How to avoid LinkedIn profile blunders!

Let’s be honest here … LinkedIn is simply an online business focused environment that provides;

• An online profile of you and (sometimes) your business
• A platform to connect to others who also use it – they may be friends, colleagues, prospects, customers, competitors, people of influence, etc
• A place where you can communicate – both with ‘short posts’, longer ‘articles’ (like this) or in response to other posts and articles where you can comment, share or ‘like’
• An environment where you can develop your business – this can be through active lead generation work, aggressive hunting, relationship nurturing, recruiting activities, prospecting, etc.

Generally speaking, ‘normal’ LinkedIn users are using the free version and won’t really benefit from the additional premium subscription benefits sold by LinkedIn – and LinkedIn are fine with that because the first thing they absolutely need is a massive user-base that their premium users plunder to achieve benefits from their subscriptions! (Excuse the cynicism here!)

HOWEVER … so many users of LinkedIn just don’t seem to truly grasp the astonishing potential of LinkedIn, and they don’t seem to care about the perception of others looking at their profile … the truth is that using LinkedIn well ‘can’ positively help your business but using it ‘badly’ is almost guaranteed to damage your reputation and business prospects! 

So, here’s my guide to the absolute basics of presenting your profile well on LinkedIn and not making massive mistakes that could be costing you business! To be clear, this is NOT a definitive guide to getting LinkedIn to work for you, but it is a guide to preventing lost sales because you’ve not even done the basics and are simply looking like an amateur!

One overriding comment … everything you put on your LinkedIn profile should be there because it is relevant to you, your current business/product/service and, most importantly, relevant to someone considering talking to you about your business/product/service. Your ancient history, that has zero relevance to ‘now’, is of no interest to anyone!

My second overriding comment … check your spelling and grammar and then get someone else to check it! Mistakes are simply not acceptable.

1. ‘Above the Fold’ profile elements (‘Above the Fold’ refers to what people see on your profile before scrolling down):

Name:

Most users manage to get their name right but you also have a ‘Headline’ area which can be used ‘creatively’ to give people looking at your listing a reason to pay attention. Try to focus on the benefits of you, your business and its products or services … but you also need to keep this fairly succinct or no one will read it at all!

Location:

Generally speaking, think what your prospect would want to see. It truly depends on your business – if you sell machinery to a global client base then ‘UK’ is great but if you’re an accountant in Leeds then ‘UK’ is hopeless! The main mistake people make here is to list their ‘home town’ as their location.

Photo:

People build relationships with people – so you should display a decent photo of your current self (not a 20-year-old photo when you were thinner and more presentable!). Ideally, your photo should be a ‘head and shoulders’ shot as it’s going to be shown in a really small space – full-length shots mean you’re unrecognisable as a rule. The shot should be professionally taken, well lit, presentable and just you. Your children, your drinking habits, your friends and partners should all be absent!

Background image:

You should place a background image at the top of your profile – simply allowing the default LinkedIn background image essentially says to the rest of LinkedIn that you can’t be bothered! The image should be relevant to you, your business and the products/services you offer. Make sure it’s the right size and saved at high quality as LinkedIn will aggressively compress it. Consider getting a graphic designer to help you design this unless you know what you’re doing?

Contact details:

I’m always amazed at how many users from professional businesses (solicitors, accountants, etc) display a domestic or personal email address (Gmail, Yahoo, BT Internet, Live, etc) for the world to see. Make sure your business email is used. You’re not obliged to display your email address at all if you don’t want (edit that in the security settings). If you are hoping for new business though, you really should give others every option to contact you using ‘their’ preferred method so don’t hide unless it’s for good reason! Be aware, you can show more than one website address – consider displaying a couple more links to specific pages of your website for specific services or products that ‘most’ prospects would be interested in seeing.

About section (not always shown above the fold but I’m counting it as part of the core basics!):

Here’s where you can repeat your contact details … and you should! But you can also provide more background to you, your business and why people should want to connect with you. Consider asking a professional copywriter to help you with this section – humans are often not good at writing about themselves in a way that readers want to read!

Finally, not strictly part of the profile displayed, but the actual LinkedIn profile URL needs to be personalised too … by default, your profile URL will look something like this: linkedin.com/in/fred-smith-123456789/ and you can customise this to get rid of the numbers part but there is likely to be many ‘Fred Smith’s so you might need to be creative in your choices. Instructions for this process are provided here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/topics/6042/6054/87

2. Below the Fold elements

Activity:

The activity section shows other users what you get up to on LinkedIn … be mindful, therefore, of your activity. For instance, commenting on political issues instantly guarantees you have irritated at least half the population so just avoid it. Keep your comments, posts and articles positive and professional or pay the price.

Experience:

People often had too much or none at all! You ‘absolutely should’ show your experience that is relevant to your current offering but you are not obliged to tell the world that you worked in McDonald's as a Saturday job when you were are college! Keep it relevant, short and to the point.

Skills and Endorsements:  

This is tricky to get going because if you’ve not got many connections and they’ve not endorsed you for anything then it becomes a chicken and egg challenge to get these going. The advice here is to take some ‘Yorkshire Brass Neck’ and directly ask people who know you to help. Colleagues, customers, friends, etc are all likely to help get you going so ask, ask again and keep asking.

Recommendations:

This is similar to the above point – you need to ask for recommendations and be seen to give some out too. There’s nothing wrong with formally asking for a recommendation when you’ve done a good job – so ask! There is even a mechanism on LinkedIn to ask for these recommendations but I would always do this AFTER someone has agreed to provide one! If you have no recommendation then you’re a risk to a new client so build your recommendations but not all at once either (that simply looks false) – slow, steady and consistent is the solution.

Interests:

It’s great to have some, but keep them relevant and limited – too many and you’re potentially unfocussed and not a leader in your own right!

REMEMBER … the goal of this article is not to help you use LinkedIn as a tool – that’s way too complicated for 1300 words. But, if you consider the observations above then you should avoid the worst mistakes I constantly see on lots of profiles that could put people off connecting or communicating with you. 

Getting your profile right is the first step – but LinkedIn is only one marketing channel of many and if you want to use it well, this should be done as part of a ‘whole of business’ marketing plan where LinkedIn ties into your other marketing activity and is used strategically.

I’d be interested to know what profile blunders irritate you – comments are very welcome below: