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If you’re tired of using your LinkedIn profile as a digital resume and want to elevate your experience, read on.
Thousands of LinkedIn sales professionals, business owners, and digital experts consider LinkedIn a critical component of their social selling strategy.
Here’s the deal: They only optimize their LinkedIn profile for sales.
Yes, you heard that right!
LinkedIn is more than just sending connection requests and liking and commenting on each other’s posts.
Would you pay Ads to drive traffic to a page not optimized for conversion?
I guess not…
The same rule applies to your LinkedIn profile.
The first thing you need to do now is to optimize your LinkedIn profile for sales.
So let’s up your profile so you can nail your LinkedIn prospecting!
Today’s guide/tutorial will teach you the following:
- What is an optimized LinkedIn profile?
- Why to optimize your LinkedIn profile?
- 10 Tips For A Better LinkedIn Profile
What Is An Optimized LinkedIn Profile?
An optimized LinkedIn profile increases your visibility to both prospective clients and recruiters.
By thoroughly completing your profile and presenting your expertise, roles, and identity, who you are, and what you do, improve your ranking within the LinkedIn search engine and build trust with potential connections.
Why To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile?
LinkedIn has evolved from a simple networking platform to a dynamic tool for job applications, prospecting, event invitations, and service promotion.
It serves as a digital business card, essential for establishing credibility as a professional.
For marketers and sales professionals, an optimized profile is invaluable.
It allows you to:
- Showcase your professional achievements
- Build and evolve your personal and professional brand identity
- Share your professional insights
- Implement a solid inbound marketing strategy
- Improve interaction rates
- Drive direct sales
- Organize and promote events, both online and offline
- Boost your company’s overall credibility
So, maintaining a polished and professional image on LinkedIn is essential for anyone who wants to advance their career and close deals effectively.
10 Tips For A Better LinkedIn Profile
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile doesn’t mean putting it all out there and “bragging” about the LinkedIn certificates you have.
It’s more simple.
Here are 10 tips for optimizing and improving your LinkedIn profile:
- Define LinkedIn profile goals
- Design an original profile picture and banner
- Write a Simple LinkedIn Headline
- Propose value in the About section
- Display social proof in the Featured section
- Customize your LinkedIn URL
- Optimize the Activity section
- Provide detailed work experience and education
- Get recommendations
- Activate the Creator Mode
1. Define LinkedIn profile goals
Before doing any LinkedIn outreach, you need to know what action you want people to take when they visit your page:
- Send you a LinkedIn DM
- Email you
- Directly book a meeting in your calendar
- Drive traffic to your website
- Drive traffic to your YouTube channel
- Make them download a white paper
You can use different Calls to Action.
Choose one or two and build your entire profile around them.
2. Design an original picture and banner
Your LinkedIn profile is like a website’s homepage. You have 3 seconds to:
- Leave a first impression on your potential customers.
- Convince you are trustworthy.
- Make them understand your value proposition.
For that, you need to optimize the first two elements that will come to your prospect’s attention:
- Your LinkedIn profile photo
- Your background image
To easily create custom designs, you can use Canva (it’s like Photoshop, but you don’t need to spend five hours on YouTube learning how to do cool things with it).
- Connect on Canva
- Click on “Create a design”
- Look for “LinkedIn Banner”
Canva will automatically show designs of the right size and templates, from which you can start designing your LinkedIn background photo.
- Add your value proposition, call to action, or job title to this design.
- Download the file.
- Upload it to LinkedIn.
You can do the same for your profile picture.
Choose one of your good-looking and professional headshots and insert it in the design of your choice.
Remember to keep it minimalist and clean.
3. Write a simple and clear headline
The second element to optimize is your headline.
You have a maximum of 220 characters to describe your profile.
LinkedIn’s feed is limited to 60 characters, so consider it before you start being creative.
To write a simple and clear, you can use this template: “I help X do Y with Y”.
Like: “I help business owners save time with automation”.
That way you describe:
- Target (X)
- Value (Y)
- Expertise(Z)
4. Propose Value in the About section
Your LinkedIn summary is where you give more details about your personal brand .
It provides more context to someone who wants to know more about you and your business.
The real goal is to get people to click “See More”, so give them a good reason.
Try to make your call to action as appealing and obvious as possible.
Include relevant keywords so the LinkedIn algorithm promotes your profile upon any search request.
Once you’ve hooked your visitor, you get plenty of space to develop your value proposition.
- Stay focused on your call to action
- Use storytelling to keep your audience’s attention
Even if links don’t work in the About section, leave different social media links, as people can still copy-paste them to get access to them.
Also, remember to leave your email or other contact information, as many people don’t like LinkedIn Messaging or using their InMails credits.
5. Display social proof in the Featured section
The feature section is pretty big. You can take advantage of it to add:
- LinkedIn posts
- Blog posts
- Links
- Media (like PDF Guides, Lead Magnets…)
If you have already made some successful posts, click the three dots on your publication, then choose Feature on top of your profile.
This way, your post will then appear in the Featured section.
That way, you show visitors that people value what you say (so they must listen to you, too).
You can add your website, best blog posts, guides, or LinkedIn articles to drive traffic to them.
Some of them might be potential clients and become new customers.
6. Customize your LinkedIn URL
If you need to share your LinkedIn profile URL in your email signature or by message, you should customize it to look nice.
For that:
- Go to this URL
- Go to “Edit Custom URL” and click on the pen
- Modify your URL
Make sure you choose a professional LinkedIn URL with your name and surname, as present in your profile headline.
Note that your LinkedIn URL is visible only when you have a public profile.
7. Optimize the Activity section
The activity section will display your recent activity on LinkedIn:
- Posts
- Comments
- Likes
With this section, your profile visitors can see that you have recently posted or commented on a post.
Posting regularly and becoming a LinkedIn influencer will be a good asset in your LinkedIn profile optimization.
It’s another way to give social proof by giving them food for thought and showing you are active on the platform.
8. Provide detailed work experience and education
Don’t make a resume that describes all the work you’ve done. Instead:
- Tell a story
- Show your expertise
- Stand out
Add figures:
- How big are the pain points you solved?
- What’s your quantified impact?
- Why have you taken this position/started this business?
If people want to do some background checks, it is pleasant to have direct access to the websites of the companies you worked in the Experience section.
You can also add links to content you created as testimonials.
9. Get recommendations
Whether you work for an agency or freelancer, people mostly value your work based on your clients’ recommendations and success stories.
People value the recommendations more than your well-prepared cover letter and resume.
Having skills endorsement is not vital, but having some will always look good, as you want to exploit all the opportunities LinkedIn gives you to stand out.
Conversely, recommendations can be an efficient way to get clients for your business through LinkedIn.
Don’t hesitate to leverage your:
- friends
- colleagues
- current clients
- old clients
They can give you cool testimonials about the quality of your work!
10. Activate The Creator Mode
Activating creator mode is a good move when you are an advanced user and want to use it as your main lead generation channel.
It allows 2 things:
- Display the number of followers at the top of the profile
- Give you the ability to add a link at the top of the profile
Displaying followers count helps to build social proof, and the link is a great way to place a custom Call To Action at the top of your profile.
This is very beneficial when you use LinkedIn as a powerful tool for generating leads and sales prospecting.
Conclusion
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is an ongoing process that requires regular updates and active engagement.
These strategies can transform your LinkedIn profile into a dynamic tool that showcases your professional expertise and actively contributes to your sales success.
Stay proactive, continually refine your approach, and watch your professional network and sales opportunities grow.
FAQ
Why to optimize your LinkedIn profile?
LinkedIn has evolved from a simple networking platform to a versatile tool for salespeople, job applicants, prospecters, and service promoters.
For marketers and sales professionals, an optimized profile is essential, allowing you to:
- Showcase your professional accomplishments
- Build and evolve your personal and professional brand
- Share insights and execute inbound marketing strategies
- Increase interaction rates and drive direct sales
- Organize and promote events to build your company’s credibility
Maintaining a polished and professional LinkedIn image is essential for career advancement and effective deal-making.
How do you use LinkedIn effectively for sales?
Here are 10 tips for making your LinkedIn profile effective for Sales:
- Define LinkedIn profile goals
- Design an original profile picture and banner
- Write a Simple LinkedIn Headline
- Propose value in the About section
- Display social proof in the Featured section
- Customize your LinkedIn URL
- Optimize the Activity section
- Provide detailed work experience and education
- Get recommendations
- Activate the Creator Mode
How do you optimize your LinkedIn profile for sales?
You can optimize your LinkedIn profile to increase your sales potential as a salesperson.
Here are some key tips to get you started:
- Complete your profile fully
- Include keywords relevant to your industry or position.
- Use a professional, recent profile photo to build authenticity.
- Highlight what makes you different as a sales professional and your unique selling points.
- Network with prospects and colleagues to increase your visibility.
These steps can significantly improve your ability to attract and engage with more sales prospects.
Disclosure
This content was partly written by AI (ChatGPT 4), I added my own perspective, fact-checked it and made sure it is helpful for you.
