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Are you looking for the best tips on how to create a LinkedIn profile?

Number of LinkedIn users – statistics

LinkedIn is one of the biggest professional networking sites. It makes it possible for different industry professionals to connect and collaborate. LinkedIn is most popular amongst professionals that are actively seeking employment opportunities. However, there’s a lot more you can do on the platform. LinkedIn is a powerful medium to establish thought leadership and to promote your business.

Today, LinkedIn is an important networking tool for every professional and business. It is also an inexhaustible source of though leadership and high-quality content from professionals.

Whether you are looking for a job right now or looking for strategic partnerships, you must create a LinkedIn profile to better connect with your prospects. You need to create a LinkedIn profile that says all the right things about you. It should draw attention to you and make it possible for you to connect with the right people.

Writing a LinkedIn profile is not as straightforward as it seems.

As a professional LinkedIn profile writing service, we understand what’s behind the success of the best LinkedIn profiles. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a LinkedIn profile that stands out.

How to Create a LinkedIn Profile

Creating a LinkedIn profile is your first step towards securing new opportunities. A professional and complete LinkedIn profile will bring you in the limelight. Your LinkedIn profile should be, as LinkedIn calls it, an All-Star Profile.

Complete the following categories to earn the All-Star profile status:

  • Add your location and industry
  • Add a LinkedIn summary
  • Add specific dates to your work experience
  • Add a professional profile photo
  • Add a job description of your most recent position
  • Add details to your Education section
  • Add skills to the Skills and Endorsements section
  • Connect with other professionals

Your chances of appearing in LinkedIn search results will greatly increase if you complete these steps.

How to Write the Perfect Headline for Your LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn headline is the first thing that anyone notices when they land on your profile. Whether it is a potential sales lead, prospective employer or Suzy from accounting, they will read your headline first. Thus, it is incredibly important to write headlines that make a great first impression.

That’s not all – your LinkedIn headline is arguably the most important thing when it comes to LinkedIn Search. You must write optimized LinkedIn headlines if you wish to appear in the search results of your prospective employers.

By default, your current company and job title is your LinkedIn headline. Edit it to make it more impactful. You have a 120 character limit for your LinkedIn headline.

LinkedIn headline character limit is 120 characters

Use it well.

Include details that you think will help you stand out. Write what you think will help you show up in the LinkedIn Search results.

Here’s an example of a good LinkedIn headline:

A screenshot of Peter Shankman’s LinkedIn profile

This headline makes Peter Shankman stand out. You could tell that he’s an influencer who’s serious about business, but adding “Awesome Keynote Speaker” and “Dad” makes him seem like someone you can approach.

ProTip1 profile

How to Write a Profile Summary on LinkedIn

The next and most important step is to write your LinkedIn profile summary. Your profile summary is the #1 thing hiring managers look at when they view your profile.

Many LinkedIn users either underutilize this space or simply leave it blank. Your LinkedIn Summary is what introduces you to the visitors. You can work around with 2,000 characters, which gives you plenty of room to add information that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

LinkedIn headline character limit is 2,000 characters

Even though you get 2,000 characters for your profile summary, only the first three lines are displayed by default.

A screenshot of Peter Shankman’s LinkedIn summary section

This means that you should either pack the first three lines with all the essential information or create suspense that encourages viewers to click show more.

Your profile summary must be highly impactful. Here are some tips that can help you out.

Consider Your Audience & Goals

The first step towards writing a great LinkedIn summary is to determine your audience and goals. The language, call to action, and tone you use in your summary depends on who you are trying to reach through your LinkedIn profile.

Here’s how you can determine the audience of your LinkedIn summary:

  • Hiring manager: if you have been and are applying for jobs online
  • Recruiters: if you are looking to take a leap to the next step in your career
  • A potential new client: if you are using LinkedIn for sales and partnership
  • Members of the industry: if you are eager to establish your expertise in your industry

Writing your LinkedIn summary for each of these categories will be different. Clarifying your goals, intentions, and audience beforehand will help you write a better LinkedIn summary.

Optimize It for Search Engines

You must optimize your LinkedIn summary for search engines. You have 2,000 characters. Try and work in as many keywords and hard skills as you can in the summary. This will increase your chances of appearing higher on searches. Recruiters will also immediately know what skills you have and what you are looking for.

To optimize your LinkedIn Summary, analyze the profiles of other industry peers, and examine relevant job descriptions.

You will find some important keywords here that can help you come up with an optimized summary for your LinkedIn profile. This will improve your chances of appearing in LinkedIn Search results.

LinkedIn Search works essentially the same way as other applicant tracking systems. Therefore, you must include keywords and phrases to appear in the search results. You can also find keywords that searchers used to find your profile once your LinkedIn profile is live.

How to write a LinkedIn profile

CDP Tip: When adding the company name,

Tell Your Story

Use your LinkedIn Summary to tell your story. Address your visitors directly and let them know why you will be a great addition to their professional network. Be smart about how you use this because it creates a first impression.

Here are some points you can include in your LinkedIn Summary:

  • Career ambitions
  • What makes you passionate about your work
  • Guiding principles

Use your summary to tell others that you are constantly learning. Tell them that you are slowly progressing towards your ultimate goal.

Loosen Up a Little

Your LinkedIn Summary is a great spot in your LinkedIn profile to give readers some insight into who you really are. Tell others about your personality and what you’re like. Show off your personality as it may help a hiring manager determine if you are fit for their company culture or not.

You can also mention your values, hobbies, and accomplishments. This way, recruiters can figure out if you are a good fit for their company.

A good LinkedIn profile summary should walk the readers through your key skills, passions, any unique qualifications, and different professional experiences. Make it around 3-5 short paragraphs. You can also add bullet points to make it easy to read.

ProTip2 profile

Two men in business avatar shaking hands

Add Your Work Experience

There is also a Work Experience section on the LinkedIn profile. There’s more space on here than you have on your resume. You can expand on each position and add as much information as you want.

Start by adding your work history. Don’t just add the job title, company, and dates of joining and leaving, but also add a detailed description for each category.

Add your job responsibilities and major tasks you were responsible for. Also, take this space to add any accomplishments you had during your tenure at this position.

Add a new job by clicking the + sign at the top of the section.

Here are some tips on how to write a great experience section on your LinkedIn profile:

Work on the Job Title

Just like your LinkedIn headline, your job title is also very important if you want to appear in relevant search results. You have 100 characters for the job title. Use this space wisely.

The best way to go about writing your job title is to add the job title and then write some specialties and skills. For example, don’t just write ‘Accountant’ in the job title. Instead, write a job title that looks something like this:

Accountant – Budget Forecasting, CPA, Financial Statement Analysis

This will not only tell a recruiter that you are an accountant, but it will also tell them your area of work and expertise. It will improve your chances of appearing in search results.

Add Keywords in the Description

When you are listing down your responsibilities, make sure you use search optimized keywords. This will help you appear in search results. Add as many details as you can about your job with the right keywords.

Improve your SEO with LinkedIn

Add Measurable Results

Recruiters and hiring managers look for measurable results rather than just a paragraph on what you can do. Therefore, mention specific measurable achievements while working in a certain position. This will add legitimacy to your claims.

A businesswoman’s avatar working on a laptop with a resume on the side

Add Your Education

Many of us leave out our education history empty on our LinkedIn profile. For some of us, our degrees are just not that relevant to our career. For others, education sounds like ancient history.

Even if you don’t want to write too many details about your education, you should at least list your degrees and the schools you attended.

There are two main benefits to this:

Search Filtering

While searching for the right candidates, recruiters use a number of search filters. Education can be one of them. Hence, if a recruiter is looking for a marketing expert with masters, then your profile will be left out of the search results irrespective of how many years of experience you have. Therefore, you must add your degree and school to your education section.

Networking

Adding your Alma Mater on your LinkedIn profile helps with networking. You can see if you know any alumni that works in the organization you are applying to. If they do, you can ask them about the organization and ask them to put in a good word. The hiring manager may also prefer you to other applicants if you went to their school.

Add Skills

There is a section for Skills & Endorsements on your LinkedIn profile. Use this section to showcase skills that others can then endorse. This tells recruiters that you have the skills that they are looking for in their ideal candidate.

Adding a list of skills also optimizes your profile for search results. A recruiter can get to your profile if they are searching for a specific skill that you have listed in your Skills & Endorsements section.

Your skills should be relevant to your industry. Find out what skills recruiters look for in your industry. Add the hot skills to your profile to get noticed by hiring managers on LinkedIn.

Here’s a list of the best skills to add to your LinkedIn profile.

Proofread and Then Proofread It Again

LinkedIn is a professional platform. Don’t just publish anything on your profile without proofreading it first. Many recruiters and hiring managers are put off by typos, spelling, and grammar errors.

Pay attention to what you have written.

Double-check your LinkedIn headline and summary. These are the sections with the most mistakes. Proofread every word to make sure that everything is right.

Getting Started with LinkedIn Profiles

You can get help from a LinkedIn profile writing service if you are not confident that you will be able to do a great job on your LinkedIn profile yourself. Make sure the service you choose asks targeted questions to understand what you need.

Anyone can create a generic profile. What’s important is to create a LinkedIn profile that stands out.

Our LinkedIn profile writing service has helped hundreds of our clients achieve their goals. Get in touch with us today if you want to get noticed on LinkedIn.