How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

What if we told you there was a magical, free tool called LinkedIn out there that could help you boost your industry reputation, provide a home base for all your experience, education, and affiliations but also help you meet cool people, and even land gigs that help you afford your LARPing addiction?

Sounds too good to be true, right?

NOPE! Such a thing most definitely exists. Oh, you know it already? Hear us out anyway! C’mon, it won’t hurt and you may just learn something.

LinkedIn is cool because it’s a place to promote yourself, keep tabs on your competition, and learn about new opportunities in a place that’s actually meant for it. As opposed to other social media platforms where people are always slyly trying to promote themselves and sell their services/stuff, LinkedIn is a respectable professional meeting place meant for business. Feeling slimy not required!

That being said, maintaining your LinkedIn profile regularly (and you should) can be something of a time suck. So, today we’re going to give you some of our top tips to get your LinkedIn profile in tip-top shape and working for you in no time!

Update Your Profile Photo

Your profile photo should be of…you. Yes. Your actual human face. No cartoons, no avatars, no “default” images please unless you’re actually aiming to be a creepy catfish. In which case, we respectfully ask you to scram.

The photo should be as professionally done as possible, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire a photographer if you know someone with a decent camera or even smartphone. Just be sure it meets LinkedIn’s recommended size criteria of between 400 by 400 pixels and 7680 by 4320 pixels! What even are pixels? Who knows! Not us!

While it’s always a challenge to find your signature pose, we highly recommend facing forward and smiling, with your head taking the majority of the circle frame. Cheesy? Sure. But people want to get a look at your beautiful face and read your vibe, your energy—your sacred business aura!

Just be sure to capture an authentic smile. Fake smiles are whack and everyone can detect them a mile away. If you need to make yourself laugh to get a good one, ruminate on the words “doo doo pie,” “tinkle” and “smithereens.” Hey, it works for us!

Proofread Your Profile

This one may seem pretty obvious, but proofread your entire profile, top to bottom! And if you’re thinking, “Pft! I’ve already done that.” Think again!

Typos, misspellings, and grammatical oopsies slip through the cracks all the time. Even the smallest error could turn off a potential client, recruiter, or organization that you’re interested in working with.

Plus, it’s just not a good look for someone as smart as you are. Try reading your LinkedIn profile as a visitor to your page and not as yourself.

You should also assess your profile’s clarity, structure, tone, and organization. Don’t give anyone any reason to see your profile as “lesser than.”

We also recommend sprinkling some keywords relevant to you and your work throughout your profile. You’ll attract more recruiters and visitors to your page, thus making you more likely to land the right gigs for you. If you aren’t sure which keywords to use for your specific niche, just give it a Google!

Create a Customized URL

Did you know that you can customize your public profile’s URL? A custom URL will help employers and recruiters find you faster, plus it just looks a lot nicer. Like many things in business, optics matter, and your URL is no exception.

We recommend using your name or business name with as few symbols, dashes, numbers, or characters as possible. You’re allowed to change your custom URL up to five times within six months, so if you’re feeling indecisive or constantly changing your name for funsies—no worries. However, one and done would be ideal for searchability and consistency.

Double Check Your Contact Info

You’d be surprised to find out how often people have missing, incomplete, or incorrect contact information on their LinkedIn profiles. Check your contact info regularly to be sure it’s updated with your profile URL, e-mail address, phone numbers, your website (or a link to a blog or portfolio), your instant messenger accounts, and your birthday!

Fine-Tune Your Headline

Your headline is a microscopic, 220-character version of your entire professional existence. No pressure though! Use your headline to share who you are! If you’re freelancing as an instructional designer and you’re great at developing eLearning with Storyline, you could write: “Freelance – Instructional Designer | Storyline Developer.” We recommend using the “pipe” character to separate your roles (as seen in the previous sentence). It’s much sleeker than boring old commas and dashes.

If you’re thinking about not using the word “freelance,” consider the following: it has been proven that clients and recruiters specifically search using the word “freelance” when looking for help. Put it in there!

While your headline should be relatively brief, it doesn’t have to be a total snooze. You want to draw visitors to your page in, so they’re dying to read more about you. After all, this will be their very first impression of you, in combination with your profile photo, and potentially the most important element on your entire profile! Give this one a good think. Again, no pressure.

Streamline Your Summary

Please oh please, oh please…keep your summary short! Think of your summary like a brief, friendly, non-sleazy sales pitch. In this space you can summarize your products and services. We recommend bullet points to make it easy on the eye. Lengthy paragraphs are so 1999. Clients just want to know, as quickly and simply as possible, what you can do for them. Show a little personality in this section, but keep it brief. Be your best, professional you!

For an extra dash of spice, we recommend using symbols to make eye-catching bullet points. It makes you look like you know what you’re doing on the computer ‘n’ stuff, too. Just Google “How to add bullets and symbols to your LinkedIn profile.” You’ll find a page where you can copy and paste the symbols of your choice

Join Some Groups

There are tons of Learning and Development groups just waiting for you to join on LinkedIn! One thing about the L&D community is that we’re always trying to help each other, connect each other, and learn from each other. Not to sound too conceited but…we’re all pretty much the best.

Best of all, new groups are getting added all the time, including ones that are highly specific to your niche, location, interests, and way more! After you join some groups, you can use the search box to type in the phrase looking for (or searching for or seeking, etc.) Scroll through the results to see if any individual or organization is “looking for” freelance help. At the very least, you’ll probably make some industry friends and that’s always a good thing!

Conclusion

And that’s the list! There are lots of ways to make your LinkedIn profile work for you, but we hope we’ve given you some tips n’ tricks you can knock off your list relatively quickly.

As you’re optimizing your profile, take some time to realize how awesome you are. Think about it: if you didn’t have accomplishments and impressive experience, you wouldn’t have made it this far in your journey or even be able to consider freelancing as a full-time career. You’re doing great!

By the way, do you think there’s a “bizarro LinkedIn” in a parallel universe called, UnlinkedOut? Just some food for thought.