LinkedIn is, by far, my favourite social media channel, but as the number of users increases, it’s makes getting found much more difficult. In helping people to optimise their profile, I’ve found the biggest challenge people have is their lack of understanding of how LinkedIn itself actually works. By overcoming this one obstacle, you can leverage the power of LinkedIn to your advantage.
There are 3 things you need to understand:
1. LinkedIn is a computer driven application
This means that whereas a person would understand the nuances of your LinkedIn profile, and could analyse it in terms of the person specification they have at hand, a computer doesn’t. What it does instead, is search all the profiles it has (currently all 300+million of them!) for the specific word/s that you have typed in. The word/s may only appear once in your profile, but if it is there, and someone has used it in a search term, then you will appear in the search results. Yay! Well, actually no. If you type in “project manager” for example, you could get 10+ million results, but LinkedIn only displays the first 100 on basic accounts (and up to 500 on some premium ones). Regardless, if you want to get found in a search, you need the right keywords in your profile.
Don’t forget, people also search by name, so make sure your name does not prevent you getting found. Use the name that you are known by, not what’s on your birth certificate. I’ve also had problems finding people who, for example, have a space after O’, so instead of O’Rourke – one word, the computer see O’ Rourke – two words.
2. LinkedIn displays search results in terms of the person doing the search
So, we’ve just found our 10+million people with terms project and manager in their profile, but how does LinkedIn present those results? Well, to make the results meaningful, it presents them in terms relevance to the person who carried out the search, and it does this by prioritising people in the following order:
- those who are 1st degree connections
- then 2nd degree connections
- then those who are members of the same groups as you
- then 3rd degree connections
- then everyone else.
Ah, but what if you have a lot of connections that all project managers? Well then, LinkedIn looks at:
- how connected you are with those people. So basically, what do you have in common? This could be anything from your emails, shared connections or groups, to employers, locations, skills, interests and education. Those who are most connected to you, will be shown first, and a 2nd degree connection with more in common with you will trump a 1st with less.
- the quality and completeness of the persons profile. Those with complete profiles are prioritised higher than those without. A 100% complete profile consists of:
- A Profile Photo.
- Your country and industry – you entered these when you set up your LinkedIn profile.
- An up-to-date Current Position (with a description).
- Two Past Positions (also with descriptions).
- Your Education.
- At least 3 Skills.
- At least 50 Connections.
So what does this mean for you? Well, it means that the more people that you can connect to in your field of expertise, the bigger network you have, the higher up you will appear in search results and so the greater chance you have of your profile getting seen. It also means that it is important to ensure that you have a complete profile. Incomplete profiles may not even get far enough up in the search results to get seen,
3. Appearances are everything
Once you have gotten onto the front page of all those search results, you have one final hurdle to getting clicked on, and that is how you appear in the search results. When you are found in search results, what the person sees is:
- Your image – if you have uploaded one and allowed people to see it
- Your name and by what degree you are connected to the person
- Your headline
- Your country and industry
- How you are connected to the person
- Premium account holders also have a summary of present and post jobs displayed, along with the first line of their summary.
At this point it is really important that you haven’t let yourself down. This leads me onto the 3 biggest mistakes people make on LinkedIn. These are:
- poor choice of photo i.e. not presenting a professional image
- spelling and grammar e.g. your name in lowercase letters
- under-selling yourself in your headline e.g. it’s still your current job title
If you have gotten this far, can avoid these 3 mistakes, then there is a very good chance that your profile will be clicked on and viewed.
Action Points
To optimise your LinkedIn profile simply look at the following:
- What skills are the people that you want to work with looking for, do you have them, and are they mentioned in your profile?
- How complete is your profile? It needs to be 100%.
- How many people you are connected to, and how actively you are networking?
- How often are you appearing in searches? Compare this to how often a person views your profile.
- What does your image say about you?
- What does your headline tell people about you?
If you’ve found this useful, or have any questions relating to this post, then let me know. I also have lots of free resources to help you with LinkedIn, and my Mastering LinkedIn ebook is free to download.