Massive LinkedIn Guide

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Table Of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Create
  3. Your LinkedIn profile is your digital “agent”
  4. Your profile picture
  5. Your background image
  6. Your headline
  7. Your summary.
  8. Work history and education
  9. Building your skills list for LinkedIn visibility
  10. Endorsements and recommendations
  11. Enhanced content
  12. Growing your following
  13. LinkedIn search tools for best exposure
  14. Boolean search basics
  15. Expanded Boolean combinations
  16. DFY LinkedIn solutions
  17. Using Your feed
  18. Article sharing importance
  19. LinkedIn article sharing guidelines
  20. Search for jobs on LinkedIn
  21. LinkedIn account management.
  22. Privacy settings
  23. Archiving and deleting your account
  24. Romain Berg and your LinkedIn account.

You may have seen ads in your social media feeds about beefing up your LinkedIn profile lately. Yep, this is a thing right now.

LinkedIn has long been an under-utilized social platform to generate more leads, showcase your expertise, and get more recognition in your industry. The days of LinkedIn underuse are now behind us, and everyone and their cat is jumping on the LinkedIn super-profile bandwagon.

At Romain Berg, we provide you with leading-edge SEO tactics, innovation, and collaboration. With our help, you can knock your LinkedIn profile out of the ballpark.

Set up a consultation today for help with your LinkedIn profile as well as all your digital marketing challenges. Trust us. We’ve got the solutions that work. No hype, just results.

Grab a sandwich.  We’ll be here for a while.

This post is longer than our usual fare and with good reason.  Bookmark this article right now. You’ll want to refer to it again and again as you use our proven LinkedIn profile build-out strategy to grow your audience.

We’ve done extensive research into LinkedIn best practices, and we know how to get you and your company seen and paid. Open up your LinkedIn account right now, and let’s dive in.

Oh, wait. You’d rather run your business?  We thought that might be the case for several of you.

Call or email us, and we’ll build an amazing and active LinkedIn profile for you and your business.  Your qualified leads are waiting. Why are you?

First step–create

Many users wonder why they need another social media platform. With LinkedIn, the answer is easy: your LinkedIn account is your digital resume. And, who doesn’t want a strong CV?

Your profile could be calling out to leaders, hiring managers, investors, customers, and other potentially lucrative and rewarding professional opportunities. Let’s make sure that’s happening for you, shall we?

Your LinkedIn profile is your digital “agent”

Close up of hands

Imagine you are an actor, a singer, a sports star, or a best-selling author.  These folks all have agents who get them contracts, projects, appearances, and performances.

Also Read : Digital Marketing Tips for Startups

These commitments result in money and recognition. Your profile needs to act on your behalf as a brilliant agent. Here are the foundational steps to represent yourself well on LinkedIn:

  1. Decide how you will use your LinkedIn profile.  Choose between:
    • Job seeking
    • Network building
    • Product or Service showcase
    • Content searches
  2. Build your visibility. Here’s how:
    • Add to or improve the quality of your information in all applicable sections of your profile. If anything is out of date, off-trend, or plain boring, fix it. 
    • Use keywords relevant to your industry throughout your profile.
    • Create value for your network; what do your profile visitors stand to gain from checking you out?
    • Stay active on LinkedIn by sharing articles, commenting on others’ posts, and congratulating your connections on milestones
    • Make yourself easy to find and share by customizing your page URL to your name.  For example https://www.linkedin.com/in/samromain/
  3. LinkedIn is for professionals, so post like one.
    • LinkedIn is not the place for cat pictures and baby’s first steps. Keep your posts relevant to your profession, industry, or related industries.
  4. Out-of-date profiles are so, well, yesterday.
    • Your LinkedIn profile is a living document. It should be updated whenever you have a new job, skill, recommendation, career pivot, or other notable professional change.
    • The more current content you share and post, the more relevant you stay on LinkedIn.
  5. Do You–honestly.
    • If you’re an expert, position yourself as such without needing to be a guru. Other people know stuff too, and that’s fine. Your unique set of talents and experience is probably what more than a few people need. Bill yourself that way and don’t brag.
    • Show your personality. People like to know who they’re dealing with, so let people know a little about who you are when you’re not at work. 
    • Give an honest account of your details and accomplishments without bragging. For example, only mention it once if you’ve summited Mt. Everest, and have it be the 4th or 5th thing you list. Mix that one in with some of your more regular feats of strength and stamina.

Your profile picture has one job: to make an invitation

Portrait

Yes, you need a quality profile picture. Why? Because people trust what they can see. A clear, non-pixelated, non-cheesy headshot is a must for a searchable Linkedin profile.

Further, people will use your picture to recognize you for in-person meetings if you haven’t met before. Make it easy on your interviewers, investors, collaborators, and recruiters to identify you on the first try when you set a coffee date.

Here are some other vital elements in your profile photo:

  • Only you in the picture, please. No group shots.
  • No “badges” of any kind.  Just a friendly, click-worthy photo. 
  • No single raised eyebrow or smirk. You are not the Most Interesting Person In The World (unless, of course, you are him, and that’s a whole other article.) Use a picture of how you look today. If you get a haircut or grow a beard, change your profile pic to reflect those changes.
  • Your face should be clear and visible with proper framing.
  • If you’re unsure, hire a professional photographer.
  • Good pictures invoke trust. If you can’t take a good photo, why should your audience trust you?

Background Image: you only notice when it’s terrible

Your background image should be the thing no one notices unless it’s horrible. A useful background image is a subtle element that makes your photo pop.

Stay away from stock photos here. Instead, consider having a graphic designer make you a background image that’s on-brand for your business or your personality and objectives.

Use a size of 1536×768 for your background imagery. Attractive designs lead to higher engagements, believe it or not.

Your profile visuals are an essential part of your overall invitation to your audience to get to know you better. Spend some time and maybe money on getting the look of your profile page just right.

Make or break your LinkedIn SEO cred with your headline

LinkedIn will use your company and title as your default headline. Can you hear all the snoring from Google? Not only does Google get a little bored with your general info,  but your profile visitors will also need a nap.

Your headline is the first thing your visitors read. Give them a wake-up call!  Use industry keywords in your headline. Choose words that have an impact on the audience you want to reach.

Spend a little time getting into the heads of the people you want to find you. What questions are they asking? What problems do they have that you can solve in your unique way?  Use your answers to craft your stand-out headline.

Run your headline by some people you know who will give you honest feedback. What does your headline invoke for them? They should be curious enough to read more from the words you use at the top of your profile.

Where’s the meat? It’s in your summary.

Okay. We’re on a roll here so far, but now it’s time to slow down and reflect. Your summary is where you carefully plan the words that make you sound as amazing online as you clearly are in person.

Your summary should be no less than 500 words. Here are several tips to optimize your summary content.

  • Pepper keywords throughout your summary. Your use of keywords should feel natural and conversational. There’s no need to shine a spotlight on them; Google will do that for you if you’ve composed a good summary.
  • Let more of your personality show in this section. Write professionally, but also with a relaxed tone that reflects your style and the words you might use in conversation.
  • Carefully compose the first two sentences of your summary, as that’s what viewers will see as a snippet when they first land on your page. What two sentences will best engage your audience and get them to click on the “see more” button?
  • Creating an “area of expertise” section can help you naturally maximize your keyword use.
  • Your summary should answer the questions:
    • Who are you?
    • What do you do?
    • Why do you do it?
    • How do you add value to a business or team?
  • LinkedIn algorithms recognize summaries with robust engagement, so it’s great to flex on your professional history like a boss in this section. You’ll appear more often in the search bar and recommendations.

Work history and education: up to date and on point

Keep your work history relevant and current.  List your existing or most recent job description and 2 or 3 more roles, if applicable. Or, list only the work experience that’s relevant to the position you want to land next.

Always associate yourself to your company for increased visibility and profile power. Restrict yourself to valid information. After all, if you single-handedly rescued a truckload of drowning puppies and no one was there to see it, did it really happen? Just. Don’t. Lie.

Finally, add links to your media and work portfolio to make your previous projects and education stand out.

A comprehensive skills list is paramount to LinkedIn visibility

Macro photo of tooth wheel mechanism with SKILLS concept related words imprinted on metal surface

Take a long look at all the skills you’ve accumulated in your work history. Even if your current position is so niched you serve the 20 or so seasonal inhabitants of Antarctica; we bet you’ve picked up a few transferable skills in your career tool kit along the way.

When compiling your list of skills, phone a friend or mentor to help you complete it. The “skills” area of your profile is essential to get you noticed on LinkedIn.

Use this section to define further who you are and what you do. Make your skills list as exhaustive as you can. Your profile is 27 times more likely to get seen with a robust skills section.

Endorsements and recommendations: you get what you give

Need we say more? Be generous in your endorsements of others, and don’t be shy about asking for what you want or need in return.

Be specific. Target those people who’ve experienced a particular skill of yours and ask them personally to endorse or recommend you for that skill.

Blanket requests go nowhere. When you make an endorsement ask, offer to reciprocate to your contact for one of their precise skills.

Enhanced content: choose wisely

It’s okay to add relevant non-work experience like volunteer gigs, certificates, awards, languages, courses, and the like to your profile. Selecting a few of your extras will bump up the appeal of your profile without adding clutter.

Remember, your profile needs to change as you do. If you do eventually get an award for saving all those puppies from earlier in the article, you can add it to your profile any time you want.

Profile complete. Now, we grow.

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Your profile growth and visibility depend on several factors. There are a couple of principles that can guide your LinkedIn profile reach:

  • You only get what you give
  • Where you put your time is where you’ll find success

LinkedIn, just like any other social platform, requires your engagement with it to designate you as a social media MVP.  And, you may already be running a good engagement game on other platforms.

You can transfer a bunch of your existing social media engagement patterns easily to LinkedIn with a bit of tweaking. Here’s what we mean.

Remember, LinkedIn is for professionals. The way you interact on LinkedIn must always tie  into your business, your career, or promoting the business or occupation of someone else.

Here’s a list of “do’s” to help get you started making friends and influencing people on LinkedIn.

DO:

  • Import your contact list so LinkedIn can suggest connections for you.
  • Search for your existing friends, coworkers, and other offline professional contacts and request a connection.
  • Create compelling, unique, and relevant content about what you do or who you serve.
  • Look for ways to add value to your connections, and you’ll get value in return.
  • Search for and join groups built around your industry or project area or demographic.
  • Start contributing to group conversations by asking questions and getting people talking about themselves.
  • When you request a connection with a new person, send a personal note to increase conversion.
  • Search companies in which you have an interest, either as a potential employee/contract worker or as a B2B sales lead.
    • Learn about the company–staff, leadership, target audiences, products, and services
    • Check the company growth rate. Are they in an expansion, contraction, or maintenance phase?
    • Discover the employee distribution by function or department
    • Search for job openings by department (for US companies only)
    • Brainstorm ways you can be of service to your corporations of interest

There are a few glamour-don’ts to avoid. We’ve all done a “don’t,” but try to eliminate them from your regular LinkedIn engagement strategy. Here are the big ones.

DON’T:

  • Join a group and then try to sell stuff.
  • Send auto messaging or spam to your new or existing connections. It’s annoying and impersonal. Stop it right now.
  • Brag in your groups. Nobody likes that. Instead, share info and insight naturally and humbly. Champion your fellow group members when they post something fresh, useful, or insightful.
  • Use messaging for general announcements. Instead, send messages when you want, need, or can contribute something precise and of value.
  • Send long-form text in a private message. Use email instead.
  • Plagiarize. If you copy and paste something valuable to share, give credit where it’s due.

Nerd out on LinkedIn search tools to gain exposure where you want it

Portrait of the Beautiful Young Pro Gamer Girl Sitting at Her Personal Computer and Looks into Camera. Attractive Geek Girl Player Wearing Glasses in the Room Lit by Neon Lights.

LinkedIn offers many search funnels to its users. Effective, targeted searches yield results like qualified sales leads or job openings for which you are a perfect match.

When you familiarize yourself with LinkedIn search methods, you can save time and effort. You’ll more easily find the companies and individuals who will help you achieve your original LinkedIn objectives.

Remember when we asked you at the beginning what you wanted your profile to do on LinkedIn? Go back to that objective when tailoring your search.  Use the tools below to refine and focus the rocks under which you want to look.

Foundational search criteria you can enter in the search bar:

  • Job title
  • Name
  • Content (keyword or subject)
  • Company name
  • Group

Once you’ve searched a job title, for example, you can also add a filter like location or company. You can further refine your search with filters like post date, experience level, and more.

Try a Boolean search

You can also get geeky with a Boolean search. Follow that link for a trip down the Boolean search rabbit hole if you like.  

For our purposes, we’ll talk about this kind of search as a way to combine search terms. We do this with quotations, parentheses, and words like  AND, OR, and NOT as operators.

Modifying words should be in all caps for search purposes.  An example of a Boolean search in LinkedIn might look like this:

  • “product manager” AND (“vice president” OR VP)
  • manager NOT ceo
  • “Vice President” OR VP

Different Boolean search operators could be:

  • First name
  • Last name
  • Title
  • Company
  • School
  • Examples 
    • Title:manager
    • Company:microsoft
    • School:harvard

If you need to zoom in the focus on the criteria you wish to search, try a combo.  Something like this will pinpoint your results down to a small handful of hits:

  • Title:”vice president” company:(Microsoft OR Amazon OR Google)

Practice makes progress

We recommend jumping on LinkedIn when you have a minute and trying out some of these searches so you can see how they work in real-time.

Don’t worry about targeting your specific objectives at first, just throw in some search operators and practice using them. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can get rolling with searches that give you very precise results.

Can someone please do this for me? It’s, like, not my bag, man.

Please help! Portrait of hopeful bearded young manager in white shirt and black tie are sitting in office and asking for help universe, holding hands like have pray, looking up. Studio shot, isolated

What if, at this point, you’re a business owner or busy employee and you’re thinking, “This is great information! I have absolutely no time to do anything with it, though.”

We feel you at Romain Berg. That’s where we come in. We can help you expand your growth on LinkedIn with evergreen content, profile build-out, and organic and paid traffic.

We also offer customized LinkedIn training along with our DFY (done for you) services, so that you can use your LinkedIn knowledge with confidence at any time. The sooner you call us, the sooner we can help you rock your LinkedIn largesse.

Now what? Use it or lose it.

Time for a quick recap. Stay with us. How was that sandwich, by the way?

You’ve created a strong and inviting profile. You’ve learned how to do all kinds of LinkedIn searches relevant to your account objectives. You found a few groups in which to hang out, ask questions, and contribute humbly and honestly to the discussion.

If you want your LinkedIn account to stay top-of-mind with your audience, you have to engage with them continually.

Here are the ways to do that. Guess what? The most useful engagement actions on LinkedIn are not much different than with other social media platforms you already interact with while you’re munching on your morning Wheaties.

Your feed:

  • serves up the latest information and content from your favorite contacts, industries, brands, and thought leaders.
  • is a resource for you to see what’s trending, what companies are growing, and what opportunities may be around the corner for you.
  • gets stronger, more relevant, and more fascinating the more you browse, read, like, comment on, and share posts.

Here’s what you can do to create a fascinating feed:

  • Provide valuable content
  • Brand yourself as a thought leader
  • Professional posts only, please (keep it relevant)
  • Showcase your passions
  • Broadcast your leading-edge industry awareness
  • Set a posting calendar and stay consistent
  • Use your feed to share “on brand;” no random thoughts, please
  • Vary your post types to include text, articles, video, photos, and live segments

Articles are authoritative on LinkedIn

Writing articles for your LinkedIn feed invites your audience to deepen their relationship with you in several ways. When you write, you position yourself as a thought leader. You can also include compelling calls to action with your readers.

By that we mean, you can ask your readers to do things like click on your website, order a free sample, or schedule a 20-minute consultation. Articles are action-based.

Finally, articles are powerful SEO builders when linked to your website or your other online places. A well-written article with plenty of internal and external links could enhance your searchability both on and off LinkedIn.

A few rules for LinkedIn articles

When you write an article, always do the following:

  • Don’t forget the analytics! You’ll want to monitor how your article is doing out there on LinkedIn. You can check the number of likes, shares, and type of comments on each item you post. 

More advanced analytics include job title, location, and how your article was found. All these metrics are helpful in using future articles to better target who’s listening to you in real life.

Search for jobs on LinkedIn

people waiting for the job interview

Job searches on LinkedIn are especially easy. And, when you’ve done the groundwork of building an amazing profile, you’ve got a better chance to stand out to potential employers.

Begin your search by logging into LinkedIn and clicking the Jobs icon in the top toolbar. Transport yourself into a world of filters, favorites, online job applications, and more.

The cool thing about searching for jobs on LinkedIn is that you can often apply for roles directly, and LinkedIn will import your profile details into the application.

You can also follow your favorite companies and request notifications for open positions. You can search for job title, company, salary, and location.

LinkedIn will let you know about openings based on your profile information as well. It’s a full-service professional social media platform that loves matching people with what they most love doing.

It’s a good idea to check and update your job search preferences frequently on LinkedIn. Updates are especially necessary if you’re embarking on a significant career pivot. You need to make sure you are visible to the new industries in which you’re searching for work.

We’re almost done. A few words about LinkedIn account management.

LinkedIn offers both free and premium membership. Of course, a free account is the best place to begin.

You can build your profile like a boss for free. You can tour around the search features, build a hefty connection list, join groups, and look for jobs–all at no cost.

If you’re looking for more features, a premium LinkedIn membership will add value with the following capabilities:

  • Exclusive analytics for job seekers like seeing how you stack up to others looking for the same jobs, and targeted job discovery
  • Network nurturing and growth for business owners
  • Advanced sales and outreach tools for developing qualified leads
  • Recruiting tools for managers to hire top talent

Privacy Settings

With LinkedIn, you’re in charge of how much you share and how much people can share with you. In general, it’s good practice to share your profile updates, so that viewers can see changes in your career evolution.

You can customize your profile viewing settings, as well as how LinkedIn communicates with you and who can send you invites.

Archiving and Deleting your account

Archiving your LinkedIn account is an option. You can save past information, and if you ever choose to delete your account, you could reinstate it again at a later date if it’s archived.

To archive your account, do the following:

  • Go to your profile
  • Find and click “Settings and Privacy”
  • Find and click “Account”
  • Find and click “Getting an Archive”

To delete your account, do all of the preceding steps, except choose “Closing Account” after you’ve clicked the “Account” button.

Unless you’ve archived your account, LinkedIn will permanently delete all your information. And, you’ll need to discontinue your premium membership before deleting. You’ll get an email confirmation once everything is closed.

Romain Berg is here for you for LinkedIn help and so much more.

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Whew!  We all made it. We really appreciate you hanging out for so long during this educational journey into the underbelly of LinkedIn.

Remember, we can do all of this for you so you can run your business or keep killing it at your job. We’ll make sure you get seen by leaders, innovators, collaborators, and customers, and hiring managers. Your visibility is our success.

We also offer customized LinkedIn training when you know you want to DIY, but want to build your competence and confidence before you unleash yourself on all the LinkedIn folks ready to be impressed by you.

Give us a call today, and let’s talk about launching your LinkedIn profile like the boss you are. We stand with pride behind our tagline — we focus on results, not hype.

About the Author

Sam Romain

Sam Romain

Digital marketing expert, data interpreter, and adventurous entrepreneur empowering businesses while fearlessly embracing the wild frontiers of fatherhood and community engagement.

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