6 Ways to Get the Best Out of Your LinkedIn Profile

So now you know how to effectively fill out your LinkedIn profile, you’ll need to know how to use LinkedIn to enhance your career. Whether you are actively job hunting, just gathering leads or want to do some networking; we’ve created a list of 6 easy ways to get the best out of your profile.

Have a Professional Profile Photo

Your LinkedIn profile photo should be professional, fairly recent (not from 10 years ago, even if you did have a lot less grey hair!) and clear. Remember as this is a professional social media platform, it’s probably best to avoid the kind of selfies you would post on Facebook/Instagram. Ideally, your profile picture should be a headshot so it might be easier for someone else to take the photo for you.

Oh and please – for the sake of literally everyone – don’t use a Snapchat filter. Those dog ears aren’t fooling anyone.

Add a Personal URL

LinkedIn will automatically give you a unique URL for your profile – but it will be a messy one. It will look something like this:

www.linkedin.com/in/your-name-2318178a7982732/

So you’ll need to customise your URL and tidy this up.

ON DESKTOP:

Make sure you’re logged into LinkedIn and go on to your profile page. In the top right will be a section that says:

Click on ‘Edit public profile & URL’, and then click on the pencil icon next to ‘Edit’ on your public profile URL. It’ll be an address that looks like the one above. So all you’ll need to do now is type the last part of your new custom URL in the text box displayed, and click SAVE.

ON MOBILE:

Again, make sure you’re logged in to LinkedIn, and tap on your profile picture. If you scroll down, you’ll come to the ‘Contact and Personal Info’ section. Tap the pencil icon next to ‘Edit’ – on the ‘Edit contact info’ page, tap on your Profile URL. You’ll then be redirected to the Public profile setting page. Under the Edit URL section, tap the pencil icon again and then type in the last part of your new custom URL.

Your URL can have between 5 and 30 letters or numbers – but don’t use any symbols, special characters or spaces. It isn’t case sensitive, so whether you type ExampleURL, exampleURL, or EXAMPLEurl, it will all point to your profile.

Edit Your Headline

Automatically, your LinkedIn headline will be set as your job title. You can actually edit this to say a little bit more about yourself; for example, why you do what you do – why is it your passion? (If it is). If you need some ideas for this, you can take a peek at your colleagues LinkedIn headlines to see what they have to say about themselves! Alternatively, for some inspiration, you can have a look at other people’s Headlines within your Industry. Whilst you’re there – connect with them! Why? This brings us to our next point…

Connect with People

It’s really important to grow your network within LinkedIn, and you can do this by connecting with people. Kind of similar to ‘add as a friend’ on Facebook. The easiest (and actually, most relevant) way of connecting with people is by syncing your profile with your email address book. By doing this, LinkedIn can ‘suggest’ people for you to connect with. We use the term ‘suggest’ because all of these connection requests can only be sent out with your permission. So if there’s someone in your email contacts that you would prefer not to connect with, you don’t have to!

Another way easy way to connect with people is by joining relevant LinkedIn groups. There are literally thousands of groups, so there’s bound to be one that’s relevant to the sector you currently work in – or wish to work in. Have conversations and engage with people within these groups. This will keep your network active, vibrant and up-to-date!

(P.S – Certain groups on LinkedIn have ‘LION’ in their titles. This stands for ‘LinkedIn Open Networkers’, and these groups are full of people who are actively wanting to network with as many people as possible!)

Following relevant industry leaders will also help you by putting a variety of industry content right on your feed. If you really like a piece of content, add comments and share it to your own page. This will show the passion you have in what you do!

Post and Share Content

You haven’t created a fantastic profile to let it just sit there! Much like other popular social networking platforms, you can post regular content. The best time to post on LinkedIn is between 10 and 11 am; because it’s used by professionals, it’s mostly used during work hours. So posting in evenings and at weekends is actually the worst time to post content!

Social Media Platforms, in general, tend to prefer visual posts – meaning photos and videos. The same can be said for LinkedIn. Posting a video will more than likely receive more attention and engagement than a standard written post!

Now we understand not everyone finds the time to post new and fresh content every day. So it’s absolutely fine for you to ‘share’ someone else’s content that you have particularly enjoyed – that’s why the button is there, after all!

Apply for a Job

Did you know that you can apply for a job on LinkedIn, the same way that you would on other job-seeker sites? If you click on the search bar at the top, you’ll find 3 options to search for:

• People
• Jobs
• Content

If you click on jobs, you’ll be redirected to the LinkedIn jobs page. At the time of writing this, there’s 1,644,776 jobs available! LinkedIn will show jobs most relevant to you first but of course, you can narrow the search down yourself. You can filter this through the search bar, by location, date posted, company, or experience level. An alternative filter available is the ‘LinkedIn Features’ where you’ll have 3 tick box options; ‘Easy Apply’, ‘In Your Network’, or ‘Under 10 Applicants’.

Just to show the opportunities available, we searched for ‘Assessor’ jobs in ‘London’ – 1,313 results. Manchester had 728 results, and Birmingham had 658. So there’s plenty out there – you just have to look for it!

All in all, employers will be looking for people who are excited about what they do; don’t be afraid to show how enthusiastic you are about your industry!