2 Things To Do On Your LinkedIn Profile Now

LinkedIn is a pow­er­house for B2B con­nec­tions. It is owned by Microsoft and is show­ing signs of grow­ing stronger in the mar­ket. I want you all read­ing this to do two things on your LinkedIn pro­file to help make you look more pro­fes­sion­al in your indus­try. These are best prac­tices. There is a lot to learn about LinkedIn. I want­ed to keep this short and make it easy for you all to com­mit to these two things.

Update Your Pro­file Picture

If you do not have a pro­file pic­ture, you need one. It is a must if you plan to use LinkedIn now or in the future. Many com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als will skip over your pro­file if you do not have a head­shot pic­ture. Yet if you are going to upload a pro­file pic­ture, make sure it is a good one. Do not find a pic­ture of you next to a group of peo­ple and then try to crop your head into the pho­to. Get a pro­fes­sion­al pho­to tak­en or at the very least, get a decent, non-blur­ry shot of your face! If you ever attend a LinkedIn 101 webi­nar, the pre­sen­ter will prob­a­bly tell you to do this first!

Update your Tagline Of What You Do*

When you are done upload­ing a new pro­file pic­ture, now it is time to think of 1 sen­tence that describes what you do at your com­pa­ny. This is real­ly your per­son­al sell­ing point (not to be mis­tak­en for your busi­ness’s unique sell­ing point). A lot of peo­ple will use this sec­tion to stuff key­words in here like: ​“Mar­keter, SEO, Paid Search Wiz­ard, Pow­er­house Lead Machine” or just plain and sim­ple, ​“Painter, Sales Pro­fes­sion­al, Esti­ma­tor, Curl­ing Pro” — you get the idea. I rewrote mine awhile back to read, ​“I help a select group of paint­ing con­trac­tors make wise mar­ket­ing deci­sions and assist in the exe­cu­tion of those plans.” If you hap­pen to be the best sell­ing author of a book(s), you can use that area to express that in the pro­file too. This is your quick space to tell some­one who you are and why one might want to con­nect or read more about you. It is the space below this sec­tion where you can go into more specifics and detail.  Do those two things to make your LinkedIn pro­file a lot more engag­ing and pro­fes­sion­al. Now before we go, let me give you 1 bonus tip. As I just men­tioned, the sec­tion just under your pic­ture and what you do is where you can go into greater detail on what you do at your com­pa­ny and how you help your cus­tomers. This should be writ­ten 100% with your prospect in mind. If you are look­ing for a job, this does not apply to you. You can change it with your strengths and why you might be a good fit for a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny. If you are cur­rent­ly employed, this space should be all about your cur­rent com­pa­ny. You can take a look at how I wrote mine. It is long and detailed. Here is my LinkedIn Pro­file. Let me know if you have any ques­tions, and thanks for read­ing. *Some LinkedIn experts will tell you that instead of writ­ing a sen­tence on what you do (like I men­tioned above) you can also use key­words that might help local search. You can try both ideas and see what works best. I think this could help more for peo­ple try­ing to find some­one to hire. So if I was a com­mer­cial banker, I might use that in the sen­tence, ​“Com­mer­cial Banker.”