LinkedIn has been the most important online marketing platform for some time. For an entrepreneur, it represents invaluable and bestowing access to a world of clients and fellow professionals.

Your LinkedIn profile is your window into this world. At the same time, it displays your professionalism, outlook, and credibility to others.

This is why it is so important to invest time and energy in building as captivating and as engaging a profile as possible.

Poorly crafted profiles with incomplete summaries, low-grade photos, or missing key elements would not only plummet your visibility but would repulse those who stumble upon you on this social platform.

Gear up your profile visuals

The LinkedIn profile visuals consist of three major elements:

• Profile photo
• Cover image
• Headline

Almost two-thirds of the entire LinkedIn traffic comes through mobile phones. This is the only thing you need to know to choose the right photo as your digital identity.

It has to be a headshot, and it has to be a high-quality professional take, not a homemade selfie. You should radiate optimism and self-confidence.

A proven technique of making your avatar recognizable and distinct is using a solid color for the background. Especially if it matches your brand color.

Your cover is what you offer. Don’t leave it blank. It should be conspicuous and readable on smartphones.

To highlight your industry role and services, use the headline. The most significant information should be reserved for the beginning of this section.

Bring in the profile content

LinkedIn’s search engine is keyword-driven. Choose up to ten keywords or phrases that best describe your role in business, your values, and what you offer. Use those words throughout your profile.

The About section should cover your general message and offer. Know the pain points of your customers and fill this section with ways of bringing about solutions for these problems. Avoid text piling. For a clear overview, use:

• Bullet points
• Emojis
• Text optimization

Use storytelling techniques to capture the attention of your future clients And always end with a call to action. Inform customers on how to reach you.

Share the content

Unlike many other social media platforms, LinkedIn’s purpose is not fun, but business. Still, it does leave a lot of space for creativity and content creation. Two main types of content are:

• Blogs and articles
• Status updates

Explore the current big themes in your industry, and start writing. Publish a blog and attract new audiences. Aim for originality. Algorithms don’t care for copy-pasting.

Status updates are the kind of feedback you give the audience about your current projects and state of affairs. Publish them once or twice a day, and keep them short and interesting. It’s a good way to pop out in people’s feeds.

Be consistent in content creation. One thing is to make an immediate impact, but it’s a whole different story to gain loyal followers. Meet their expectations by maintaining a certain level of quality. It does take time and effort, but it is the only road to building a great LinkedIn entrepreneurial profile.

Always connect

A well-built profile and ardent content creation go hand-in-hand with the third, and crucial component of a well-built LinkedIn profile: a solid number of connections. Leave just one segment out, and the page won’t yield results.

Try to make a habit of the following:

• Always ask for recommendations
• Send follow-up emails
• Use blanket emails on a regular basis
• Occasionally send custom messages to random connections

Never refuse a connection. You never know the possible result. If someone views your profile, send them a message and connect. Opportunities for lead generation are considerable.

When you make a habit of reaching out to other connections, it is a good idea to consider some useful apps that manage your LinkedIn connections. LinkedIn does come with some limitations. Using LinkedIn Inbox can be especially tricky when dealing with a large number of connections.

Keep track of LinkedIn groups in your industry. They are designed to make connecting a lot easier. Find groups with active members and share some enticing content, while at the same time connecting to prospective future clients.

Conclusion

Bring color to your profile, engage in regular content creation, search for clients and associates, and never stop connecting with them. Those are the guidelines for your mission of building a great LinkedIn profile as an entrepreneur.Follow those guidelines and your business will grow. And in the current business climate, LinkedIn is as fertile soil as it can get.

Did you know that six people are hired through LinkedIn every minute? When used strategically, LinkedIn can serve as a highly effective tool in your job search efforts. However, with over 830 million members, how can you make sure that your profile gets noticed by employers? 

Fortunately, LinkedIn has plenty of features designed to help job-seekers create stand-out profiles. This guide from Berkley Recruitment will walk you through five simple steps you can take today to boost your profile’s visibility in 2022. 

1. Complete Your Profile 

If you’re seeking a new role and want to promote yourself to employers/recruiters, then profile completeness matters. 

The LinkedIn search algorithm prioritises complete profiles over incomplete profiles. LinkedIn has gamified the process and will reward users with an All-Star status upon reaching 100% profile completion. According to LinkedIn, All-Star profiles are forty times more likely to receive job opportunities.

So what do you need to do to reach 100% profile completion?

1. Upload a professional, high-quality profile photo.
2. Write a personal summary about yourself.
3. Include an engaging headline that succinctly sums up who you are.
4. Add at least two previous positions, along with written descriptions of your roles.
5. Add five or more skills.
6. Fill out your industry and location.
7. Include where you went to school or college. 
8. Connect with a minimum of 50 people.

2. Add Skills, Skill Tests & Endorsements

Did you know that you can add up to 50 skills to your profile? Taking the time and effort to add a carefully curated list of hard and soft skills to your profile will make it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to see what you’re good at. It will also affect which LinkedIn searches you show up in, how many searches you show up in, and how highly you rank in those search results.

In addition, LinkedIn has launched many new features that allow users to validate their skills: 

• First-degree connections can endorse your skills. When someone gives you an endorsement, it further strengthens your profile and increases the odds that you’ll be discovered for opportunities related to these skills. 
• You can take a brief assessment to showcase your technical skills. If you score in the top 30% of people who have taken the quiz, you can earn a badge to display on your profile. 
• As of 2022, you can now add skills to each position within your work experience section. 

3. Get Recommendations

Recommendations are a powerful tool that add greater credibility to your LinkedIn profile. These are written testimonials from your connections that offer a step up from the endorsement feature (which doesn’t have a written component). 

Recommendations are a form of social proof and allow you to validate your skills and personality. What’s more, they can provide a way to draw attention to elements of your personality, skill set or experience that you may feel too awkward to mention yourself. 

You can request recommendations from anyone in your network. As a starting point, we advise reaching out to your CV references, colleagues, clients, classmates and friends. You may wish to offer one in return. 

4. Engage

Once you have completed your profile and generated some recommendations, now you can shift your attention to engaging with others. Ideally, you should dedicate a few sessions a week purely for LinkedIn engagement through commenting, writing posts and re-sharing content. 

The strategic use of commenting and sharing can allow you to build connections, demonstrate thought leadership, and highlight your subject matter expertise. All of this will help you to get noticed by the relevant people.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when crafting the perfect comment:

1. Read the original content carefully to make sure you fully understand it before adding to the conversation.
2. Aim to write a relevant and thoughtful comment that enriches the discussion (e.g. add a practical tip, share your personal experience, ask a question, or make a respectfu counter-argument etc.).
3. Take the time to write an original and engaging comment that is at least 2-3 sentences long.
4. Avoid the temptation to be salesly.
5. Use the tagging feature to mention the post’s author and get their attention.

5. Try Out New Features 

In order to keep the platform fresh and current, LinkedIn frequently rolls out new features. Oftentimes, they will prioritise profiles that use these features to encourage users to try them out. Some examples of new features launched in the past year or so include:

• Video cover stories on the mobile app
• The ability to add your preferred personal pronouns to your profile
• The ability to upload an audio file to demonstrate how to pronounce your name 
• Image carousel posts 
• Newsletters that your connections can subscribe to

Molly Forsythe is a Digital Marketing Executive with Berkley Recruitment. As part of her role, she enjoys writing helpful guides for job-seekers who are looking for their next dream job. Berkley is an Irish-based recruitment consultancy specialising in the areas of Business & Technology, Life Science & Engineering, and Supply Chain & Procurement. To discover the latest career opportunities in your area, talk to Berkley today.