Things that make your LinkedIn account stand out

 

It doesn’t matter what stage of the job-search process you’re in, you’ll always need a LinkedIn profile that stands out.With more than 810 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is easily the wide professional network. If you’re serious about your career and professional enhancement, you need a LinkedIn profile that’s optimized and up to date. Your LinkedIn profile is your opportunity to make a mark in front of hundreds or even thousands of professionals in your business. If you’re looking for employment, building a strong network is crucial.

However, it’s not sufficient to just have a LinkedIn page. You need an eye-catching LinkedIn profile that draws attention, puts out the right information and helps you really connect with the people who can guide you to expand your career.

Here are a few tips to make your LinkedIn account stand out.

1. Add your headshot

The most basic thing you can do to upgrade your LinkedIn profile is to put a face to your name and add a profile picture. Be creative enough to explain well what you do or who you are, but remember that this is the first impression people will get from your page. If you don’t have an appropriate headshot to use, it’s not worth the investment. With the high number of people on LinkedIn, those without a photo are easily accelerated aside.

2. Write an eye-catching headline

Your headline is arranged right below your name in your LinkedIn profile and hence, it is the first thing profile visitors read. The settings will fill this in with your current position and that’s okay for starters but the headline can be whatever you want. In total, you have 120 characters to write an eye-catching headline, so why not write something that pops? Think of it as a short billboard advertisement for you and what you do. Instead of just listing your job title, mention your forte and how you benefit your company or customers. Don’t forget to keep your desired audience in mind. Are you speaking to management peers, customers, or headhunters? Write to attract your desired audience. For example:

Advertising Sales Rep helping clients create a winning branding approach. Over 300 successful clients.

Just like that you’ve told them your job, what you bring to the table, and provided a little sincerity easily and firmly.

3. Craft an interesting summary

Your LinkedIn summary gives you the convenience to tell your story. Your summary can be a longer form of your headline; here you have 2,000 characters to work with. Don’t just focus on your past experience but on what you do well and what you can bring to a proposed employer. Keep in mind that keywords are important here and use the words that you want to be actively connected to in your field.

In today’s time, people have shorter attention spans, so don’t use up all of those 2,000 characters. Instead, keep it shorter. Be creative enough and paint a picture of who you really are as a professional.

4. Highlight your experience

You can do better than easily cutting and pasting your resume onto your LinkedIn profile. You don’t need to follow the two-page rule here, but you do have internet readers with a short attention period. Make sure to include any jobs that are related to where you want your career to go, and use two to four interesting and exciting bullet points for each job you include.

5. Use visual media

Why not add a background photo/cover photo on LinkedIn just like you do on Twitter and Facebook? It’s simple to do and it makes your LinkedIn profile stand out, you can pick a theme that expresses your profession or personality.

LinkedIn lets you connect other media to your profile like YouTube videos, Info-graphics. Get creative with applicable media and make your page jump off the screen and demand attention.

6.  Start making connections

You need to keep expanding your connections as you meet people because of LinkedIn’s system of first, second, and third-degree connections; having a lot of connections helps keep you highlighted to others.

With that  said, while you can connect with people you don’t know, it’s desirable to connect with individuals whom you know personally, have worked with, or met in a professional scope. If you do, decide to connect with the entity you haven’t met, or don’t have a direct connection to, send a note with your request to demonstrate who you are and why you’d like to connect.

7. Ask for recommendations

This is a major step to follow. Think of people that you’ve advanced a good working relationship with in the past. When you edit your profile, there is a link that you can click that says ‘Ask for Recommendations’. Click on it and choose what you’d like to be recommended for and choose a list of people from your contacts. Then, send it out, and hope you get some good feedback.

8. Keep your page active

LinkedIn is not just an online resume — it’s a networking social media site. That means to get the most out of it, you need to endure effectively. Check out what other people are posting, engage them with thoughtful comments, and like and share posts that you think are helpful.

You can also join groups on LinkedIn. According to your professional interests, from marketing to accounting, there are going to be groups talking about the specifications. You can join one or two and interact within that group. It’s a great way to meet some new people and share creative ideas and learn too.