How To: Add and Optimize your Featured Section on LinkedIn

Ready to amp up your LinkedIn profile?

One of the easiest ways to level up, and one that is super under-utilized, is the featured section.

Here's mine:

Ohhhhh, ahhhh...it looks pretty good, right? In this blog post, I'll walk you through the process of adding a Featured Section and explore the types of content you can use to showcase your best work and accomplishments. Let's go!

Step 1: Add your Featured Section

First, visit your profile and click on the "add profile section" button near the top.

This will pull up a dialogue box that looks like this:

Click on the recommended tab to find the option to add your featured section:

Step 2: Optimize it!

Ok, so now that you've added your featured section, what exactly should you include?

Here are the options:

You can add a post, newsletter, article, course that you've taken, a link, or photos.

Which you decide to include will depend entirely on your goals for your LinkedIn profile.

For example, if you run your own business, you may want to focus on links leading back to your company website, or an article about your business, or a post that talks about a new product or service offering.

If you are a job seeker, you may want to focus instead on adding an article about your accomplishments, a link to a pdf of your resume and/or recommendations, or showcase a recent LinkedIn Learning course that you've taken.

Also keep in mind that what you choose to include isn't permanent! If you want to include a post about an upcoming event you're hosting, you can do that and just swap it out for something new when the event is over.

For me, I like to use this space to give away a valuable resource to visitors (100 post ideas for LinkedIn", my LinkedIn Learning courses that I'm super proud of, and my contact page.

I also REALLY love links because when you add a link, you also have the option to upload a custom thumbnail like I have here:

Here's how I did this:

Step 1: Create your thumbnail in Canva

As of right now, LinkedIn hasn't released the dimensions for the custom thumbnail, which is a bit frustrating but we can work with it! In Canva, I just created a 600x600 pixel square image, and made sure that the text was centered. I downloaded my image and then headed back over to LinkedIn.

2. Add a link

On your featured section, click on the + symbol to pull up the dropdown menu, and choose to add a link.

3. Type in your link and click "add"

In the dialogue box, type in the link that you want to include and click add.

This part is important if you want all your thumbnails to look consistent...DO NOT add a description. Adding a description will change the sizes of your thumbnails, like this...

4. Choose your thumbnail, and click save to save your beautiful work!

And your featured section should display like this:

Ta-da! That wasn't so hard, was it? I've found that adding and optimizing a featured section on my profile has given it new life and I just love how polished it looks!

If you found this article helpful, I would so love if you'd share it with your LinkedIn network, and don't forget to subscribe to this newsletter, The LinkedIn Lowdown, for more LinkedIn tips, tricks, and tutorials in your inbox every week (except next week because I'll be recording a top secret project!).

Love and coffee,

Michaela