- Basic Hygiene
First things first: let’s not forget about the basic hygiene of LinkedIn profiles: unload the nice picture of yourself, put some nice cover image and try to fill the majority of the profile fields (including skills, industry, summary, education, location, and interests).
A nice example of the profile photo is Satya Nadella – he is smiling, not wearing sunglasses, eyes looking directly to the visitor of his profile. The cover picture does not contain any ComicSans text or any homemade image compilation of the products you’re trying to sell.
- Hacking your headline
These fields are among the first things your prospect can see when deciding whether to accept your invitation to connect or not. That’s why you should think twice about what’s written here.
People often use the headline field to share a few words about their product, company or field of interest. Here you can try to put your sales pitch into no more than 7 words, as the headline should not be an article.
If you use the headline as the ground for shortened pitch, avoid being too salesy. It should only attract a prospect’s attention when the rest of the profile plus your further actions are meant to inspire confidence and hold that attention.
Of course, using a headline this way is not mandatory – if you’re feeling that having your current job title as the headline is enough for now, then just leave it as it is. If you are not sure what is better, we recommend running several a/b tests, trying different variations, then fixing the results of the experiment and choosing the best option.
- Summary
Your summary should be the most accurate piece of text on your profile as it comes first right after the headline. People expect from the summary to figure out who you are, so better you give them what they want.
If not sure in your copywriting skills, then try putting there some epic phrase, life motto or philosophical quote. Sometimes five words could worth a thousand, just choose them wisely.
- Education
If you’re feeling that the education you have is not quite relevant to your current job title or not as prestigious you’d like it to be, then you can easily hide this field in Settings. For doing that go to ‘Edit intro’ and uncheck the item ‘Show education in my intro’.
- Experience
When filling the experience field try not to leave it empty. If you’re not ready yet to describe your key competencies & achievements here and there, we recommend you to copy/rewrite a few words from the company description, e.g. ‘We’re a breathtaking FinTech startup based in NY with 50+ tech geeks on board. Last year got the Stevie awards for the fastest-growing company in our field…’ and etc.
Again, every field matters, so do not lose your chance to gently highlight some facts about your company and your team you’re really proud of. And the no-salesy-content rule is still in force.
Finally, check once again if everything’s ok with your past experience, make necessary updates and delete the outdated information. Besides, shortening the info about past experience can help you to highlight your current company’s description.
