The Ultimate LinkedIn Guide: How to Build Your Professional Profile & Set Yourself up for Success

My LinkedIn journey started with zero followers, zero likes and zero engagement. Now I have more than 2700 followers, several posts with more than 8,000 views, 600 likes and 200 comments! What’s more? I got job offers without even applying. In this Career Week-special, I’ll tell you exactly how I achieved this and give you my step-by-step guide to help you kickstart your LinkedIn journey!

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Creating an online professional brand helps you stand out and opens doors to job opportunities and networks in a competitive job market. While LinkedIn seems simple at first, there are so many more aspects you should be taking advantage of to help you build your professional brand, increase your network, boost engagement on your content, and land your dream job.

My Experience

After completing my master’s degree in June 2020, I was inspired to create an account on LinkedIn and share my thoughts by creating content about psychological capital, HR, and female empowerment.

What’s the secret?

According to LinkedIn user statistics, LinkedIn now has more than 722 million members. It has developed from a professional networking site to one of the top social media platforms. LinkedIn is more than an online resume. It is a place where people share their stories, develop skills and knowledge, and build a diverse network.

Complete your profile and keep it updated

Before you choose to do anything on LinkedIn, you must first complete your profile

• List only your name in the name field. When you do not write your real professional name, your account will appear unprofessional, less credible, or even fake. Avoid using pseudonyms, fake names, business names, email addresses, or special characters.

• Choose a professional profile picture; recognizable, professionally dressed, looking straight ahead, with a neutral background. No sunglasses, weird poses or blurry colors.

• Write your headline in a way that stands out. Your headline is one of the most important parts of your profile because it is the first thing people see when they find you in the search results or view your profile. It should include keywords that consist of what you do, the service you offer, or what position you are looking for.

• Use the summary field to define and describe yourself in your own words. Whether you use it to highlight your most significant achievements or show off your personality, the summary is your chance to strengthen your first impression. Describe what makes you stand out. Mention your passion, explain your current role, highlight your success stories, reveal your personality, share your interests or hobbies outside work and make sure it serves to support your professional strengths.

• Showcase your skills. Focus on the skills that are most relevant to your career goals. For example, if you have marketing experience, you may include soft skills like curiosity and hard skills like SEO. You can also verify your hard skills by taking a Skill Assessment to showcase your proficiency on your profile, making you up to 30% more likely to land the job. LinkedIn Learning offers more than 16,000 courses that can help you build soft skills.

• Highlight your experience in the experience section. Consider it a summary that presents your main achievements. Mention projects you have completed, goals you attained, credentials you earned, and promotions you received.

• Do not ignore the significance of volunteer experience. According to a LinkedIn survey, volunteer experience gives you an advantage over other candidates. Moreover, the survey results showed that 41% of the professionals surveyed give high weight to volunteer work when selecting candidates, and 20% of the hiring managers surveyed hired candidates based on their volunteer experience.

Tip: Fill your profile page with relevant keywords and search terms for SEO. You can find these by following the practical guide by certified executive coach Erin Urban.

Build your network

Your connections help increase your exposure. When a connection likes, shares, or comments on your post, it will appear on their connection’s newsfeeds. This will trigger other people to send you a connection request. So how do you build your network?

• Focus on relevant connections. It may be easy to increase the number of connections you have. However, interactions from relevant connections will lead to opportunities and will be fruitful in the long term. Hence, increase quantity without compromising quality and connect with professionals who can add value to your network.

• Identify your target audience. Identify who are the people that will probably read your posts? Which geographic location do you want to target? What interests do your target audience have? What pain points are they dealing with? Identifying your target audience will help you increase engagement on your posts and gain authentic followers. Consequently, being an active user with an original audience will attract recruiters who will view you as a valuable asset who can advocate for a company on one of the most powerful professional platforms out there. E.g., Are you a graphic designer? Share your artwork. Are you a content writer? Write articles.

• Promote your LinkedIn page on your website and other appropriate spaces (e.g., employee bios, business cards and social channels). Set up customized URLs and share them to increase your network.

Tip: Identify, search, and track people with specific needs or interests (through their behavior) that can be satisfied through your content. Start with people who interact with your posts.

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Post, post, post!

Post content that reflects your expertise and knowledge. Writing content that pertains to your field, and is engaging and informative, will show your dedication to learning and attract recruiters!

• Consistency is the key. No matter how many posts you’ve created, articles you’ve published, and goals you’ve achieved, all your previous work will turn to be wasted if you neglect to post for a while. Based on research by Onalytica, it is recommended to post at least 2-3 times a week — but no more than 30 times a month for higher engagement.

• Use images and videos. Posts with images earn twice the engagement of text posts and video posts are five times more likely than other content to engage your network.

• Use relevant keywords and hashtags.

• Ask your audience to share their thoughts or feedback with you. Examples: “Share your thoughts in comments”, “Start today”, “Follow these tips”.

Tip: Save your ideas in your notepad and set daily or weekly goals to post content

Be genuine, honest, and authentic in your content

“Genuine conversation around real experiences spark better and deeper conversation,” explains Pete Davies, LinkedIn’s senior director of product management. Post honest and thoughtful content that reflects your genuine personality. This will help you build a strong connection with your relevant network and allow you to secure their support and engagement.

Tip: Genuine content produces authentic audiences and connections.

Analyze your network

To increase the engagement on your posts, you need to analyze your network.

• Track when your posts get the highest views, likes, or comments.

• Monitor what posts your connections are commenting on.

• View the analytics for your posts to gain insight and evaluate the impact of your content.

• When your network reacts to your posts within a short period, LinkedIn’s algorithm will rank you more highly. To increase engagement on your content, post at times where your connections are likely to be active.

• According to Hubspot, the best days to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Tip: Your connections are located in different countries. Therefore, they have different timing. Monitor and identify the time where most of your connections are active!

Search for jobs and reach out to recruiters

Use the advanced search to filter job title, job type, location, etc., to match what you are looking for.

Two ways to reach out to CEOs, HR managers, or recruiters:

• Find the right person by narrowing the options in the advanced search by region and company type (e.g., founder of a magazine in Berlin). Connect to this person and send them a message where you introduce yourself, express your passion for learning and developing your interests in a position at their organization.

• Find a suitable job position. Apply. Send the job poster a connection request, and follow the company. This will increase your chance that this job poster will view your profile and posts. Also, you can keep yourself updated on future job postings by the company.

So, now you should be fully equipped to start your journey on LinkedIn! Make it part of your daily routine. Do it with passion, make genuine connections along the way, and achieve the goal of landing a job.