Top 12 LinkedIn profile tips that you should implement right away

Last Updated on 28 August 2024 by Wil Son

Today I will share with you the 12 most important LinkedIn profile tips you need to follow to create a fantastic LinkedIn profile in 2020. How did I find these rules? I’ve analyzed over 100 different LinkedIn profiles and found out what makes them successful.

Is there any better place to build your brand online than LinkedIn? The time you put into an on-point profile from photo to text and everything in between, will come back to you many times over. The right connection starts with the effort you put in here, and it might change the trajectory of your brand.

If you’ve had a LinkedIn account before, you know this platform offers amazing opportunities to build business relationships.

But sometimes it’s difficult to get great results (especially if you’re just starting out on your LinkedIn marketing game).

Nobody accepts your connection requests, nobody likes your content.

There can be dozens of reasons. But the essential thing is – your LinkedIn profile isn’t great.

LinkedIn profile is actually your face in the business world.

So following these LinkedIn profile tips can help you to boost your number of connections and convert more people into customers directly from fro your profile.

Don’t get me wrong –  in the beginning, my LinkedIn profile sucked!

(Sorry for such a word, but it was really terrible)

But a few months ago I analyzed more than 100 different LinkedIn profiles and did dozens of experiments on my own profile.

As a result, my LinkedIn profile began to grow:

So today I will not only tell you the rules you need to follow, but also professional LinkedIn profile tips and real examples of good and bad LinkedIn profiles so you can easily understand what you need to change:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #1: LinkedIn Profile Funnel

So there are different goals on each part of your profile:

Awareness (Headline, LinkedIn photo and cover photo):

Goal: It’s your elevator pitch, so you need to show who you are and what you do as clear as it possible, so people will want to click on your profile to check more information.

Consideration (Summary, Experience):

Goal: Here you have a lot of space to share details, for example:

• describe how exactly you solve client’s pains,
• what’s something unique in your approach or company,
• what were your results.

Decision (Media, CTA at the end of description):

Goal: You Now people know who you’re, what you do and how exactly you can help them. They just need to go to the correct place to start talking to your company.

So your goal here is to let people easily:

• book a demo with you,
• check your blog,
• write an email to you.

So now we understand the goal of each part of the LinkedIn profile, so we can go through each of that blocks and make them better:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #2: LinkedIn Profile Photo

When it comes to all social media, your photo is really important. Because communication in the social network is almost the same as in real life, so we need to see the face of the person to visualize this conversation.

LinkedIn is no exception. What’s more, people not only look at photos from the perspective of the person, but also from a professional’s point of view.

Why?

That’s as simple as it is.

People judge their potential employees, partners and suppliers on the basis of their photos. For example, if you don’t have a photo in your LinkedIn profile, people usually won’t talk to you (because they don’t see a person behind that account).

So when it comes to “LinkedIn profile pictures”, it hasn’t been a rocket science. There are simple rules you need to follow, but before you come to them, let’s start BAD LinkedIn Profile Photos so you can avoid the same problems:

1.There is NO photo at all.

2.   Not a real photo.

Of course, I understand that everyone loves cats 🐈

But that’s not a great type of photos to add to professional network.

3.   Not your photo.

For example, you like Ryan Gosling, and you think that nobody knows his face except you.

Don’t be like that.

4.   Bad quality of photo.

Yes, now when Iphones have 3 camera, you CAN’T just have a poor quality photo. So right now you don’t need to buy 5K$ camera to take a great photo, now you just need your phone.

(Yes I resized my own photo for this example)

But that’s not enough to just avoid the mistakes I’ve just described. Because, a lot of people have usual photos without this magic “Stand-out” effect. So I decided to add examples of good LinkedIn profile photos:

You scroll the search results, and what photo stands out of others?

For me it’s Antony’s photo.

When you visit Antony’s profile you can see that it’s something totally different from what people usually have.

Or, there is also a trend of “photos without a background”, so there is only your face on a photo.

By the way, if you want to have the same photo without background you can:

1. Buy Photoshop course
2. Buy Photoshop
3. Spend 2 hours to remove background

OR

You can do it much easier, by using one of the tools that I mentioned in 7 Best Marketing Tools for LinkedIn – it’s called Remove.bg.

5 seconds and you get your photo without background, for 100% free price.

Don’t forget to check Image Size Dimensions, for example for LinkedIn Profile Photo you need to have a squared photo 400×400.

By the way, if you want to check all LinkedIn Image Sizes, check this infographics:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #3: Cover/Background Photo

If your profile photo should stand out and be noticable, there is another goal for your cover photo.

People don’t see it before they open your LinkedIn profile.

You have 5-7 seconds to catch up person’s attention and show what you do with visual material.

And here are a few LinkedIn profile tips for the cover image to do it:

a) Confirm what you do (and what’s written in your headline) with your photo.

For example, Michaela Alexis says that she is “Keynote speaker” and on this page she shows photos from events where she was as a speaker. Also she says “Millennial LinkedIn Trainer” and she added the photo with “LinkedIn logo” on the background.

So you need 5 seconds to understand what she does with both visual and text information.

b) Show the proof of your expertise

You always have some results that you’d love to show to people. For example, you wrote articles for The Next Web, or your product was mentioned on Forbes.

Or some awesome brands are using your tool (Uber, Pipedrive and so on).

You can show it on your background photo. Just add logos (as we all do on websites).

So people who visit your profile will have such a feeling:

“Hmm, probably these guys are experts, because they wrote articles for Forbes”.

So here is the example of Vaibhav’s LinkedIn profile (again, I love his profile). As you can see he was mentioned on BAMF, Entrepreneur  and other cool platforms.

So even before talking to him or even checking his summary and work experience you trust him.

c) Call To Action

People who saw your cover photo can easily check your Youtube Channel or contact you via email.

Don’t believe me?

If they liked the first page of your LinkedIn profile, people would like to check more information about you and your company, and if they don’t like long text, they will skip “Summary” part and just check your other social media.

For example, this is Shay’s LinkedIn Profile:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #4: Headline

Important! It’s not your title, it’s your personal description in 120 symbols.

The majority of people think that they need to share just their title and that’s it. But here is a problem, all do the same. Don’t believe me? Ok, let’s check together:

How many “Marketing Manager” did you see?

Do you remember any?

I bet – no.

That’s because there are millions of just “Marketing Managers” and you never know what’s unique in each of them.

“Ok, but how to stand out with a LinkedIn headline?”

There are a few different approaches and LinkedIn profile tips you can follow, but they all have the common point.

It’s – add your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) into headline. Tell everyone who will see your profile – what makes you different from all other experts in your industry.

I’ve analyzed a lot of different profiles and in a nutshell the formula of great LinkedIn Headline looks like:

{Title} at {Company Name} – We help {Target Audience} with {USP}

For example: we all know that there are millions different digital agencies who do SEO, PPC and a lot of marketing things to help business generate more leads through digital.

And if you just see: “XYZ – Digital Agency”, it doesn’t tell you almost anything.

But what if you see this:

You understand much more, for example that these guys not only execute but also train teams and help companies get more leads by working with them.

Or there is another approach which is also great.

Your personal elevator pitch with 2-3 statements about who you are and what you do.

The formula is:

{Title} | {What you do 1} | {What you do 2}

For example, this is Dave’s short headline.

7 seconds and you understands what he is doing.

Pro LinkedIn profile tips for the Headline:

a) Add your USP, something that shows the difference between you and your competitors.

b) Use the next formula for making your headline:

{Title} at {Company Name} – We help {Target Audience} with {USP}

or

{Title} | {What you do 1} | {What you do 2}

LinkedIn Profile Tip #5: Summary

When people understand what you and your company do, they need more details about how you do what you do, what results did you get and so on.

And “About” or “Summary” section is perfect for this purpose.

You have 2000 characters to describe all this information with numbers and proofs.

But!

People don’t see a full description about you. They see just the first 2-3 lines. And you need to intrigue people with those 2-3 lines, so they will click on “See more” button.

(The same works for post creation, to learn more about how to write posts, check here)

For example, this is Dave’s summary.

He make a ultra short description of himself in first 2 lines, and then he describes much more about his results and honors.

After reading it you have only one emotion – “Wow, Dave is super awesome!”

And if you have any questions or offers for a potential cooperation you will try to find his contacts to email him.

But, Dave (as a great marketer) knew that and at the end of his summary added “Contact me” information.

LinkedIn Profile Tip #6: Media

Media is a great place where you can share your articles, photos of your team or any other links to your website.

For example, Vaibhav added the link to his website and Instagram account + created the images “My website” and so on.

So if anyone wants to check more information about him, they will click on this image and follow the link.

LinkedIn Profile Tip #7: Customize LinkedIn profile URL

That’s not the most important part of your LinkedIn Profile, but this is a small thing that still matters.

Personally, I don’t take it seriously when seeing that someone with uncustomized URL tried to connect with me:

For example, like this:

So spend just 30 seconds to customize it. For example, like I did:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #8: Experience

This is the block that a lot of people don’t fill.

(Like I did for my experience at lempod 🤣)

But this is a great place to show your expertise.

For example, this is Ruslan’s LinkedIn Profile and he shared his numbers and wins:

Also and I’ll talk about it more, this block is great for adding SEO tools to improve your LinkedIn ranking.

So don’t be lazy and write as many details as you can.

For example, this is how I updated my experience.

Was:

Now:

LinkedIn Profile Tip #9: Skills

It’s not a rocket science here.

Just add skills that are the most relevant to you and put them to your top 3. For example, if you’re doing SEO for companies, just put “SEO”.

That’s an additional opportunity to increase your LinkedIn SEO positions. But I’ll share the detailed LinkedIn Profile SEO below.

LinkedIn Profile Tip #10: Articles

Basically there are 2 ways to produce content on LinkedIn:

• Usual posts
• Articles

I’ve tested a lot, created 30+ different posts and can say you for sure – LinkedIn Posts are muuuuuch better than LinkedIn Articles in terms of traffic and awareness.

For example, my LinkedIn posts usually get 20K views and up to 1K clicks from posts.

At the same time my articles didn’t get even 1K views:

So you can say:

“Okies, so there is no sense to write these articles!”

And you’ll be … wrong!

Even if articles don’t generate you enough traffic, I highly recommend you publishing at least 1 article.

Why?

Because LinkedIn understands that you’re creating different types of content, so your account can bring some value and as a result your ranking on LinkedIn SEO becomes better.

LinkedIn Profile Tip #11: LinkedIn Profile SEO

This is probably one of the most important LinkedIn profile tips here.

Do you want people easily find you on LinkedIn and contact to you about business?

I bet – you do!

And as usual SEO on Google, you need to optimize your LinkedIn Profile with keywords that people usually use to find something.

But, Google keywords and LinkedIn keywords might be different, so there is no need to open Semrush or Ahrefs to find the list of words and their search difficulty and volume.

a) Find keywords on LinkedIn

There is no tool for LinkedIn SEO, so we’ll need to go to basic LinkedIn search and find keywords with search volume

Now we type keywords in a search bar -> choose “People” -> click on “see all results”

Now we can see the total number of results.

When you test 5-6 different keywords you will have a clear understanding of SEO situation.

Now you can choose 1-2 keywords you’ll focus on. Notice, that the bigger search volume keywords has, the harder it’ll be for you to rank there.

b) Add SEO keywords to your LinkedIn profile

Now when you understand what is the better keyword for your LinkedIn profile you can add them to:

a) Headline,

b) Summary,

c) Experience,

d) Skills.

I highlighted the focused keyword on people’s profile.

And as you can see, Title, Summary and your Headline make the biggest impact on your SEO.

LinkedIn Profile Tip #12: Create content

If you follow these LinkedIn profile tips, and you just created the best LinkedIn profile on this planet but don’t generate any content, nobody will see your profile.

So content is the key when it comes to LinkedIn awareness.

For example, I increased the number of my LinkedIn profile views by 241%when I created one great post.

As you can see, this growth was at the beginning of September. But I created a great post at the end of August:

If you want to know how to write posts to get 10x more LinkedIn post views check this article.

If you want to know how I reached 100K + views on my content in just 30 days by using LinkedIn Engagement pods – check my story here.

To Sum Up:

You need to make your LinkedIn professional and eye-catching. So you need to follow these LinkedIn profile tips:

1. LinkedIn photo and cover image
2. Your headline and summary
3. Don’t be lazy and add details in your work experience
4. Write at least 1 article
5. Focus on SEO keywords
6. Create-Create-Create Content