5 quick ways to improve your LinkedIn Profile

When was the last time you looked at your LinkedIn profile?

Perhaps you set it up to just have a presence on LinkedIn, but have done little with it since.

LinkedIn is constantly changing, adding new elements, visual opportunities and engaging ways to connect with other professionals. Here are my 5 quick ways to improve your LinkedIn profile and make it more engaging.

1. Photo

Make sure your photo is as professional as it can be. Holiday or wedding shots, whilst they may make you

look nice, do not give the right first impression.
A well-lit head-shot with a plain background is perfect. Nothing too dark or too dated. There is nothing worse than having to squint at an image on LinkedIn to see if that's the right Dave Smith.

2. Headline - Let them know exactly what you do/offer

This should be what you actually do or can offer rather than your job description (which is just below your headline anyway).
Head of all things at Push Start Marketing means nothing. But...
Edit
Freelance marketing for organisations with a limited/non-existent budget, helping them achieve their goals themselves

... will get my message across instantly

3. Summary - Make it engaging

Again, use your summary to let people know why they should connect with you, what you can do to help them, and why you are on LinkedIn.
Avoid going through your education and employment history and really tell people why you are the best at what you do or what is unique about you.
Anyone can be an accountant, marketeer or recruitment consultant, but there is a reason they should connect and work with you, so let them know about it.

4. Use images and video

You can now insert images, videos and links, along with previews to the links, into your summary and experience. If you have a job that is very visual, this is the perfect opportunity to add examples of your work, but if not, take this opportunity to add websites, images or videos to liven up your background. 

5. Recommendations

Unlike endorsements that anyone (whether you know them or not, or whether you possess those skills or not) can 'endorse', recommendations are personal testimonials. Recommendations now appear underneath the relevant position with an accompanying image. 

It is easy and prudent to ask your connections for recommendations (in edit profile, edit recommendations, ask for a recommendation on the right).

Be sure to make all recommendation requests personal, and if there is a particular point you want covered, don't be afraid to mention it. Some even write the recommendations themselves for their connections to approve, to save time and be sure everything they want mentioned is there. Be careful though, that all your recommendations do not read like you wrote them yourself.

In summary

LinkedIn will help and encourage you to complete your profile. Take a look at what you are telling visitors about yourself, your experience and what you have to offer. Consider what you say at networking meetings for your 60-second pitch, or how you introduce your business to new customers, and then apply that to LinkedIn. 

How we got organic traffic to equal pay-per-click traffic in just 8 weeks. A mini case study.

Do you have a website that is not ranking?
Not getting visitors?
Not converting to sales or leads?

Are you paying for Adwords to get traffic?

Designed to Sparkle: How a few small changes made a huge difference

I have a client, Fiona, who makes beautiful jewellery and sells it online but the website was struggling with no organic traffic; all her visitors were coming from her paid for AdWords campaign.

Fiona was very active on social media, but with no strategy to make the most of the time she was spending sharing her jewellery.

She has a Facebook page and is very active on Pinterest.

I spent 2 hours talking to Fiona about her website and what she was doing with her social media.

She didn't have a strategy for her social media and was using a more 'scatter gun' approach. By looking at what she was hoping to achieve, the images, and messages she was using and exploring the idea of 'content curation'  for her customers we were able to establish a strategic and cohesive social media plan.

Search Engine Optimisation

We looked at her current organic SEO and ran a ranking report to see where she was ranking for her keywords.

The results weren't so good.

So I wrote Fiona a new sitemap to help her give all the search engines the basic messages they need to rank the different pages of the website, whether it's bridal gifts, wedding jewellery or bridesmaids bracelets.

Only three weeks to see a change

3 weeks after implementing the changes I recommended Fiona wrote:

...I'm busy working on making the changes to my website and can already see some great changes via my Google Analytics account and the ranking of keywords in search.

Still more work to do but it's gratifying to see them already making a big difference, so thank you :)

8 weeks later she was flying up the search engine rankings. 

Proven return on investment

Fiona's organic traffic is now equal to her AdWords traffic, and the organic visitors have placed orders. 

Although her Adword spend is not massive, as soon as she stops paying, those visitors will stop. But her organic rankings will continue to rise, as will her number of visitors and hopefully paying customers, so her return on the small investment she made in some time with me and her hard work will continue to increase. 

Well done Fiona, and thanks. 

Sound like something you need?

If you need some help with your website, give me a call. There is always something we can do to help you achieve your goals.