional headline keep it, well, professional. “Guru” as a headline probably isn’t going to get you very far. Pointing out that you are a “Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)” however has a better chance of being seen by humans as a worthy headline, and someone they may want to contact.
Let’s talk about your photo for a second. You should have a professional looking photo, one that represents your brand, but also something that people might be expecting to see for some in your line of work. If you are a construction worker, then appearing in a suit and tie may not be needed. However if you are a Chief of <Anything> then you should dress the part (if you will.)
These are just some ideas you can use to clean up your profile, and increase your visibility on the LinkedIn network.