With over 260 million monthly active users, LinkedIn is the place for professionals to grow their network, seek or give professional advice, attract top talent or find new opportunities.
With over 8 million registered users in Australia alone, it’s not a matter of whether you should have a LinkedIn profile too, it’s a matter of how to nail your presence and stand out from the crowd. Is it time to update your LinkedIn profile?
Let us step you through these four updates you should make to your LinkedIn profile to ensure you stand out in your industry.
Optimise your profile
If you want to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. Let’s start by building a profile that feels representative of your professional self and creating a sense of credibility.
Starting with your profile picture, we recommend using a high-resolution headshot which doesn’t have any text overlays or bold filters. Avoid wearing sunglasses and hats and remember to smile! This photo should appear friendly, approachable and professional. It’s best to avoid group shots to ensure your connections know who you are.
Once your headshot is uploaded, it’s time to include a descriptive headline featuring your current position and what you offer. If you are an employee, it’s great to mention the company name in your headline to assist people in finding you through search.
Craft a powerful and to-the-point summary or use a pre-written bio. This should state what you offer, your experience and how to get in touch. Extra points if you can intertwine some personality here to stand out from the crowd!
Update your employment history and list your job history, achievements, attach relevant articles and disclose your responsibilities. The more completed this looks, the more professional and credible you will appear to your connections. We encourage for you to ensure your current and previous employee’s business logo is featured to polish off this section.
Include your education and interests. Discuss your qualifications, majors, GPA, leadership positions and the institution you studied at. For interests, we recommend following relevant companies and groups that appeal to you and your work.
Build your network
Now to the exciting part – building your network and meeting new connections. Although your quantity of connections does help on LinkedIn, we want you to connect with people who are quality connections and will engage with you on the platform. It’s not uncommon for strangers to want to connect with you – which is great! Just ensure these people have some relevancy to your work and industry and will be useful in their content.
A great place for you to start building your network is to consider connecting with your current colleagues, clients, ex-colleagues, professional peers, alumni, those you meet at networking events and people you find aspirational or in a position that interests you.
We encourage for you to set yourself the goal of reaching 500 connections. Work towards this goal each week and connect people in your industry, people working for your favourite companies and people who inspire you. Once you reach 500+ connections, your profile will be bumped up and you will be easier to find through a LinkedIn search.
Generate engagement
To increase your presence and be remembered amongst your new connections, it’s important to be engaging with people’s posts. The key here is ensuring your comments are authentic and genuine – if you see a post you love, mention it in a comment and explain why.
Ensure you are liking and commenting on your company page posts, you share your network’s activity and you tag your company page in any posts relevant to them. Ultimately, it’s great to check in to the app 1-3 times a day for around 15 minutes to keep up to date.
Create content
Finally, it’s time for you to start publishing content of your own! Aim for 1-2 posts per week to maximise your LinkedIn experience. Here are some content ideas to get you started.
Post a short and sweet status on why you are grateful for a certain team member lately. Tag them in so they don’t miss it and have the opportunity to reply!
Share an industry publication, press or essay and your thoughts on it. Articles from the AFR, Australian, The Monthly, The Conversation, Harvard Business Review and McKenzie Quarterly are all great places to start.
Advice, tips and tricks and industry insights! Sharing these can be helpful to your network and teach them things they may find valuable – instilling trust and seeing you as an industry leader!
Share company news and achievements. Did your company win an award? Hit a goal? Brought on a new staff member? Seeking a new employee? All of these are events which can and should be shared by you.
If you made it this far, you’re on the right path to LinkedIn success! Would you like a LinkedIn profile audit and feedback personal to your account? Get in touch with us, we’d be happy to help.
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