How to Rock Your LinkedIn Profile and Build Your Personal Brand

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Among all the social networks, LinkedIn is a special one — it’s not a place just to be entertained or to share photos, it’s a platform to make professional and business connections.

Most people treat their LinkedIn as a digital resume, but when a prospect looks at your profile, they’re not really curious about where you went to high school; they’re looking for clues that indicate that you are knowledgeable in the areas where they need help.

Let’s take a look at the things we can tweak to make our profile look and sound credible and relevant.

1. Avoid losing your account

LinkedIn limits the creation of user profiles to just one per person.

You could try to be crafty and use different email addresses to create more accounts, but we don’t recommend that because LinkedIn is very smart.

Having more than one profile can result in a suspension or worse, LinkedIn jail!

We don’t want to risk losing our time and effort, right?

Check if you have multiple accounts. If you do, your first tweak should be to merge them by following the steps in this article.

2. How to look sharp for your picture

LinkedIn photo tips to get you noticed. 

It’s important to upload a clear and professional profile picture. Selfies or your Facebook picture are probably not appropriate here. 

Think about the prospects you’re trying to connect with, it’s better to wear a smart, professional, and good-looking outfit. Something that brings out the best of you!

You don’t need a fancy camera, just make sure you are well-groomed, and capture a good-looking picture using the portrait camera mode.

In this article, you can find some recommendations from LinkedIn directly.

We also prepared the following video to share a few more tips on how to take an appropriate yet attractive profile picture: Tips on taking appropriate pictures for social media

We also turned the video into an infographic that you may find handy 🙂

3. Capture the attention of your profile viewers

Your background photo, or banner, takes up a large portion of the screen and helps capture the attention of your profile viewers.

A good banner should have some branding and a tagline/slogan but make sure that the text is not cropped, stretched, or covered by your profile picture. The recommended dimensions for the banner are 1584 (w) x 396 (h) pixels.

In the next video, we explain how to update your banner.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Uyee_Vimik%3Ffeature%3Doembed

4. Write a strong slogan for your profile

Your headline is basically a one-liner that tells people who you are and what you do. 

Think of it as your personal mission statement. The key here is to write a concise, viewer-centric headline.

We used the advice in this article to come up with some interesting and intriguing ones. The article explains how to use keywords, style, and a few extra tips to nail your statement.

Here are some great examples to inspire you:

Josh Braun – Founder – Josh Braun Sales Training

Amir Reiter – CEO – CloudTask

5. How to tell your audience you’re the right person to help them

LinkedIn is not your digital resume. 

Most people use their summary section to write about themselves in third-person or don’t write anything at all.

They’re missing out on a great opportunity to speak loud and clear to their prospects.

We recommend telling your visitors what you can help them with and why you’re the best option to help with that.

The simplest format for this sounds like “I help [Buyer Persona] achieve [Outcomes of the solutions I promote] thanks to [Work/industry experience]”. 

Take a look at this article that explains in more detail how to write a great summary. 

6. Avoid looking like a fake profile

Completing your background sections is a great way to give your profile credibility. 

Try to update as many fields as possible because the weaker the profile, the higher the chances it’s just SPAM. 

On the contrary, the more complete, robust, and relevant to your current job, the more you’ll raise eyebrows and get noticed.

Your background sections include:

Work experience: Most people list their job titles, few take the time to describe their tasks, but only the best describe their achievements!

You can list services, features, and USPs (unique selling propositions) here. 

Make sure you link to the company’s LinkedIn page so you get their logo. Try to include what you did and how you helped make a difference.

Remember to make each work description buyer-centric and highlight how you were/are a high-value resource.

Think of this: If you were to hire a Sales Manager, would you rather read:

A: “Responsible for meeting sales targets with 3 salespeople” or 

B: “Lead a team of 3 rockstars to book 252 meetings, crushing sales quota by 26% and closing Q1 with $1.2M in revenue. Broke company records”?

Education: Use a similar logic here but keep in mind that for your prospects, what you’ve learned and can do well is more important than the classes you attended.

Location: Some people like to change their location to wherever their prospects are because saying that you’re in New York or San Francisco could improve your chances of getting your connection requests accepted. 

The problem with this is that LinkedIn can detect when you’re logging in from an IP address in another place and restrict your account so just keep it simple and real with where you currently are.

Licenses & Certifications: If you have taken certifications from places like HubSpot, Drift, LinkedIn, or any other platform, make sure to include them.

Volunteer experience: Not everyone has something to add here, but if you do (and it would be wonderful to see the human side of you), try to phrase it in a way that describes your volunteer experience like it’s deeply intertwined with your professional career.

7. Help visitors focus on you

The “people also viewed” section on the right side of your profile is an easy way for visitors to get distracted by checking out your lookalikes and forget about you. 

You can look at the following video to remove that section from your page and help the viewers stay focused.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mrc0ij-Q6dA%3Ffeature%3Doembed

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