Discover How To Use Your Linkedin Profile To Make A Strong First Impression With Prospects And Connections

By Author: Nitish Chandra
Total Articles: 4
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Discover how to use your LinkedIn profile to make a strong first impression with prospects and connections.
#1: Complete Profile Basics
Your LinkedIn profile is the cornerstone of your professional brand online. Yet many sales professionals create a LinkedIn profile that looks like their résumé or CV. If you’re using LinkedIn to attract clients, a simple list of your professional experiences could be the most boring content to have on your profile. Instead, complete all of the profile basics in a way that conveys your personality.
Optimize Your Profile Photo, URL, and Headline
To start, make your first visual impression count by displaying an optimized professional photo. LinkedIn isn’t the place to run a casual snapshot. Make sure you use a high-quality, well-lit headshot that’s at least 200 x 200 pixels.
Don’t use a photo with dimensions smaller than 200 x 200 because it will become pixelated and blurry.
Next, customize your profile URL so you can easily tell people how to find you online. Typically, this URL reflects your full name without anything else.
Optimizing your ...
... headline, which appears directly under your name, is especially important because it’s highly visible, as well as searchable. The headline is limited to 120 characters so be sure to use valuable keywords that your target audience uses often.
Customize Your Contact Information
When you fill out your contact and personal information, LinkedIn rewards you with more visibility. To further optimize this area, change the default contact labels (such as “Personal website” or “Company blog”) to reflect keywords your target audience might use to find your product or service.
In the Edit Contact Info dialog box that appears, click Add Website and copy and paste your website address into the corresponding field. Next, choose Other from the drop-down list so you can enter your own description in the Type (Other) field. When you’re done, click Save.
Introduce Yourself and Your Work With Video
You can add video to your introduction and other areas of your LinkedIn profile. Video is excellent for telling stories, sharing client testimonials, and explaining what you do. Introducing yourself in a video with your own face and voice makes your introduction personal. You immediately stand out from the crowd, especially if most of your competitors aren’t including video.
After you upload your video to a supported service, you can add your video introduction to your LinkedIn profile.
Get Endorsements and Recommendations
The Skills & Endorsements area of your profile is a keyword haven. Think about all of your skills and order them so the most important terms are endorsed first. When selecting your skills, make sure you use high-volume search phrases. As an example, “content writer” is more likely to appear in search than “wordsmith guru.”
In addition to endorsements for skills, you can also show recommendations. Your recommendations build your prospects’ confidence and trust in you. Ideally, your profile features recommendations from members of your target audience with whom you’ve already done business.
To request recommendations, click the Ask to be Recommended link in the top right of the Recommendations section. Next, follow the on-screen prompts to fill out and send your request.
Share Your Education, Certifications, and Awards
Education is a core criterion on LinkedIn, so completing this field is important. If you didn’t go to university, reference your high school. Some people have even put “School of Life” or “School of Hard Knocks,” which works if that informal style is right for your brand.
LinkedIn has a special section for accomplishments where you can add certifications, awards, publications, and other details important to your professional qualifications and experience. Add these to your profile whether they’re from your company or related to your personal interests.
Think through your education and past roles, and build credibility by showing off your achievements. It’s really important that you aren’t shy in this department. Sing it loud! You could include the workshop you took on a specific software application or an organization for which you volunteer.
#2: Hone Your Content and Communication
Your profile isn’t a résumé or CV. You want to be personable and write as if you’re having a conversation with someone. Always write in the first person, allow your personality to come through in your writing, and let people know your values and passions. Always write so you’re speaking directly to the type of person with whom you want to do business.
Posting regular updates also helps optimize your LinkedIn profile. One of the pillars of social media success is consistency, so update your LinkedIn status daily with something that provides value to your target market. Regular updates not only appeal to readers’ desire for consistency, but also to LinkedIn. Posting content consistently gives you more visibility on the platform.
You can also boost your visibility by writing long-form articles. To open the LinkedIn publishing tool, click Write an Article at the top of the feed.
Indeed, since LinkedIn updated its algorithm in February 2018, it rewards content creators who share content in multiple ways on LinkedIn such as long-form articles, video, or short updates (which you add by writing a short post at the top of the feed). By using a mix of content and sharing other people’s content too, you’ll get more exposure in the LinkedIn feed.
To get even more exposure, you can also share your articles in groups and try to get featured in LinkedIn’s Daily Rundown, which is shared via the LinkedIn company page and other platforms like Twitter, as shown below. To ask LinkedIn editors to feature one of your articles, tweet “tip @LinkedInEditors” along with a link to your article.
#3: Grow Your Network
When you do a search on LinkedIn, the results vary based on your network. Generally, you see first-degree connections, then second-degree connections, and so on. Therefore, a great way to expand your reach is to simply add more connections.
You can grow your connections on LinkedIn by employing a number of tactics. Reach out to previous employers, teachers, mentors, colleagues, clients, and school friends. You can also include a link to connect in your email signature, blog, and website. Also, use the search feature to find people in your target audience.
Tip: If you have an email database, you can import customer emails or email marketing lists and synchronize your email contacts with LinkedIn. This tool will give you an excellent foundation to start reaching out to people who share mutual connections with your current or former clients.
To find the feature that imports your contacts into LinkedIn, click the My Network icon. On the left, click More Options in the Your Connections area.
Now you can enter your email address or choose a service provider from which you want to import your contacts. If LinkedIn’s importer doesn’t support your email provider, you can still invite people to connect via email. Click the Upload a File icon and navigate to a CSV or TXT file of your email contacts that’s saved to your hard drive.

If you’re happy with the list of people, click Add Connections to send invitations to all of the people listed. Next, you see contacts who aren’t yet on LinkedIn. Click the Skip link to avoid sending them emails from LinkedIn asking them to sign up.
LinkedIn groups are another great way to grow your network. LinkedIn has all kinds of groups so you can almost certainly find groups related to your target audience. These groups give you access to more people who matter to your business.
To find groups that reflect your interests and goals, start by researching which groups people in your current network are involved in. If you’re connected, you may have some similar interests and goals.
To search for groups by name or keyword, use the search box at the top of your LinkedIn home page. Type keywords or group names of interest and click Search. On the search results page, click the Groups tab.

LinkedIn also recommends groups for you. To browse these groups, click the Work icon on the far right of the toolbar at the top. In the panel that appears, select Groups. Then click Discover at the top of the page to view suggested groups.

#4: Develop Healthy Inbound Links
By increasing the amount of good-quality inbound links to your profile from elsewhere on the web, Google will see you as a more credible and popular profile. As a result, your LinkedIn profile will appear higher in the search results.
You can increase inbound links in a number of ways. An easy way to start is to link your other social media sites back to your LinkedIn profile. If you publish articles or blog posts on other sites, link back to your LinkedIn profile in your article (if appropriate) or your author bio. On your website, include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your About page.

Nitish Chandra is a Web Developer and Digital Marketer. Work as a freelance consultant and also the Founder of Vindhya Process Solutions. He has done B.E. in (Computer Technology) and Masters in Digital Marketing from Delhi School of Internet Marketing and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and . He has been a network administrator. Have also published e-books on (i) Basic Concepts of OMR Technology (ii) The Absolute Guide to Instagram (iii) The Computer Networking (iv) The Google Adwords – Complete Tutorial (v) E-Commerce Tutorials He has successfully developed various websites and have also published many Advertisements of various industries like travel, education, B2C and B2B industry on Google and Social Media Platforms. He has been certified by (i) Google in Analytics and Adwords. (ii) Facebook for Facebook Marketing (iii) HubSpot for Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Inbound Marketing. He have also have been in the field of Competitive Examinations for last 22 years, where OMR related works are involved and has himself designed various types of OMR Sheets and prepared results for various organisations and ministries of Govt. of India.