Guide to LinkedIn (Part 2): LinkedIn Profile Tips
This is part 2 of DGG’s Guide to LinkedIn. If you missed part 1 of this guide, you can give it a read here before proceeding!
Now that you have learnt about the benefits of LinkedIn, you might feel motivated to go ahead and create your own superstar LinkedIn profile right away.
Before you do so, let me offer you some actionable and valuable LinkedIn Profile tips that you can make use of!
This guide will be presented in 2 sections:
Section 1 will offer LinkedIn profile tips to improve and optimize your profile, while section 2 will suggest ways to best engage with your connections.
Using these LinkedIn profile tips, go forth, create and optimize your profile and use the platform effectively!
1. PROFILE
Completing of Profile
The first tip is simple, yet extremely important:
As you create your LinkedIn profile, you might feel like procrastinating, and leaving out certain parts of the profile, to update them in future.
While this might sound like a reasonable distribution of workload, this comes with one key caveat: Your profile will not stand out among others in the search tool.
I know that many of you want to use LinkedIn as a platform to find more opportunities in your career.
Not completing your profile will then defeat the purpose of you creating a LinkedIn profile, as you might potentially be losing some key opportunities!
You should try your best to complete your profile and achieve All-Star status, to allow your profile to be easily found by potential connections.
Headline and Summary
Your headline and summary are arguably two of the most important areas to focus on in your LinkedIn profile. How so?
- They can make or break the first impression you give to visitors, so it is imperative that you create an excellent headline and summary for yourself.
- They allow your profile to come up in the search results when other users search for similar relevant keywords.
- They also allow profile visitors to get a grasp of your skills and experience as a professional, seconds after they land on your page.
Your headline should
- First, state your area of expertise/specialization clearly.
- Next, include a few key skills that you are strong at, followed by the industry you work in
This gives a quick overview on who you are and the strengths you possess.
Your summary should include a few key pieces of information:
- Brief career summary
- Your notable achievements
- Top skills you want to highlight
- Invitation to engage + Contact information
Having this information will give you a succinct but insightful understanding of your experience, and if done well, will make the visitor want to connect and know more about you.
Custom URL
Did you know that you can have your own custom LinkedIn URL, instead of the original one provided?
Having a custom URL makes it easier for you to introduce your LinkedIn URL to other friends, and makes it look way more professional!
Simply go to the button ‘Edit your public profile’, and change your custom URL to one that is more professional and easy to remember!
Skills
In this section, be sure to add 8-10 core skill sets.
You can also choose the order you want to display them in your profile. Naturally, you would want to give the priority to skills you are most confident in.
As you gain more connections, a good way to gain more endorsements is by endorsing other connections first.
There is great power in reciprocity, so connections are much likelier to endorse you once you have done the same for them.
2. ENGAGEMENT
Following the right people/pages
As discussed in part 1 of the guide, a key benefit of using LinkedIn is to stay updated with industry trends and news.
A great way to do that is to follow relevant people/pages on the platform with significant influence. They tend to provide valuable content on a regular basis, so you should definitely follow them to absorb the content and learn from insights.
To do this, I would recommend first following large content and news companies, as they would provide a good flow of news in general.
You can then proceed to following industry-specific influencers.
If you already have a few in mind, simply search for them in the search bar. Otherwise, you can search for keywords in your industry, and browse through the top profiles that appear.
This would provide you with a good mix of latest news and insights from professionals that you can explore and learn from!
Groups
Another great way to engage with LinkedIn users is through Groups.
These are smaller communities of people that gather to discuss and engage about specific topics of interest.
You should consider joining groups related to your industry, your career role, your alma mater and more.
Simply go to the search bar, and type in keywords of your interest. Then, just select results that have the description ‘Group’, and you will be directed to the specific Group.
Contributions
As you receive so much valuable insights from the platform, you should definitely give back by contributing your own thoughts and opinions as well.
When you come across interesting and relevant articles online, do share them in LinkedIn too!
Don’t forget to value add to the post with your personal opinions. You can also ask relevant intriguing questions to invite connections to discuss the topic.
Remember that you can share them with your connections and your groups as well!
If you have more thoughts that can become a more in-depth piece of content, you can also publish your own notes.
With these LinkedIn profile tips at hand, I’m sure you are ready to go on to optimize your LinkedIn profile!
Of course, LinkedIn is not a one and done effort, so do regularly use the platform, engage with connections and explore new content.
Hope you’ve enjoyed our guide to LinkedIn, and that it has inspired you to start using LinkedIn more often.
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