5 quick tips to pimp out your LinkedIn profile (personal or business)

Your profile should give your audience an insight into who you are as a person but also your professional capabilities (or an insight into your brand and what it stands for if you’re building a business page).

To help keep your profile fresh and stand out from the pack, here are 5 quick tips for both personal and business pages.

Personal profile

1. Photos: You have two two sections where you can personalise your profile with photos - your profile photo and your cover photo. When it comes to your profile photo, use a recent headshot (taken in the last 2 years) that shows who you are professionally. If you don’t normally wear a suit to work, you shouldn’t use a photo of you in a suit, for example. Your cover photo (the banner photo at the top of your account) is a great opportunity to bring some of your own personality into your profile. Do you enjoy corporate volunteering? Add a photo of your at a recent volunteering project. Are you part of a professional networking group? Add a photo of yourself at a recent event. Pro tip: a typical landscape or portrait photo won’t look great in the dimension of the cover photo section, however to get around this create a collage of photos in Canva using these dimensions.

2. About: This is perhaps the most important section on your LinkedIn profile as it’s your opportunity to include an elevator pitch about you professionally. Keep it short and sweet as it shouldn’t be longer than 100 words or 3-4 sentences, and focus on your key capabilities and how you’ve helped clients/employers previously.

3. Featured: Usually underutilised by many LinkedIn users, the featured section is a great space to showcase 3-4 of your favourite projects. Upload photos, documents and presentations or link to them as this gives your visitors a quick visual representation of what you do. Go for what is most striking to eye, so it doesn’t have to be your latest and greatest work but rather what is going to deliver some wow-factor to your page.

4. Experience: This section is pretty self explanatory but there are some dos and don’ts you should follow. When you list your professional work career in this section, it doesn’t need to be an exhaustive laundry list so just keep it to the past 10 years (people don’t need to know about the internships role you had 20 years ago). Importantly, under each of your roles, list your top 5-8 responsibilities and then list your top 5-8 achievements while in this role. Make sure to back up any achievements with statistics and data. For example, ‘In 2019, I generated $1.7 million in revenue and was the number 1 sales person in the central region for the year.’

5. Skills & endorsements: Don’t wait for others to give you an endorsement out of the blue - it’s not going to happen. Approach current and former colleagues and clients and ask them to give you an endorsement on LInkedIn, and be specific about what skills you want them to endorse you for. If you feel uncomfortable approaching them, tell them you’ll do the same for them as well.

Business profile

1. Tagline: This is your company’s elevator pitch, and most likely the first thing your visitors will read. You only have 120 characters so you need to keep it concise and to the point. Highlight how you support customers and what benefits your product/services offer. (Pro tip: make sure to use a couple of emojis to make it stand out).

2. About: This is where you can include more information about your company’s key products and services (definitely use emojis in this section to break up the copy and easier to read).

3. Location: While it might not seem important, adding the location of your company’s premises will show up at the top of your profile and gives your visitors immediate context about where you operate. Add in your office address or at the very least the city in which you operate.

4. Hashtags: Add 3 relevant hashtags that are aligned to your business. You’ll be able to see and comment with trending posts from the hashtags feed, which is a great way to build and engage with an online community.

5. Cover photo: Use an image that best reflects your business and brand. This might be of a recent project you’ve completed or a current marketing campaign you have in market. Make sure it’s visually striking and ideally has people in the photo (although that can be difficult with the dimensions of the space).

For either a personal or business page, aim to update your profile at least once a year, and even more regularly when it comes to cover photos and featured work.