5 Tips to Improve Your LinkedIn Presence

Your LinkedIn profile is an extension of your personal brand.

**Updated April 22, 2024**

What Is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the internet, with 1 billion users as of late 2023. In short, it’s the social media platform that acts as a professional networking site, designed to help people make business connections, learn from experts, share their experiences, and find jobs.

Your LinkedIn profile is an extension of your personal brand and an extension of your company’s brand. Like it or not, people judge your company by your profile, so you want to represent it well. It details who you are, your professional interests, past experiences, skills, education, and more. Here are five LinkedIn strategies for elevating your personal brand and setting yourself apart from competition online.

1. Best practices for LinkedIn

There are certain attributes every profile should have to succeed. According to Leisure Jobs, users who list their education appear in searches up to 17 times more often than those who don’t. Filling out the location field on your profile will also help you appear in more searches.

A professional-looking photo is another must-have. Profiles with a photo get up to 21 times more views and up to 36 times more messages, according to Brett Power. Your profile should have a compelling background picture. It sets the tone for your profile, allowing you to convey a message about your personal brand and the company you work for.

2. How to Position Your Current Role and Headline

Carefully write your profile headline to communicate not just your job title, but your areas of expertise and other positions you may hold. A LinkedIn headline is an expression of who you are, your strengths, and your skills. This space should be considered as a personal branding opportunity. Include key words that speak to your expertise, and what value you bring to your current (and potentially future) employers.

3. Create a Vanity URL

Creating a vanity URL simplifies the process of directing people to your LinkedIn profile. People will always be looking for you. Whether they are peers, investors, journalists, job seekers, or potential business partners, LinkedIn is the first place people look to learn about other professionals. It’s a lot easier and more professional when your page has a direct link with your name in it than a random assortment of letters and numbers.

If you have not already customized your LinkedIn profile URL I highly recommend doing so. There is no additional fee to do this. LinkedIn allows you to customize it easily on the right-hand side of your profile.

You can customize your URL in the Settings & Privacy tab. See what that looks like in the screenshot below.

4. It Is Still a Social Network

Actively engage with your connections by liking, sharing, and commenting on their posts. Just connecting with people will not take you far. Make an intentional effort by scheduling time on your calendar to engage, whether it’s with your company’s page, clients, partners or friends.

You can also help build your personal brand by sharing your achievements such as certifications or awards you may have received.

Even though it is a social network remember to treat it professionally. Some people may cross the line by oversharing about their personal life. Before posting something, ask yourself, “Would I share this at a networking event?”

5. So, How Can I Engage on LinkedIn?

There are many ways you can engage on LinkedIn. At Pierpont, we recommend that our clients follow industry pages and other companies that are relevant to their business and share their posts. But the key is adding a short, one or two sentence comments with the share, so you don’t need to create your own original content.

But whether you share others’ posts, or if you create your own original posts, be sure you are providing some value to your network.

What to measure:

• Connections are the people you have as “friends” on LinkedIn, while followers can keep up with anyone without having them as a connection. In addition to the number of connections and followers you have, here are a few metrics to keep an eye on by accessing your Dashboard:
• How many profile views do you have over time? This number will not likely continually rise, but a steady stream of profile views means you’re visible on LinkedIn.
• Search appearances are an indicator of the number of times your profile appeared in search results in the last week. This is largely driven by what people on LinkedIn are searching for, but it’s another number that you’d like to see remain relatively steady, if not grow. Updating your profile and posting often can help you appear in more search results.
• Knowing where searchers who found your profile work lets you know if you are showing up in front of the people employed at businesses you want to connect with.

Summary:

Whether you are a seasoned professional, or new in your career, LinkedIn is a valuable tool that, when used appropriately, can do wonders for your professional development and personal brand. I enjoy working with my clients to help them improve their presence on the platform and seeing them reap the business development benefits afterwards.

Pierpont intern Isabel Chow helped revise and update this blog post.