Here’s our mini guide to acing your profile! Once logged in, LinkedIn is great at giving you profile set up prompts to help you maximise the effectiveness of your account.
Head to your profile and ensure you have a high-quality head shot as your image, something professional and preferably, high res. Add a background image too, something that reflects your professional life or personal passion e.g. a company designed graphic, key messages on what your company does, the colour of your brand, maybe a photo of you and your team or a mixture of all of the above. Try to avoid blurry & outdated photos!
Next step, fill out as much information as possible. Your LinkedIn should reflect your resume and your professional story but make your profile engaging, so peers, employers and prospects are interested in connecting and interacting with you.
The headline at the top of your page doesn’t have to be your job title, talk about how you see your role & what you’re good at. Here’s a good article on how to write a Professional LinkedIn Headline from Hubspot with great examples!
If you are employed put in your employment experience, under the work & education experience sections find your old schools, your past jobs and current jobs. You can add attachments such as media samples, certificates & other achievements. Don’t just put your job title & years you’ve been there, also add a summary of what you did/ do in that role and what’ve achieved. If you manage accounts, which ones and in what industries? Fill out detail, let people feel like they know you. You are the trusted advisor.
The summary section should be for your story, your mission, motivations and skills, why you do what you do? What do you love about your job, who are you looking to talk to? What difference are you making in the world? What are your best qualities & what makes you stand out? What are your goals? Do you do other things outside of your current job e.g. mentor? Here’s 10 summary examples.
When setting up a LinkedIn each profile has a custom URL, this can be copied and shared, it also displays when people are viewing your profile. It should be your first & last name; however it automatically generates as a strange number so head to ‘Edit Profile’ & click ‘Public Profile’ & ‘Set Custom URL’.
If you aren’t employed, advertise that you’re looking! You can enable the ‘Open to Job opportunities feature’ from your profile and allow recruiters to reach out to you! Fill out your profile just the same as above, where have you worked previously? What are you good at? What kind of job are you looking for?
In the skills section list all your skills, what are you good at? Then go and endorse a few of your professional friends and colleagues on their skills. This is good to do as a one off LinkedIn setup task.
We have chosen to write this article as Taurus has a trademarked personal branding service, TaurusProfile™ we understand that a lot of our clients don’t have their LinkedIn profiles set up as best they can, nor know how to use it and what it’s for. This article aims to help get you set up for success. To learn more about our personal branding service don’t hesitate to get in touch at [email protected] or 02 9415 4528.