With its 740 million members (January 2021 data) distributed in over 200 countries, of which 15 million in Italy alone , LinkedIn is undoubtedly on the podium of the most widespread social networks: with an exquisitely BtoB vocation, it is manned by professionals and companies with the aim of creating and developing a professional relationship network.
The 2021 WeAreSocial report highlighted how, in the Italian market, Linkedin is among the most used social platforms to create valuable relationships and useful relationships for business. But not only that: the report shows how Advertising on this platform has reached 15 million people with a reach of 7.1%, demonstrating the fact that Linkedin is increasingly used by brands and companies that invest in Adv for lead generation and for brand awareness.
What is LinkedIn for?
Born in 2002 in the United States, LinkedIn has grown and consolidated over the years through a business model based on the offering of consultancy and advertising services to allow companies to find ideal candidates, but also to offer marketers new opportunities to connect with partners and consumers. So what is LinkedIn for besides connecting job supply and demand?
We can certainly define it as one of the most important personal branding tools and therefore serves to build and improve professional reputation, but not only that: Linkedin allows you to intercept prospects and customers, support sales and build loyalty – in communication terms ( social selling ) – but also to tell and promote company content ( branding ).
There is another aspect why it is essential to be present on LinkedIn: because it is a precious source of information and therefore updates on everything relating to your area of work and sector.
Planning your presence on this social network cannot therefore be the result of improvisation, but rather requires having a clear strategy in mind for managing the channel which starts with the optimization of your personal profile.
Well yes, LinkedIn is the most “personal” social network there is and the user profile must not be mistaken for a virtual Curriculum Vitae because in reality it is a real professional presentation : guided and complete, integrated with various multimedia contents, positioned organically both on the LinkedIn search engine and on Google.
Correct optimization of your LinkedIn profile is therefore the first step in planning your presence on this platform.
How to create a well-optimized LinkedIn profile
Reach the highest level of completeness
How many and which sections of my profile are important for optimization? The answer is: all.
LinkedIn rewards and considers well-positioned a profile that, among other things, reaches the highest level of completeness . To remember this, use many ways: newsletters, alerts and counters on the homepage.
Filling in all the sections of the profile is a way to position yourself well, but above all it is an opportunity to highlight our strengths in the eyes of visitors (specializations, experiences, personal characteristics, etc.). In fact, Linkedin states that an accurately filled out profile is 27% more likely to appear in search results and gets “up to 3 times more traffic to your profile via Search, Feed and my network”.
Don’t forget Settings and Privacy
The first action to do before starting to work on your profile is to act on Settings and privacy, at least to avoid generating automatic updates for each change to the profile with respect to your network of contacts.
The settings and privacy section is invaluable for regulating the relationship with the platform, so it is essential to consult it and modify it according to your needs and objectives:
- Account preferences : from this section you literally manage your experience on LinkedIn, from setting the language, to viewing your profile photo, customizing your feed , syncing your calendar and contacts, etc…
- Account access: from this section you set the account security levels defined by email, telephone number, password change, etc.
- Visibility : here you will find all the settings that allow you to define how the profile and contact information are visible to the network and – above all – to whom they are visible, with respect to the degree of connection.
- Communications : the settings in this section determine how many and what communications you want to receive from LinkedIn, but also how. To avoid being inundated with emails and push notifications , it is essential to stop by the communications area !
- Data privacy : in an era in which confidentiality, at least on social media, seems to count for little or nothing, Linkedin allows you to manage every aspect of user privacy, up to and including downloading all data, information and published content.
- Advertising data : finally, it is possible to choose how your data is used for advertising purposes and which data Linkedin can use to profile a user with respect to ads
It’s easy to understand why the settings and privacy area is the first to take care of when creating or optimizing your personal profile.
Take care of LinkedIn SEO or use keywords
In addition to being a social network, LinkedIn is a search engine , therefore, one of the first aspects to take care of when creating or optimizing your personal profile is to identify the keywords for which you want to be positioned, i.e. the keywords for which you want to appear in searches.
To choose keywords it is right to ask yourself specific questions:
- who do I turn to?
- with what words does the target identify the services or products I offer?
- What products or services are of greatest value to customers?
- How does Google identify my profession or business?
And last but not least: what words are recurring in competitor profiles ?
It is useful to know that the LinkedIn search engine does not work by semantics like Google’s, i.e. it does not interpret the user’s intention, therefore it is important to activate “lateral thinking” that is, for example, identifying synonyms, singular and plural expressions , Englishisms, etc..
After having identified the key words (no more than 3 or 4) it is necessary to insert them strategically into the personal profile. Here are the areas in which they should appear:
- in the job title or the summary
- in the services offered
- in the summary or information
- in work experiences
If even the Linkedin Country Manager for Italy advises as the first thing not to neglect the biography, there must be a reason. It is therefore advisable to follow this tip and complete all the sections of the profile, from the bio to the publications, because each section can be worth a new opportunity.
Don’t forget multimedia content
Even for LinkedIn, as for most social networks , visuals play the lion’s share. What does it mean? It means that the text, written correctly and in the style that most distinguishes us and with the correct use of keywords, is important for the optimization of the profile but, where possible, must be integrated with multimedia contents, because this guarantees a better “impact” of the content with respect to use by the user, which translates into better usability and a greater likelihood of further investigation.
LinkedIn therefore allows you to upload multimedia content, i.e. web links, PDFs, photos, videos and Power Point presentations, to specific sections of your profile.
It is possible, by appropriately editing the titles and description of the document to motivate its inclusion, to add multimedia content in the featured section and in the professional experiences .
Profile photo: serious or nice?
When a user views a personal profile on LinkedIn, the first thing they focus on is the personal photo and then, following that, the job title or summary.
If for LinkedIn the absence of a profile picture is highly penalizing – just think that the photo determines the degree of effectiveness of the profile – it is also important to take into account that it represents a potential obstacle to the generation of new contacts, because there are fewer people incentivized to contact a user who does not show himself (the same thing happens when only the initials of the surname are displayed, rather than the full surname or a job title that is too creative or even absurd, typical of those who sin with excessive creativity or self-referentiality).
It is useful to remember that a profile with photos receives up to 9 times more connection requests, 21 times more views and 36 times more messages than a profile without photos.
The personal photo on LinkedIn is therefore important for the purposes of profile optimization and must, needless to say, convey professionalism , empathy and must, above all, be recognizable and representative.
Good advice is to take a photo, even half-length, with good lighting, perhaps not perfectly frontal and in a corporate or business context .
Without a doubt, a smile and spontaneity are the basis for a good photo and company logos, sunsets, dogs and cats are categorically banned, as are photos of couples or winks and in a holiday mood . In short, professionalism is the watchword.
The photo, in jpeg or png format, in the (ideal) 400
How to delete your Linkedin profile
Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn guarantees the deletion of the personal profile (as well as the company page), without the data remaining in memory and above all in an irreversible manner.
But when did this need arise? Generally when by mistake – and it happens more frequently than you think – a user ends up having multiple Linkedin profiles created with different email addresses.
Deleting a profile is easy and quick: from Settings and Privacy -> Account Preferences -> Account Management you can delete , suspend or merge two accounts by transferring the links.
Clearly it is necessary to remember your login details: if this is not possible, all that remains is to contact Linkedin assistance which responds precisely and promptly to requests for information and operational support.
The optimization of the LinkedIn profile, of which we have seen only some of the most important steps here, is one of the three fundamental elements, together with the construction of the network of relationships and the publication of contents, for the correct design and planning of one’s presence on LinkedIn.
At Noetica we support companies and professionals in the implementation of the LinkedIn management strategy, both through specific consultancy and training plans and through the direct management of company channels and promotional plans aimed at lead generation, brand awareness and social selling.
If you are interested in building an effective strategy on Linkedin, all you have to do is contact us and request advice or an ad hoc training plan.
