Improve Your LinkedIn Business Profile For A More Professional Image

After establishing a business profile on LinkedIn, you might be surprised to find that relatively few prospects who come across your profile actually reach out to you. This probably means that you haven't provided visitors with enough motivation to take some kind of action, either by connecting with you, or by going to your website for additional information. The way you generate that kind of motivation in prospects is to make a very positive first impression, and there are several ways to go about that.One good strategy is to demonstrate that you're actually an authority in your field, and someone worth following. Of course it also helps to optimize your LinkedIn profile so that it will be discovered on searches. When people do come to your profile, they need to find something there which is memorable enough and inspirational enough to cause them to take action. That means you need to somehow demonstrate to them that you can solve a problem, or fulfill a need that they have. Here are some steps you should consider to achieve a complete makeover of your LinkedIn profile, so that you make the kind of impression which motivates people to take action.

Create a powerful profile headline

Your LinkedIn profile headline should be an expression of all those elements which help to optimize your profile in general, and causes visitors to want to reach out to you. That means you have to establish your credibility, optimize for search criteria, make an impact with visitors, and make it easy for your target audience to connect with you. It may sound like this is an awful lot to include in a simple headline, but a cleverly worded LinkedIn profile headline can actually accomplish all four of those objectives.

Include a strong summary

The heart of your LinkedIn profile is in your summary, and since you've already gotten visitors' attention by your outstanding profile heading, it's time to follow up your advantage with a good connection to your prospects. The most effective summaries are written in the first person, because they sound like you are directly communicating with the prospect, which is a great way of establishing an instant connection.The keywords which you're striving to be found for on LinkedIn should be scattered throughout the summary, so that your rankings stay high, and plenty of users are able to find you. As a word of caution, don't resort to anything that resembles keyword stuffing, because not only does it not blend well with the rest of the content, but you can actually be penalized for it by search engines.

Include a professional business image

You might already have known that profiles with images attract more visitors than those without them, but you probably haven't realized up till now that the actual figures are that profiles with images are 11 times more likely to be viewed. It's also true that many users don't bother to accept connection requests from individuals who lack an image on their business profiles. When you do have your business picture taken, make sure that it's a simple bust-type picture of yourself and no one else, because any other type of photo is really more of a personal picture.

Make sure to fill out contact info

This is very important, because you want to provide visitors with the means of connecting with you, which is what your profile is all about in the first place. Be sure to include your email address, your business phone number, your company website URL, and your Twitter ID if you have one. You should also include your LinkedIn profile URL, so that they can come back to your profile easily.

Make use of LinkedIn Publisher posts

The platform provided for publishing posts by LinkedIn is extremely easy to use, and it also enhances your credibility as an authority in your field. As long as you can continue to generate high-quality content which has value to your target audience, you can count on creating a powerful impact among new prospects who may be just discovering your business, and finding out about your strong position in the market. If some of your LinkedIn Publisher posts can achieve even modest popularity, it can have the effect of making you an influencer who is worth consulting, about any of the topics that you've written on.

Information on work experience

This might be a bit tedious to fill out, but it's definitely worth it, because it provides valuable information to prospects who come across your profile. Make sure to include keywords that you want to be searched on in your title, as well is in the description of your work experience. The description should then go on to provide all the necessary information about what your company does and whatever services or products it provides to customers and clients. When writing this description, use language that doesn't only describe the product or service, but mention how it fulfills a need or desire that people have.

Multimedia information

You can get a quick leg up on the competition by including images, video, audio, and even slideshow presentations on your profile. Enough has been written about the value of images and video in web content that there's no point in further justifying it, but you can bet that those profiles which do include multimedia presentations routinely get more views and follows than those which are comprised of simple dry text.Beyond that, be sure to make your multimedia presentations as personal as possible, because this will enhance the probability of making a connection with your target audience. Viewers who can see your face and hear your voice immediately feel a personal connection to you, whereas when such images and video are lacking, it's much harder to establish that kind of personal connection.

Past experience

While you probably don't have to include all of your past experience on your LinkedIn profile, it's certainly worth at least including the most recent areas of experience. This will give readers a bit more information about you, and it will make your profile look more complete. Again, try to include the keywords you want to be found for in both the title field and the description, and then add a paragraph or two about what you did in each of the positions you mentioned, along with any outstanding accomplishments or achievements.