As more people turn to LinkedIn in search of prospects and candidates for their organizations, the importance of a well written, fully optimized LinkedIn profile is more important than ever.
Aside from the fact that LinkedIn is a terrific channel for personal branding and building business presence, it can also be exceptionally useful for job search.
If you start to notice that no one is viewing your profile, then it is the right time for you to follow this complete guideline to LinkedIn optimization.
Before we proceed, it is right for you to be aware that character count is very crucial in a LinkedIn profile. Punctuation, spaces, letters, and numbers are included in the character count. The list below will provide you the details for each field.
Contact Information
Experience
Related Areas
You can see the headline under your name. Notice that by default, your current job title will be displayed in the headline followed by the company you work for.
Generally speaking, those titles assigned by companies are unoriginal. Therefore it is smart to alter to something a little more unique, a little more you! Note that the headline that is well-chosen will give you 14 times more visibility in terms of views.
To optimize your headline, consider the following three crucial components:
Be sure that you have designated yourself as a professional in your major area of skill for which you want to be acknowledged. It would be wise if you choose a headline that matches your current skills, rather than one more relevant to past experiences.
Why is that? Because it is a lot easier to rank in search results. You can also avoid the high competition in search results when you use long-tail keywords.
As an example, if you are a chemist, your point of interest includes physical and analytical chemistry. There would be more results for the keyword Chemist alone and hence, much more competition. But there would certainly be less if you use a long-tail keyword such as Physical and Analytical Chemist.
The reason? Because the longer your headline, the easier it is to weaken your title, add the essentials and remove less relevant keywords.
Most profiles contain LinkedIn profile pictures, but does your profile picture conform to the professional standards of the LinkedIn platform?
LinkedIn has a very professional standard, unlike Facebook or Instagram. So if you want to optimize your profile, you should be conveying a professional image.
Below are tips on what to include in your LinkedIn profile picture:
The banner is one of the most crucial aspects of optimizing your LinkedIn profile. We’re given a default blue background, but the recommendation is to personalize the area to suit your industry, and/or skillset.
However, don’t forget to include these things in your LinkedIn banner:
Start your story with the substance and the reasons behind your actions. In this way, you are getting people’s attention and they may be eager to know your purpose.
And then slowly explain how you would achieve your mission and vision. That means the action you will take to materialize your goals or plans in life.
Does your summary end here? No, you have to finish your summary by presenting your ‘what’. And that is the way you should build your summary.
LinkedIn allows you to attach media files to your resume. This strategy will provide recruiters a vivid and clear idea of the quality of your work. It also adds visual appeals and would give you an edge among others. Videos work best here.
Just a gentle reminder. If you want to excel, only publish original videos that will point out your character.
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile would be much easier if you will only use a custom URL. The reason is that it is shorter than what LinkedIn assigns to you.
It is easy to do this. Just go to your LinkedIn profile and click the ‘Edit Public Profile and URL’. From there, you can edit and type the address you want.
Most people thought that contact information includes contact numbers and addresses only. It is unfortunate to think that this part has been taken for granted by many where in fact, this alone can remarkably optimize their LinkedIn profiles.
Contact information should include your email address, website, and blogs as well. Why blogs? Because those who visit your profile can also visit your blog. If you want someone to contact you, enter your email address and contact number.
First and foremost, you should be able to know that the skills in this part are not the ones you want to portray or promote.
Therefore, the best thing that you should do is to include all the necessary skills that match your profile.
However, you should be aware that proper categorizing of your skills will allow LinkedIn to prioritize your top-ranked skills. Hence, you should be able to pin your top 3 expertise that identifies your best for which you want to achieve recognition.
Getting recommendations is as essential as the others. It will boost your optimization in particular if you get them from senior professionals.
Descriptive recommendations prove to be the most compelling content that you can have in your LinkedIn profile. It would be a good practice if you can write persuasive recommendations for others and ask them to write one for you in return.
LinkedIn might not be the best social media platform to add your articles or blogs. But definitely, it is a terrific way to show people your ability. Try to create an article every two months covering what is hot in your niche or expertise. It should be readable and at the same time, interesting to read with. Don’t forget to pay attention to the title length since the maximum characters are 60.
By doing so, you can establish a thought leadership authority within your topic. One good practice that you can do is by tagging people that might show interest in reading your article or blog to increase visibility.
This is called optimization, and just like other social media platforms, LinkedIn has this thing called an algorithm.
The algorithm may sound confusing to you. To put it in a simple term, the LinkedIn algorithm measures lots of factors to determine how relevant your content is.
There are specific ways to increase your chances of making yourself visible:
Be active and always update your status on a regular basis. It makes you gain more followers and stay relevant. Remember that to be successful in managing your social media is to be consistent at all times.
Regardless of your job situation, take the necessary time to improve your LinkedIn profile. After all, it is pretty simple to create a fine social media profile without the need of any professional help. Just follow this guideline and you will be sure that your LinkedIn profile is fully optimized. So what are you waiting for? Optimize your Linkedin profile today!
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