So, when it comes to creating your LinkedIn strategy, where do you start?

Well, it would seem that a smart place would be… at the beginning. And what is the first thing you need to do when signing up to LinkedIn? Create a profile!

There are two types of profile you can create on LinkedIn though in fact. The first is your own professional profile which will be a profile for you specifically. The second is the profile you will create for your business which is where you will promote your brand instead of yourself.

To begin with, let’s start with your personal LinkedIn profile which is probably the first thing you will create when signing up and which will act as a springboard for most of your other activities. Here, the idea is to sell yourself and to make yourself look profession and accomplished while doing so. LinkedIn gives you a number of tools and areas through which to accomplish these objectives. We’ll look at each of them in order.

Your Headline

The first field you’ll likely enter in the creation of your LinkedIn profile is the description about yourself called your ‘headline’. This is a short line that will list your job role and possibly your interests or your experience.

Say you worked as an internet marketer then, your headline could read as any of the following:

Internet Marketer, Digital Entrepreneur and Business Consultant

Helping businesses to connect with customers and clients through digital marketing Digital marketing expert and head of DMSolutions

Whatever you put here, try to make sure that it is short and succinct while at the same time professional, impressive and descriptive. The idea is to make yourself sound like someone that people would want to work with if they are in your field. At the same time though, you should also aim to put across a bit of personality to help make yourself feel somewhat approachable.

This doesn’t mean that you should try to be ‘funny’ or ‘quirky’ in your headline – this can come across as desperate and may actually undermine your ability to appear professional.

Think about it this way: you’re trying to sum up your professional persona in a single line. That means you want to encompass what you do for a living, your mission statement, your goals and your history as much as possible but in a bite-sized form.

Note: Specifically you have 120 words to play with here.

Your Summary

Don’t spend too much time trying to cram everything into your summary though, as that’s what your profile ‘Summary’ is for. This is the next field that you can use to enter your details into and that you can use to attract potential business partners and clients.

This is where you will go into a little more detail explaining what it is you do for a living and what the key elements of your business are and your major achievements.

The best way to think about this section of your profile, is to imagine that you’re at a professional party or event and someone then comes up to you and asks you ‘what do you do’? Your job is to answer that question in about a paragraph, while at the same time selling yourself. Unlike a party though, you don’t need to worry too much about boring the other person when you’re writing your LinkedIn profile!

Let’s take the example of the digital marketing expert again then. Here, you might say something like the following:

I am the founder and owner of DMSolutions, a small business providing digital marketing solutions. I help companies and individuals to increase their visibility on the web through search engine optimization, branding, content marketing, influencer marketing and social media marketing. I have worked with a number of large clients in the past included ILoveMincedPies and LanyardsRUs, both of which saw a significant increase in traffic, turnover and profits thanks to the efforts of myself and my team.

I also have several other professional interests including web design, programming and more. I am the developer of a very successful app and have an extensive background and qualifications in business management, marketing and graphic design. I am currently open to working with any and all new clients, so please get in touch if you require my services in any capacity.

Notice that this summary performs three main roles: it outlines the specifics of what DMSolutions does, it shows how this helps businesses (and demonstrates the clear potential ROI) and it gives a little background. What’s more, it also invites readers to get in touch which right away opens the lines of communication. Don’t be afraid to outright ask for the kinds of connections you want to make. Are you looking for sponsors on your YouTube channel? Great – then ask for them. Are you looking to get into fitness modelling? Again, mention this and invite agencies to get in touch.

While writing any aspect of your LinkedIn profile, try to keep in mind the following objectives:

• Content should be grammatically correct with no errors in spelling or punctuation
• The tone should be professional but human as you might see on a CV (but with a little more personality)
• You should try to keep it brief and aim to give the most information with the fewest words

Tip #1: Your summary and your headline do not need to be static fields. You can update and freshen up the information you provide about yourself regularly – for instance, what was your biggest accomplishment this year? As we age, so we gather experiences, accomplishments and knowledge; so you need to keep updating your profile to ensure that it conveys everything you have to offer.

Tip #2: Ditch the buzzwords! Remember how you’re always told to say things like ‘teamwork’ and ‘synergy’ and ‘initiative’ in your CV? That’s old advice and it’s become something of a cliché. Try to avoid making the age-old mistake of using big and impressive-sounding words to say… nothing much at all. Instead, focus on being honest, genuine and likeable. Likeability is a big factor actually – no one wants to work with someone who comes across as unpleasant.

Tip #3: Not confident in your writing skills? Write it yourself and then have a proofreader look over it. Many online writing agencies offer this service cheaply, or you can alternatively ask a friend or relative with good writing skills to do it for you.

Experience

The next section for you to fill out is your ‘experience’. Here, you can add each of your different job roles and briefly highlight the skills that you learned working in those capacities.

If you currently own your own business – as many people reading this will do – then remember to make sure that you include that here.

At the same time, put down any job roles that sound good and that

helped you to develop the experience you have today. Remember, the rate you charge will be directly related to the experience you have in your industry – so show your clients why you deserve the rates you’re going to ask for by demonstrating your decorated career so far.

One tip though is to make sure that you include only relevant job roles. The ideal scenario is that each of your former positions was in the same industry and that they together demonstrate your ascent through the ranks to become the best in your business. It’s okay to include job roles from previous career paths however (such as the time you thought you wanted to be a lawyer), just make sure that in the description you mention how it benefited you and you try to link it to your current position.

So, if you’re currently offering web design services and you want to include your work experience as a waiter, make sure you focus on how you learned to deal with clients and listen to their requirements – skills that transferred nicely to your current role. Always try to keep in mind the outcome that you want from your LinkedIn profile and then paint everything on the page in that light.

Tip #1: Avoid trying to list part time jobs and other non-relevant information. If you spent your summer working for a local paper round… leave it out. Including this kind of experience only makes it look as though you’re clutching at straws. If you’re fresh out of college and you just want to find a job, then it may be useful. For serious professionals looking for networking opportunities and clients though… leave it out.

Tip #2: You have the option here to list documents, photos, links and videos to back up what you say. You don’t have to do this but if you can provide some evidence then this will help you to inspire more confidence and trust.

Projects

The projects section is your real opportunity to show off and to demonstrate what you can do. You can use this to showcase your personal projects – such as an app, book or website you might have created on the side – but you can also use it to showcase your best work within your current position.

For instance then, if your last organization left you in charge of

relations with a big client and it turned out well, that is something you can list as a project. Likewise, if you recently provided work for a big client to help them promote themselves/cut their overheads/design a website, then this is something else you can list.

This section is actually particularly useful for self-employed entrepreneurs and start-ups. If you list your own business as your only experience this won’t inspire much confidence in your clients on its own – it might be that you actually spend all the time sitting at home in your pajamas claiming benefits. By listing high profile clients you’ve worked with though and by listing the results you’ve helped them to achieve, you can show that your business is one that should be taken seriously and that you really know what you’re doing. Note though that you need to check with your clients before listing them by name.

Skills and Endorsements

Here you can list all the skills that you have and all your areas of expertise. You do this by searching for keywords and this is one of the main ways in which potential clients and partners will find you. Try to be comprehensive here but again avoid ‘overreaching’. If you start adding skills like ‘makes a mean carbonara’ it will come across as

though you don’t have any actual marketable skills. This is the equivalent as listing your work experience as a school cleaner when you’re trying to promote yourself as a lawyer.

Laser focus has the benefit here of making you look like a master of your trade. At the same time, by having a smaller selection of skills, you’ll find you get more endorsements for each individual one. This means that people have ticked ‘YES’ when LinkedIn has asked them whether you really know about what you claim to know.

Tip #1: Make sure you make an effort to endorse other users for their skills. When you do that, you’ll find that they tend to feel obligated to reciprocate in kind and you’ll quickly build up a long list of endorsements.

Education

Education is where you’ll list your qualifications. Here you can add any college/university/high school and extra curricula education as well as any courses you’ve completed. Again, you also have the option to add documents, photos and videos as evidence that you really have the qualifications you say you have. As with your projects, there is no requirement to do this but it certainly doesn’t hurt. And

likewise, as with your work experience, avoid adding qualifications that don’t relate to your current business in anyway. That cycling proficiency certificate you got when you were 6? You can leave it out.

Additional Info & Honors & Awards

You can also add additional information to your page such as your hobbies and interests, your personal details and ‘advice for contacting’. This is where you can make yourself sound human and give people the chance to connect on a more human level. At the same time, you can invite people who have seen what you have to say to get in touch and give them the best means to do so.

The Honors and Awards section meanwhile gives you the option to showcase any crowning achievements. This can be a great way to sell yourself a little more – if you haven’t headed up many projects in your line of work but you have repeatedly been employee of the month, this is where that might belong. Again, think about whether what you’re bragging about will actually impress anyone though!

General Tip: As you fill in all the details on your profile, you’ll be able to see a ‘Profile Strength’ meter filling up. Keep going until it reaches the top and you’ll know that you’ve covered most bases.

Your LinkedIn Photo

The old adage that ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ is certainly true when it comes to picking a picture for your profile. And no matter how hard you’ve worked to write yourself a bio that will stand out and make people want to do business with you, a poorly chosen picture can completely undermine all that hard work if you aren’t careful.

So how then do you go about picking a picture that will show you in

the best light and that will work with you to help you build connections and business opportunities?

The first thing you need to consider that is your photo should be of yourself, with your face prominently visible. The next thing to ensure is that the photo looks friendly and approachable but at the same time professional. This definitely isn’t a scenario where you want to use a picture from your latest night out on the tiles and nor do you want a picture of yourself hugging your pet pooch. Instead, the best LinkedIn profile pictures will simply be you in a shirt or a suit smiling for the camera. Ideally though, you want to avoid anything that looks too staged or forced. Don’t make the common mistake of dressing up in a suit at home and taking a picture in your home office – you’ll look like an idiot. If you don’t normally work in a suit, then look for a picture of yourself in smart clothes. If you’ve attended a wedding recently for example, then take a look through those pictures to try and find something appropriate.

Smiling is still important though because again – you want to create a profile that makes people want to work with you. Then again, this shouldn’t be a smile that says ‘I’m having a great day out!’ so much as one that looks dependable, approachable and reliable.

And likewise, try to pick something that makes you look attractive. You might not expect this to matter but actually, studies show that better looking people tend to get better jobs and do better in interviews! It can be difficult for us to tell which photos of ourselves are the most attractive, so if you’re unsure, try asking a friend or relative which of your pictures works best.

Tip #1: You can also add a cover image, just like on Facebook. This is a good way to make your profile more eye catching and it’s a great way to enhance brand awareness – if you have a logo then adding this onto a black background and making it your cover image will help tie all your products and services together and aid with your attempts to build authority.

Keywords Are King

When writing your LinkedIn profile, something to keep in mind is that you can benefit from including keywords and phrases. What these are phrases and terms that people are likely to enter into search engines

– including both Google and LinkedIn’s own search function.

The idea here is simple: by using the right words throughout your content, you will increase the likelihood that those words will bring up

your profile when someone searches for them. At the same time though, it’s important not to ‘overdo’ the insertion of keywords as this will make your text seem awkward to read, damaging the impression that you’ll make on your visitors. Meanwhile, when you overuse your keywords this can actually send a signal to Google that you’re attempting to manipulate their search algorithms at the expense of delivering great quality to your visitors – and the result is that they can end up penalizing your page by preventing it from ranking highly in the searches at all.

A good ‘density’ for inserting your keywords is around 1-2%. Moreover, Google is now capable of looking at ‘related’ keywords and using those to help you rank as well. This is called ‘LSI optimization’ or ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’. So as well as trying to subtly lace in your keywords, you should also be aiming to write ‘around’ the topic and include lots of synonyms and related terms. This should occur pretty much naturally as you’re writing.

Choosing Keywords

The biggest question is how you pick your keywords to begin with. Here, the answer is to think about what people might be looking for that other LinkedIn users might not have thought to target. So in other words, if you try and ‘rank’ for the term ‘writer’ you may well find that this is very difficult or even nigh impossible. Why? Because everyone and their wife will be trying to do the same and the chances of ‘beating’ all of them is slim.

You might then instead try to rank for something such as ’15th century art law writer’. The problem in this case? No one is likely to be searching for that term. You’ll be the first name to come up if anyone does probably… but no one will.

On the other hand though, if you were to try and go a little more specific – by ranking for a term such as ‘fitness writer’ you can stand a much better chance of competing within this more limited field but at the same time you’ll still be able to attract traffic through a decent number of search queries.

Your Company Page

Once you’ve made your LinkedIn profile, you’ll next want to add your company page. This is basically like a profile, except that you’ll be writing about your business rather than about yourself personally.

This means you should write in a manner that sounds a little more detached and professional and you should focus on value proposition (how do people stand to gain from using your products or services)

as well as on mission statement and goals. A little SEO (search engine optimization through keywords) again can go a long way.

The Company Page has a ‘summary’ field just like your profile, which is where you are going to fill in most of this information. Previously there was a ‘Products and Services’ page, though this is no longer supported by LinkedIn. Instead, you can now create ‘Showcase Pages’ which is where you will be able to create specific pages for your products and services. This might

include your digital marketing services, or it might include your website. This has the distinct advantage of allowing you to market a specific aspect of your business. For instance, if you have multiple websites, you won’t need to have multiple company pages to promote them.

Note that you can actually get direct sales from your LinkedIn page if it’s good, so make sure you give your visitors the direct links to where they can buy what you’re selling. At the same time, you want to demonstrate the success that your products and services have enjoyed to show how capable your business is. Talk about numbers of sales, customer reviews and the like.

Branding

On your company page, you will find that your branding is particularly important. You will want to include a logo as your main ‘profile image’ for instance instead of a picture of yourself and you’ll probably want the same for your cover picture.

As mentioned earlier, this is an excellent way to tie all your various products together and to create a coherent visual style that will

increase your apparent professionalism. This is a very important tool for creating authority in your niche and for creating a cohesive experience for your visitors and customers.

So how do you go about creating your brand? The first thing to do is to come up with a logo if you don’t have one already. We won’t go into that in great detail here but essentially this needs to be an image created with vector software to create a ‘vector’ file (instead of a raster file).

The best example of this is to use Adobe Illustrator which will produce an AI file. The reason that these are so important is that they allow you to subsequently edit the image by selecting individual lines and moving them around the image. At the same time, they can be zoomed in and out of without sacrificing any image quality. Essentially, the difference is that vector files contain ‘code’ that tell the computer how to draw particular shapes. On the other hand, raster files are simply large selections of pixels tin particular positions.

When coming up with the design for your logo, try to ensure that it is simple and that it is versatile. You should be able to change the color of the logo, shrink it, enlarge it and place it on various different backgrounds without sacrificing the quality or the visibility. This is important because apart from anything else, it will likely need to be used in a square format for your Company Page profile image and as a cover image in a horizontal oblong. Do spend some time and effort on this aspect of your business before you invest too much time on LinkedIn as it will act as a force multiplier and help you to benefit more from all of your subsequent work. In fact, if you aren’t particularly confident in your own abilities when it comes to branding and design, think about hiring someone who you do trust to do a good job. And in fact, why not try using LinkedIn to find a professional designer?

You should also consider making yourself a prominent part of your own branding. This is a great strategy for bloggers in particular and there are many prominent examples of this working well: Tim Ferriss (The 4 Hour Workweek), Pat Flynn (Smart Passive Income) and Dave Asprey