In the era of instant information, it is all but required that you put your best face forward. To succeed in today’s business environment, you have to be willing to embrace digital efficiency as an opportunity to showcase your skills and what your business has to offer. One of the easiest ways to showcase your skills while paying attention to modern trends is by setting up your own LinkedIn profile for promoting your business. As you’ll see from this entrepreneur’s LinkedIn profile, the ability to quickly and effectively showcase yourself can help you toward finding your next job. Today, we are going to outline several tips that you can utilize while setting up your own LinkedIn account.
1) Start With a Summary – When you first register for your LinkedIn profile, you might feel overwhelmed. Rather than getting lost in the details, start with something large. Your LinkedIn profile can handle up to 2,000 characters. Don’t use all of the characters afforded to you, but definitely write three to five paragraphs that cover who you are, what you do, and what you can offer to potential collaborators. Skip industry jargon, common slang, and usage of the first-person point of view. Consider how a standard Wikipedia page ‘reads’ when finding the tone for your own summary.
2) Keep It Professional – LinkedIn is a social media platform and, unfortunately, many people treat it as such. You don’t want anything on your LinkedIn profile that doesn’t directly pertain to your work. Stay away from touchy subjects like politics and religion. To take this tip a step further, make sure that all of your visual media is prepared in a professional way. Extra tip for inquiring minds, don’t use a Snapchat photo from your college days as your profile picture. Dress well, dress clean, and focus on the camera with a picture that starts around the middle of your chest.
3) Seek Legitimate Endorsements – The endorsement section of LinkedIn can be an amazing resource for hiring managers to peruse. If your endorsement section is looking thin, consider reaching out to former associates who may be on LinkedIn. Don’t ask for a glowing endorsement, just request that, when they are available, your former associates post an honest evaluation of your work and skills. Similarly, make sure that you endorse other users who you have professional experience with. While we don’t want you to treat LinkedIn like a social media platform, there are certain aspects that you need to embrace. Being proactive with your business relationships is one of the reasons that you’ll want to treat LinkedIn like social media, at least in that respect.
Establishing a professional LinkedIn profile isn’t that difficult. What IS difficult, however, is actively working to maintain it. In order to build your business while climbing the ladder in your industry, maintaining your LinkedIn account is all but necessary. Imagine what would happen if a potential investor or collaborator went to research your profile, but you hadn’t updated it in six months or a year. Use these tips to start off your LinkedIn career, but make sure to always look for more ways to improve.