How to Vastly Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

Monday's Episode

285: How to Vastly Improve Your LinkedIn Profile: Brenda Bernstein joined me on the show this week to teach us how to improve our LinkedIn profiles. She’s the author of How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn Profile*, a book that held the #1 best-seller spot in Amazon’s business writing skills list for over 2 years.

Key Points

• LinkedIn profiles are very important for job seekers.
• Your headline is the most important place to have keywords.
• Don’t include your company name in your headline unless it has cachet.
• In your experience section, emphasize your current job and make sure it has the best description.
• Think of three key words you want to come across in your profile photo.
• Make sure you have a 100% completed profile to get boosted by LinkedIn’s algorithms.
• Write your summary in first-person.
• If you have a very uncommon or unclear job title, it’s okay to write one that people would understand, so long as it’s accurate.
• Recommendations are important because they’re the only way on LinkedIn to really prove who you are and what you’ve actually done.
• When you request a connect, don’t just use the standard one, write a custom request.

If you want to practice writing a custom connection request, Brenda’s advice was to connect with her on LinkedIn. I’m always thrilled to hear from listeners in our community, so please connect with me too.

Resources Mentioned

• How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn Profile by Brenda Bernstein*
• Wordle.net
• LinkedIn’s Overused Buzzwords for 2017 – Do You Really Need to Avoid Them?
• LinkedIn profile review services by Brenda

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• CFL101: How To Get The Most From LinkedIn
• CFL129: How To Create A Personal Knowledge Management System
• CFL242: How Twitter Can Help You Lead

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