Making Your LinkedIn Profile Dynamic

By now, you know that LinkedIn is the place to go for professional networking. However, there are still some people who are unsure how to use LinkedIn for their benefit.

LinkedIn, like any other social media platform is controlled by you. You decide what you want people to know about you. Visit my post, What Do You Want The To Know About You? The good thing about LinkedIn, is that you can also control who can see your profile and certain areas of your profile.

You Control What & Who You Want To See

For example, if you do not want your current employer to know that you are actively looking for employment, you can change the settings to not allow updates when you add new items to your profile.

On the other hand, you can change your settings for people to know every time you add new information to your profile.

You control what SEO you put into your profile and how people locate you. There are some things that are standard with LinkedIn to help you get the most out of this platform.

Add A Professional Photo

If you are going to be on there, you might as well get the most value from it. First, get a professional photo. Not one you’ve taken in your car or you sitting at the beach. Make sure your photo is a great head shot and it’s a professional one.

You can easily do this yourself. Get dressed in professional attire and take a selfie on a light colored background. Or if you feel that’s not good, you can contact your local community college or university to see if they have a photography class that can take photos for a discounted rate.

The students need the practice and you need a professional photo. Win-win for everyone!

First Impressions Are Lasting impressions

Remember the old saying, “You can’t change a first impression.” Well, your LinkedIn profile is your first impression of who you are professionally to your industry.

Since this is true, make sure you read over everything you include and have other people to read over it as well. If you don’t have someone, then here’s a couple of tips to do it yourself.

Cool Editing Tip

Read it out loud while recording on your phone. That way you can see how someone else would hear what you have written about yourself. Another tip is for you to write it in a word document.

Let is sit for a few days, like 4 to 5 days, Reread it again and you will most likely find any mistakes or confusions in your profile. Then upload it to the platform.

Extra Stuff You Do

Include extracurricular activities. Even activities that do not relate to your industry. What I mean is, if you are the president of the local Toastmasters club and you work in accounting where you do not often give speeches or presentations, this is great!

On the other hand, you do not want to include anything that is controversial. For example, those no-no topics; religion, sex, politics. However, I do want to clarify, if you are doing something in your religious organization that can be done in a professional setting then list it, but not the name of the organization.

Here’s what I mean. I am always doing something in my religious organization. Just recently I was in charge of an annual anniversary program. This would be project management. Therefore, I would include on my LinkedIn profile, volunteer project management for annual anniversary program in religious organization.

Link To Articles That You Can Relate To

One thing that I’ve noticed that helps many people with their profile is to link to several articles related to your stance in your industry. It could be something on the cutting edge of your industry, new technologies that would make your work easier, laws passed or anything that would show that you are aware of information in your industry.

Linking to these several times a week would help your profile when someone clicks on you because they would see you are up-to-date and current in your industry.

Finally, create your bio in first person. Just like you are talking to someone about you. As I mentioned earlier in the tips to edit your bio, when you are reading your bio, it should be in first person and talk/write as if you are talking about your skills and goals in the industry.

For more information your LinkedIn profile, read Is Your LinkedIn Profile On Point.