How are you going to stand out from 347 million users on LinkedIn? What are the must-haves for a great LinkedIn profile?
Your LinkedIn profile is a fantastic place to showcase your best assets and greatest successes. Furthermore, it’s the fastest way to make a great or not so great first impression.
Whether it’s a potential client looking at your past work experience before meeting up with you, a headhunter searching for you on the Internet to see whether you match his contractor’s requirements, or a marketing professional looking to connect and network with like-minded people just like you, LinkedIn is most certainly the perfect place to search for you. Therefore having a killer profile that enables you to stand out from the crowd is obviously a great thing in this environment.
So you’ve got a LinkedIn profile but it’s far from being “perfect” — what’s next? How do you optimize it?
A few simple and creative tweaks can go a long way. To help you optimize your LinkedIn profile page, the marketers at Link Humans have created the following infographic. The tips and tricks provided below will help you optimize your profile and make it outstanding.
7 Facts About Your LinkedIn Profile
Here’s a quick summary of the tips and stats from the guide:
1. Adding a profile photo could result in 14x times more views than someone without.
2. A summary of 40 words or more makes you more likely to turn up in a future employer’s search.
3. Members who include skills get 13x times more profile views.
4. Adding an industry can get you 15x times more profile views.
5. Your profile is 5x times more likely to be viewed if you join and are active in groups.
6. Members who have an education on their profile receive an average of 10x times more profile views than those who don’t.
7. 42% of hiring managers surveyed by LinkedIn said they view volunteer experience as equivalent to formal work experience.
Publishing Posts on LinkedIn
Last year, LinkedIn rolled out a new feature and that is the ability to publish posts. You can now publish original content on your LinkedIn profile to share your knowledge, experience and interests. These posts are displayed at the top of the page, right after your profile pic and contact details.
Once you publish your new content it gets shared with your connections and followers. Other members who are not connected to you can now follow you from your posts and receive updates when you publish your next piece of content. Another great benefit is that your posts are searchable both on and off of LinkedIn.
Pimp Up Your Profile
Adding a profile pic can result in 14x more views than someone without. Why not take it a step further by adding videos, slides, audios, book covers etc. to your LinkedIn profile to make it stand out. All these visuals matter when it comes to marketing yourself. It’s time to shine.
Furthermore, make sure you add the industry you work in, your education and more importantly, your skills. Reorder and place the more important skills at the top of the corresponding section.
Use the above tips to tweak your LinkedIn profile accordingly.
Your Turn
What are your key takeaways?
How would you build a strong LinkedIn profile that makes you stand out?
