60 Personal branding mistakes on LinkedIn

The cornerstone of your professional brand is your LinkedIn profile, so any mistakes made here will affect your personal branding efforts. Here are 60 common mistakes that I’ve come across when I do LinkedIn profile assessments:

Your name

1. Names in lower case. This is grammatically incorrect and creates a negative impression.
2. Names in capitals. Again grammatically correct, but when you’re online, using capital letters indicates that you are shouting!
3. Names with apostrophes where a space has been added after the apostrophe, creating two words i.e. O’ Reilly instead of O’Reilly. This makes it very difficult to find you.

Your profile image

There are lots of mistakes people make when choosing their profile image:

1. Images of more than one person in you profile image.
2. Logos or avatars used as your profile image. You are a person, not a logo.
3. Casual images. This shows that you don’t understand what professional standards are.
4. Holiday snaps. As above.
5. Selfies. As above.
6. Graduation snaps. They give the impression that you are still a student.
7. Military uniforms in profile images, as they give the impression that you are still in the service, and not ready for the civilian workplace.
8. No allowing people to actually see your image. When you upload your image you can limit who sees it, but what is the point?

Your headline

1. Headlines that are job titles. Your headline is part of your personal branding and should tell people what you do.
2. Headlines that are subjective. These are full of adjectives describing you, but doesn’t tell anyone what you do.
3. Headline that are fluffy e.g. include a quote or something similar. When I see these, I think: seriously???!
4. Headlines where you states that your are looking for new challenges/opportunities. These tell people that you have a problem (no job) and are looking for someone else to provide the solution. Be the solution, not a problem.

Your contact details

1. No means of contacting you other than email.
2. Including your address. Not so much a personal branding issue, more of an identity theft one.
3. Your URL: Not customising your URL. The default URL is hard to remember, unlike the customized version.

Your connections

1. How many connections you have impacts where you appear in search results. It also tells people where you are in the “hierarchy” of LinkedIn: in terms of the size of your network
   • 6.72% of users have 0-50 connections. Having less than 50 connections affects the completeness of your profile, which in turn affects where you appear in search results.
   • 48.16% of users have 51-499 connections
   • 25.2% of users have 500-999 connections
   • 19.82% of users have 1000+ connections
2. They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Connecting with thought leaders increases your credibility, failing to build your network doesn’t.
3. Not responding to invitations to connect. Many don’t do anything as they are unsure of what to do. Don’t make it difficult. If they can add value to your network, then accept, or not, then ignore.
4. Not sending personalised invitations to connect. Your invitation to connect is potentially your introduction to a new contact, but if you use the bog standard message, then some people will interpret it as being rude.

Your summary

1. Having no summary. Without a summary, you become the sum of the jobs that you’ve had. In addition, people who have no summary, usually don’t add additional sections.
2. Summary that describes you e.g. passionate, proven track record, ambitious, helpful, great communicator. It doesn’t tell anyone what it is you do. Use verbs, not adjectives!
3. No call to action in your summary e.g. connect with me.

Your work experience

1. No description of the work you did. This affects the completeness of your profile, which in turn has a negative impact on where you appear in searches.
2. You job description starts with “responsibilities” or “duties”.  I’ve had lots of job descriptions and most of the time, what I actually did, and what the job description stated my responsibilities were not quite the same, usually because I’d developed the role beyond what was originally planned. In addition, being responsible for something doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually did that part of the job
3. No company logo displayed. It may be that the company you worked for doesn’t have a company profile on LinkedIn, however, if it does and it’s not displayed, then it affects your credibility, since you won’t actually show up as an employee. It may also limit your ability to connect with old colleagues.
4. Grouping lots of roles within one organisation. By doing this no-one can see your career progression, and the skills gained, over the period that you worked there.
5. Not including any achievements in your role.

Your skills and expertise

1. None added. It looks like you have no workplace-based skills.
2. Endorsements not displayed. This looks like no-one will endorse you.
3. Skills that are descriptive/made up.  These are usually shown in lower-case

Your education

1. None recorded. Everyone has attended school. Include your secondary school as well as your university.

The other sections

1. Languages: Only one language included and it’s your native language. That doesn’t demonstrate language skills, just shows that you don’t understand that system.
2. Projects: Not including projects that you’ve worked on. Whether it’s a research project at university or a work-based project, projects usually require you to learn new skills, whilst being part of a project team showed that someone valued your contribution enough to include you in the project.
3. Publications: Not including any publications that you either wrote or contributed to really under-sells your achievements
4. Courses: These could be anything from the course modules that make up your degree, to post-qualification courses. Usually, these courses are skills-based, and so are keywords in themselves. Over time, courses can show professional development. Therefore, not including them is a big mistake.
5. Test scores: Unless you’re a student and your score was brilliant, then this is one section that you shouldn’t include.
6. Honors and awards: Many people under-sell themselves by not including honors and awards in their profiles.
7. Organisations: Not recording organisations that you are a member of. These may validate part of your profile, so not recording them could have a negative impact.
8. Patents: Not many people have patents filed, so if you have one, and don’t include it in your profile, then you are massively under-selling your achievements.
9. Certifications: Some jobs require certain licenses to practice or work-based certifications. Not including them is a big mistake, as it may be interpreted that you’re not qualified for the post.
10. Volunteering and Causes: Many organisations hire people because of the volunteering activities. It shows a life outside of work. Not including them may well affect whether someone sees you as a rounded character.
11. Interests: Your personal interests are a great conversation starter, and may well be what
12. Personal information: Including that you’re married and your birthday. These aren’t something that you would include on your CV/resume, and could be used in identity theft, especially if you have also included your home address and mobile phone number.

Recommendations

1. Not having any. Recommendations are like references in advance, so ask anyone who would be in a position to give you one. They would need to be connections first.
2. Exchanging recommendations. It’s not difficult to spot when some received a recommendation from someone that they recommended. If they were part of the same project, this may be ok, however, it still looks dodgy.
3. Having a family member provide a recommendation. I had a client where the only recommendation received was from a spouse. The spouse made it clear that they were related. That persons credibility nose-dived rapidly. It was better to have no recommendations than appear so desperate that you would ask a spouse!

Following

1. Not following any people, news channels and publications. These show what you’re interested in following. not following anything shows a lack of anything potentially career related.
2. Companies. As above.

Groups

1. Not joining any groups. Group members become part of your network, which in turn affects where you appear in search results.
2. Not joining groups that validate parts of your profile for example alumni groups. This may raise a red flag and affect your credibility.
3. Joining groups but not taking part in any discussions

Updates

1. Status updates. Posting status updates increases your visibility on LinkedIn and as a consequence, your profile views and invitations to connect. Not posting updates is a great way to stay invisible!
2. Publishing on LinkedIn. This is a great way of increasing awareness of your personal brand. Again, not doing it affects
3. Not liking or commenting on other peoples updates. This is just being sociable, but reminds people that you exist. Many people are actually grateful for the interaction
4. Not sharing other peoples updates. As above.

Visibility

I published a post ages ago on how you can make it easier for people to connect with you on LinkedIn. Many of the suggestions were to do with visibility. Since personal branding is about raising awareness of brand you, being invisible is kind of counter-productive. Review your setting to make sure that you get seen

Messages

Some people that I’ve worked with had loads, and I mean load, of messages in their inbox that they hadn’t responded to. If personal branding is about raising awareness of brand you how do you think the people sending the messages react when their messages go unanswered?

When I started this post, I was aiming to find 25 personal branding mistakes made on LinkedIn, however, as I looked through the assessments I’ve done in the past, many more mistakes came up. And they came up time and again. Have a look at your own profile and check it against my list. If you’d like a second pair of eyes to review your profile, then consider me. I wrote the book on optimizing your LinkedIn profile.

My latest book: 5o Shades of LinkedIn

Take care for now

Karen x