Last week, LinkedIn Expert and my occasional partner-in-crime, Viveka von Rosen, gave us Six ways to make your LinkedIn company page stand out. As promised, we are back this week with six easy things you should do to update your LinkedIn personal page.
LinkedIn users, views and engagement are at an all-time high during this work from home time. And, according to Viveka, these are six things you should be doing right now to optimize your LinkedIn profile and increase engagement and visibility during this high traffic moment on the platform. It’s a perfect time to solidify your brand or create a whole new one!
1. Customize Your personal banner or background image
Your background image should be relevant to what is going on in the world now or your industry. It should reflect on how you help people. State it right in your background image. You can see what I have done here www.LinkedIn.com/in/LinkedInExpert using a template from www.VengresoBanner.com.
2. Update you professional headline
That little section underneath your picture? That usually says, “Title at Company?” That’s your professional headline, and you have 120 characters (220 characters on your mobile device) to expand on that by letting people know who you help and how you help them. And if you can mention something relevant to what is going on today, add it in as well.
Mine is: “Helping #SalesProfessionals Create More QUALIFIED & QUALITY Conversations when #WFH | LinkedIn Expert, Author & Speaker | Forbes Top 20 Most Influential | #PersonalBranding | LinkedIn Learning Author | CVO | Vengreso.com.”
3. Update your photo
These days, you might be seeing more people on Zoom than you did in your “real life” on the job and in the office. The last thing you want to do is create a sense of dissonance between your profile photo and what someone sees on Zoom. I’m not saying you have to wear your sweats in the picture– but don’t use the image from your 2005 glamour photoshoot either. Make sure that your LinkedIn profile photo is an actual representation of what you look like now.