No matter how great you are in your current role, or how crucial your past experience is in terms of attracting a potential new client, employer, employee, or investor, if you don't portray yourself in the right way on LinkedIn, you will not yield the results you are looking for on LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn profile should be seen as the centerpiece of your online career persona and therefore planned to precision. Write too much about all of your achievements, experiences, identities, missions, and passions and you risk overwhelming the reader, but conversely, if you only offer the bare minimum with a sparse table of name, current job, past experience, and education then you will leave your reader unsatisfied and less likely to connect.
However, if you can articulate your value by telling your professional story in a concise but effective manner, with an infrastructure of positivity, eventually leading the reader to a happy ending then this should lead to an increase of connections, leads and interviews.
Here are our top 3 tips for curating your LinkedIn profile for success:
Tailor Your Profile To How You Want Your Story To End.
Have a think about where all your hard work has been leading up to now and where you want it to take you. If you know where you want your story to end this will form the narrative and will guide you to curate your profile in a way that is truly effective. You can highlight all of your experiences, achievements, and results that will be more likely to bring you the meaningful connections that you actually want. For example, you may be working in general marketing, but have always wanted to specialize in social media. Highlight anything that will lead you to stand out more within this field, make connections within this industry and join any groups that may be of interest.
Know Your Audience.
Once you have figured out the end goal of your story, you then need to think about who you are truly trying to speak to. This could be recruiters in a certain field, professional connections within your industry, or maybe you want to generate leads? Whoever or whatever it is you just need to ensure that you are speaking to them in language they want to hear, in a way that answers all of their questions.
Be Creative But Take Inspiration
It's always best to have your own creative flair, however with LinkedIn there is no harm in looking to others for inspiration. Choose a LinkedIn profile or two that speak to you and break down what’s working and not working about yours as you see it, and what you love about these other people’s profiles. Look for formatting, tone, how others blend personal details into their summary and create your own version of what you really liked. Keep what you love about your profile and then blend in the bits from the other people's profiles that you think will really enhance your page. Remember, you can rewrite your LinkedIn at any time so this can be a work in progress until you are happy you have found the right recipe for success.
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