So let's talk about your LinkedIn profile best practices.
First of all, it's important to understand that a LinkedIn profile is not a resume, it's a brochure.
And if you go to any car dealership and look at the brochure that's written for the cars that they sell,
go look at a Ford F-150 pickup truck brochure and then go look at the Tesla brochure and then go look
at a Honda Civic or a Honda Accord brochure.
They're all written differently, and the reason they are written differently is they're written to
speak to their target audience, their ideal purchaser.
That same philosophy should apply to writing your LinkedIn profile.
You write it as a brochure, speaking to your target audience.
Here are ten profile best practices that we'll review when we go into LinkedIn.
Number one, everybody needs a profile picture.
It shows that you are approachable.
Without a profile picture, someone looks at your profile and they immediately perceive you as unapproachable.
Number two, your headline, which is directly below your picture, must tell your target audience what
you do for them using keywords that resonate with the target audience.
Number three, you must ensure that your contact information is up to date and that the links work is
that you spell the email address right and you write the phone number, right?
Did you write the website URL correctly?
You don't just don't put it in there.
You test it and make sure it's up to date and works.
So number four is when you write your about section, you must tell highly relevant stories that again
resonate with your target audience, showing them what you do, what you can do.
Listen to these words, what you enjoy doing.
Again, it's not a resume.
It's a brochure.
Number five, use the featured section to showcase content that again amplifies your brand.
Maybe there's a YouTube video and there's an article.
There's a newspaper article.
Maybe there's a LinkedIn article that you wrote that is highly relevant to who you are, what you do,
and it speaks clearly to your target audience.
So use that featured section to put that out there.
There were six.
Use your experience section to show professional growth to who you are and what you do today.
Use the prior positions to show your target audience how you developed where no matter where you were
and what you did.
How did you develop to become who you are today?
And your current job description should speak very clearly to your target audience.
Again, telling them what you can do, what you enjoy doing, how you create success for your target
audience.
Your client.
Your ideal client.
Number seven, look at your skill section.
You must have relevant and meaningful skills in that section.
I often say this I don't want to see Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word for marketing professionals
or for CEOs and executives.
Those skills are often assumed.
I often refer to those as being analogous to use it.
A number two pencil.
Number eight.
All of the content that you put on your LinkedIn profile must be relevant and or showing professional
growth.
You do not want to talk about your past except for where it's relevant or shows growth.
You don't want to send your viewer down a rabbit hole looking at stuff that is irrelevant to who you
are today.
Number nine.
Don't put irrelevant content on LinkedIn profile again, that will send the audience down a rabbit hole.
Anything that is irrelevant, you should seriously ask yourself, why am I sharing this?
Will this grow by professional brand in context of who I am and what I do today?
Or is it just interesting to know and interesting to know may not be worthy of putting on your LinkedIn
profile.
The last one for your LinkedIn profile best practices is check your spelling, check your grammar,
check it on everything, check it in every section.
Often I say write all this content out in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
It's spell check and grammar before you copy and paste it to put it in your LinkedIn profile.
Because you want this content to look important, you want it to look like you are serious, you are
deliberate about what you share, and you're not lackadaisical or sloppy at doing it.