LinkedIn: Reimagine Your Digital Doorfront

When Hari Srinivasan, Director of Product Management for LinkedIn (and GSB ‘09!) guest lectured in Reputation Management last week, he shared strategies for telling our story. Hari’s suggestions prompted me to reconsider my LinkedIn profile in a new way. At first glance, LinkedIn might resemble a form to be filled out. Yet our digital presence is valuable real estate: We choose whether it’s a dusty, unattended lot — or a well-tended, welcoming entrance.

What if we imagined our LinkedIn as our digital home, a place to welcome people? What upgrades could we make?

Welcome visitors

A simple exercise taught me the day’s best lesson: the power of watching a person visit your profile. Yes, sitting next to a friend while she or he reads your LinkedIn! Working in design consulting, I observe users as they look at a prototype — yet I had never done the same with my online presence. I loved watching my partner, Fatima Dicko, click on my profile and read the first few lines. I watched engagement (nodding, smile) or confusion (furrowed brow) and asked about the impressions my digital doorfront made — if possible, having a visitor look on her or his laptop and phone helps most.

Up curb appeal with a photo

I recognized the power of what’s “above the fold” when a visitor pulls up a profile: it’s our job to welcome people in and encourage scrolling. A professional profile photo does this almost magically. According to Hari, profiles with photos have 9x more connection requests, 21x more profile views, and 30x more messages.

IDEO Portfolio Director and GSB alum, Joe Brown: the photo showcases his personality and the header photo elicits a smile. Greg McKeown, author and another GSB alum, showcases his friendliness and his work at speaking engagements in his photos.

Mind your neighbors

The people you surround yourself with on LinkedIn are part of your story: mutual connections, influencers that you follow, and “People Also Viewed” round out your neighbors. The most important connections will be those that you have in common with your visitor. In the way that people are drawn in with your profile photo, the feelings and associations they have with the faces that surround you matter. During class, Hari discussed how your network itself is a value proposition. People will ask for introductions and you will feel more comfortable posting.

Get involved in your community

Another way to welcome people is to be an active member of LinkedIn. A little known perk of publishing on LinkedIn is that articles get a special, separate section near the top of the profile! Hari shared that publishing on LinkedIn becomes part of your profile, gets shared with your network, and reaches the largest group of professionals ever assembled. The increased visibility makes it worth the time to write.

Here’s an example from Adrienne Allnut of LinkedIn, who published articles on the design process.

Showcase your personality through detail

To draw and keep the right type of visitor in your digital home, our work experience should be tailored to catch our visitor’s eye. For example, Hari shared that if you are looking for creative roles, sharing your process might be helpful, whereas for an operations role, detailing efficiency and results might be best. Also consider key words that appear across jobs you are searching for and include them. Hari suggests to take the time to write lines to share what you actually did in the role to help people connect between what you did and what you are looking for: e.g., if you did a lot of planning, you might be a great product manager!

Renovate and refresh

Simply adding a new section or feature to your profile will draw in visitors! Hari shared that we would be surprised at the engagement we get just from adding something new to our profile.

Here’s a list of priority upgrades you can make for your digital home:

• Professional photos: consider professional or candid “at work” shots, not just for your main photo but other parts of your profile! Hiring an amateur photographer for the day for you and friends could help you all upgrade your profiles.
• Publishing an article on LinkedIn: this gets its own special section and draws people to your page from their feed.
• Linking to a work product or presentation: why tell when you can show? Don’t be shy about asking for a photo at work!
• Renovate your presence with increased LinkedIn activity such as updating your profile, engaging with others (liking others’ statuses, leaving a comment) or sharing a post.