Take your LinkedIn game to new heights with these key tips

As of May 2023, LinkedIn turned 20 years old and as its years grew, so has its relevance in today’s career and business marketplace. The platform now boasts 930 million users, growing at a rate of 3 new members every second, and is available in 200 regions worldwide. That is no small feat! The promise of this global professional networking site is simple- connect with other professionals, sell and find jobs. However, 20 years on so many people still struggle to get the most out of this platform. And with social media screening gaining popularity with recruiters as part of the hiring process, managing your online reputation becomes paramount, and LinkedIn tops that priority list in your digital brand audit. As a result, LinkedIn itself has been deactivating thousands of dormant accounts in the past year as it continues to make product improvements and keep up with newer social media tools. But don’t fret because we dive into the secrets behind a good LinkedIn strategy below.

70 percent of employers believe every company should screen candidates’ social media profiles during the hiring process.

NB. These pointers are mainly for professionals and not company LinkedIn. For more on employer branding, check out our other blogs.

1. Brand Strategy

First things first, just like with any other social media platform, the most important thing to do is to work with a clear brand strategy that will make the rest of the actions easier. Otherwise, it will be like driving without a destination. A strategy tells us what not to do and how to direct our limited efforts for optimum results. What does a personal brand strategy encompass?

• Vision- Clear & inspiring purpose. Why are you here? What do you want to achieve? Why will it matter to you? What does success look like to you? What’s your authentic voice? As I shared in this earlier article on 3 things we wish experts told us earlier about finding your dream job, most individuals struggle with career choices because they haven’t defined their big Why.
• Action-Implementation of strategies/tactics. What are the things you can do to get you closer to your goals? How will you differentiate in a crowded market?
• Experience- Creating positive interactions. How will you engage on the platform? What value do you bring? Signing up is the easy part.
• Expression- Effective/consistent communication. How will you connect with others? How will you maintain your brand? Where will you do it?

“Brand yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.”

“To succeed, you must be the best at what you do for a specific audience.”

“The goal of personal branding is to be recruited based on your brand, not applying for jobs.”

“If you don’t know what you bring to the table, you don’t get a seat there.”

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

2. Your Linkedin Profile

Optimizing your profile for jobs and Li Recruiter

Landing new jobs and networking with recruiters is one of the primary reasons most folks keep their Linkedin active. Apart from applying directly to the jobs exclusively posted by companies, your profile is the next best thing to your CV in advocating for your candidacy to potential employers. But if I have a good CV, why should I make the extra effort of updating and keeping my profile complete & accurate? Well, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to access way more recruiters directly because of the nearly 1 billion people on the site. Plus did we mention it’s a GLOBAL network and best for our new borderless job market? This is better than sending your resume by email to random hr addresses. Over 50% of jobs are also not posted on job sites as recruiters opt for referrals and headhunting instead in what is called ‘the hidden job market’. With a complete profile, Linkedin also gives you a free inbuilt CV writing tool that allows you to download your resume as a PDF and in an ATS-friendly format. Because of AI and tonnes of metadata on job titles, it's also easier to customize your resume with recommended skills & bio from the site based on the jobs you’re applying for. Beyond applying for jobs, Linkedin can also help you discover and assess a company’s culture and job fit. Linkedin will also tell you the average tenure in years which can be a very telling piece of information when assessing an employer. In one survey, 75% of respondents said they use Linkedin to inform their decisions about switching to a new job. Here are some more stats;

Over 58 million companies are listed on Linkedin

95 job applications are submitted on Linkedin every second

4 people are hired on Linkedin every minute

50 million users search for jobs on Linkedin every week

You’re similarly allowed to add extra links, skills, documents, and images under each job or project as opposed to the CV which usually has a page limit for most countries. Your LinkedIn profile complements your CV by helping you highlight more about your passions, capabilities, and interests beyond the traditional CV format. Keeping your Linkedin long and your resume short is the golden rule. So below are some ways you can do this. Note that this will only cover some sections of your Li profile and the basic principles you should remember. To get the most out of Li, make sure to explore each feature & section.

• Name & URL- My format for editing a Cv or Linkedin profile is always a top-bottom approach ie start at the very top and work your way down section by section. This way nothing gets missed. This includes your full name and a short URL. By creating a URL that closely matches your name, jobseekers will be more easily found in the search engine results. You can edit the URL in your profile to www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe/ I also see many individuals adding extra details to their names like academic initials or job title eg AIHRM or CPA or Ph.D. I advise candidates to refrain from that for 3 reasons;

The focus of your expertise as a professional should always be on demonstrated skills and not academic qualifications. Education is merely a qualifier in the market and isn’t a unique differentiator. Plus you can indicate them under your Education section anyways

Recruiters focus more on experience over schooling and we’re seeing the trend of companies like Google removing such requirements from their jobs

Your value as a person should not be tied to your academics or your employer

Picture courtesy

• Headline- The winning formula is Role|Industry or Niche|Key words/passions|Services of products you offer|Impact. Example Project Manager| Product Development| Agile|Budgeting| Increasing cross-functional team productivity by 60%. This section is extremely important as it’s the 2nd thing after your name recruiters see when they search for candidates. It’s also how the search algorithm determines how you rank in that list if I search for say Project Managers in Kenya. And just like with your name, do not include your academic credentials, awards or emojis either. Avoid buzzwords too and go for the most common industry names & skills. No recruiter will search for a HR Artist. But they will search for HR Specialist instead.

Recruiters search for you on Linkedin using 4 ways- your name, your job title, your employer, or key skills. Your profile and headline should be optimized for how easily you want to be found. Your Total number of Search appearances is one of the most important Li metrics that you should actively keep track of. It tells you how many times you were shown in the search results within 1 week, where your searchers work, their occupation, and most importantly, the keywords your searchers used to find you. You can find this info under your Dashboard analytics.

• Profile picture- Did you know profiles with photos receive a 40% higher InMail response rate? Make it clear & professional background on brand, head & shoulder crop only with your eyes on the camera. You can easily take a headshot with most smartphones nowadays that have a portrait feature. If not, make time to get a photographer to take you one, or better yet use modern AI photography tools that allow you to generate headshots using AI. My favorite AI photo generator so far has been Remini App which you can try out for free for a couple of days and download as many new pics as you can. Aim to replace your photo every 1-2 years as you age.
• Header- Every footprint on your Linkedin can work for you if you make it do so. Most people leave their header backgrounds blank or put some random industry photo or a photo of themselves or worse something like a beach photo. This can be your opportunity to share in a simple graphic your top skills, title, you in action, or passion. Free design tools like Canva have simple templates you can customize based on your brand goals.
• Featured- Design an attractive feed and pin top-performing posts on your featured section. This is an important real estate segment you don’t want to leave blank. Add 3–4 covering Q&As, Behind the scenes, Client wins, your portfolio or website link, etc
• Talks About- This new update allows you to use keywords relevant to your niche and the job titles you’re aiming for. This feature is available when you turn on Creator mode on your profile. To maximize your footprint, avoid repetition by choosing which keywords you’ll put in your headline, Talks about, Top Skills & Bio.
• About/Bio- Who are you, what do you do, how do you do it, how can they reach you plus proof/testimonials? Your profile is 4x more likely to be viewed with an About section. Says why they should follow you and how you help solve problems & achieve goals. ChatGPT has made job search easier as you can see below. So enter the prompt [Generate a Linkedin Bio based on my resume[copy paste resume].

• Skills- Definitely one of the strongest ways to optimize your profile is to highlight your key skills. Just like in the resume, you should keep this relevant to your niche, jobs you’re applying for, and your industry. Linkedin allows you to add up to 50 skills totals in your profile. That is a very huge opportunity. Just last month, the site also added a Top skills segment under the Bio Section where you can spotlight your top 5 skills at the top of your profile. It now also allows you to spotlight key skills under each job, education, course, and project. Once you’ve listed your skills, reorder them such that the most impactful ones to your job or business show up first in your profile. The 3 categories of skills you should use are industry knowledge e.g. project management, tools & technologies e.g. Figma, and interpersonal skills eg team building. So how do I know which specific skills to highlight in my cv or profile?

View a job opening you’d apply for on Li and you’ll see the top 10 skills required as shown below.

Use tools like Jobhero that can show you top skills based on a job title

Go to your profile skills section and let Linkedin recommend top skills based on similar profiles or job titles.

• Body- Your Linkedin can act as a mini website for you. Go to your Add profile section in your profile and click on each section and fill in as many details as you can. This includes projects and volunteer work. For your work experience, it’s easier to first edit this section on your resume and then copy-paste the details to Linkedin to keep the bullet format. For resume writing guides and tips, check our earlier articles here. Keep it execution-focused and highlight your accomplishments and impact over simply listing your job duties. Here are the things I’ve done and here’s the impact my work had on the business. Jobseekers should tell their stories from the perspective of someone trying to determine whether or not they want to do business with them, hire them or respond to an InMail. Use all the content formats available ie add images, sites, or documents to showcase your work in action. For instance, a sales trainer can add a photo where they are coordinating training for staff under that Job.

By now you have seen how defining your career path or dream job makes it easier to customize your profile for what you’re strictly looking for.

Your profile is clear, complete, and compelling. What next?

3. Your content marketing strategy

Share updates prospects or customers will find insightful, useful, or provocative. In addition to providing valuable content, you should create a content strategy that promotes you as an expert without being too self-promotional. More on this in the 80–20 principle at the end of the article.

A content strategy should include;

• Set clear niche and goals- What are you trying to achieve? Is it brand awareness, increasing audience engagement, driving sales, getting jobs, or driving website traffic?
• Create visually compelling content- Use high-quality images, use graphics & typography eg icons & emojis, and incorporate color
• Experiment with content types- Videos, Texts, Blogs, articles, live streams, newsletter, files, polls, Behind the scenes, influencer partnerships. Use every Linkedin format for a complete content strategy and analyze what performs. Other examples of content types are personal stories, milestones, relatable content, funny content, motivational content, Ask Me Anything, opinion posts, toolkits, how-to-guide content, tutorials, infographic, tricks & hacks, quotes, trending topics, giveaways, etc.
• Learn about Linkedin SEO- optimize your profile, use relevant keywords & hashtags, engage with your audience, and post high-quality valuable content that’s based on the 3 marketing goals Educate: Inform: Entertain. You can add Promotional and Conversational pillars too where you promote a product or service offered or talk about trending topics, issues, news, opinions to spark engagement.
• Leverage Linkedin tools- Use as many features on the site as you can and keep updated on new product updates. For instance just this week Li released a new update that allows you to write better Inmails using the AI Helper. By being active on the platform, you can be abreast of any changes that you can tap into.
• Organise your content around 3–4 content pillars or categories- This will make it easier to plan content around certain topical ideas or goals. Examples include My Career(Your journey, your offering, things you wish you had known, hacks etc), My Industry(Industry updates and reports, news), Profile growth(Algorithm SEO, Captions, Headline, Profile updates, Consistency)
• The 80–20 principle- Be personable/humanize your brand. Don’t sound like an automated AI bot every time. Be approachable by being human, showing empathy, likeable and even using humor. Divide your content into 80% industry valuable content, and 20% you/behind the scenes. Some leaders who do this well on their socials are Richard Branson and Barack Obama. Richard frequently shares photos on vacation or everyday activities while Obama annually shares the music & movies that inspire him. The late Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore also spent a lot of time engaging with customers and employees directly and speaking their language. Why is this important? As we explained here on emotional branding, people are connected to stories and other people and not companies. As Maya Angelou also said, people remember how you made them feel. It’s why brands like Nike and Coke can connect to a billion people across regions or languages. It’s why as you can see below, company leaders have more followers and engagement than the enterprises they lead. I also see this mistake with Company Linkedin pages where most of the content shared is on company products or executive leadership instead of tapping into powerful storytelling through the lens of their employees and customers which has more impact. For content to be engaging, invest in vulnerability and community.

Barack Obama’s new Summer playlist

Company vs Leaders Following

4. LinkedIn SEO Cheatsheet

How will you ensure your brand is visible and relevant as you go along?

• Include searchable keywords in your bio and headline
• Study your analytics. Your dashboard analytics can be found in your profile on top of your Li header. For more Linkedin analytics, you can use the Linkedin Social Selling Index or SSI. This URL is how you locate it. This shows you a comprehensive overview of how you interacted with your network over the past 7 weeks. You’ll get a score for the establishment of your personal brand which is influenced by the completeness of your own profile and the quantity & quality of the produced contents.

Tracking key metrics

• Write down your overall profile insights(reach, impressions, followers, profile visits)
• Track the top 3 best-performing posts overall
• Track top 3 best performing posts per metric(Follows, DMs, reach, reposts, likes, comments, engagement etc)
• Determine your goals for the upcoming month
• Go back to your top 3 posts per metric and create more content like it depending on the metric you’re aiming for. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.
• Interact with your followers. Don’t be a dormant account or one of those who log in once a year to like a couple of posts. The algorithm is only designed to show the most active profiles first. Connect & nurture your online relationships. Keep yourself memorable & on top of mind every time by being consistent.
• Be authentic, natural, and show up a lot. It takes a lot of time and effort to maintain a social media profile. Put in the work and you’ll see the results.
• Stick to one niche and post consistently on specific topics. Be a master of one and not a Jack of all trades. Be intentional also about who you’re connecting with and the pages and groups that you follow.
• Use a tone of voice and visuals aligned with your branding. Do not try to be like someone else.
• Use hashtags in the caption according to the topic of the post
• Be credible, build trust and authority- check spelling, picture quality, facts, etc. Don’t SPAM your audience. Provide value and reduce the signal vs noise ratio of the site. Create shareable & saveable content so your network becomes your free distributor. Part of making your socials more useful is also by using the privacy & security settings. Don’t be scared to mute, unconnect & block people for whatever reasons.
• Collaborate/ get tagged on posts. By working with other top voices, you build a more credible brand.
• Keep learning and improving yourself so you can have more to offer and compete better in the job market against peers
• Join Industry specific groups and newsletters so you can network across the globe and take part in important conversations regarding trends and best practices.

5. Top Linkedin mistakes we see as Recruiters

• DON’T SPAM- Recruiters get spammed with many His or Hellos from jobseekers. Whenever I reach out to a fellow prof, I make my message short, clear & straight to the point with a clear subject line. People take time to respond to messages that are worth responding to. Especially leaders or recruiters. Use the new AI Helper of ChatGPT or visit our earlier post to draft meaningful messages to recruiters. You can also reach out to current or former employees of a company you’re interested in for an employer review.
• Empty profiles- Lack of important info eg updated experience to zero engagement activity on their profile. If you can spend 5 hours a week on social media, make sure 40% of that is on professional networking.
• Fear- Because of the professionalism of the site, most people are afraid to comment or share their opinions thinking there’s a right & wrong way to engage on the site. Remember there’s a person behind every profile. As long as you’re not rude or disrespectful, your time will be useful. Be willing to take the risk.
• Accuracy of data- Linkedin just like all other social platforms, is only as accurate as the data that’s fed into its system. Some info may be inaccurate or not updated. We’ve also seen many cases of fraud reports either from fake employee profiles or salespeople. Beware as a job applicant about this reality so you don’t fall victim to frequent job scams.
• Work smart, not hard- Use social media publishers like Hootsuite or Buffer to repurpose, repost, and calendarize your content. A long Li post can be broken down into a Twitter thread, blog post, Tiktok post etc.
• Separate yourself from the current job or company you’re working for.- This means don’t let your entire professional identity be tied to your current employer. This will keep changing as you grow. Just like Donald Trump or Michael Jordan, identify several avenues to showcase your work and brand. It’s a smart way to manage brand risk as well. Your brand should be tied to your life purpose, values, unique skill set and community.
• Adopting a One size fits all social media strategy-Every social media is built differently and for a different purpose and content. Certain networks work better for certain professionals too. Eg Instagram is better for creatives like designers, photographers, lifestyle & media profs. Linkedin is better for business corporate. Twitter is better for news media. And Tiktok is a mix of it all. Types of content work differently too. Long articles and text can work on Linkedin but short 1min videos work for Instagram, Twitter or Tiktok. The key is to define what your goal is and who your target audience is and find them where they are. You should also focus on what feels more natural to you eg I prefer writing to doing Videos. You can also try out several platforms and based on your ROI, narrow down to those that are working for you. If you’re getting better leads from Tiktok than Linkedin, it makes more sense to invest more effort into what’s working and not necessarily what’s trending or popular. It’s also important to note that any tool is only as good as the person behind it. I’ve found great HR & Career Channels on Instagram that I enjoy more than Linkedin where posts are usually longer. If you curate your social media following well, any platform will get your career growing.

Next steps;

1. Define and refine your life and career purpose. For this, I recommend this FREE Linkedin Learning course that has free editable exercises too. Once you’re clear on your life purpose and dream job, the rest of the efforts will be seamless.
2. Follow it up with this simple course on personal branding
3. Finish it up with this course on Linkedin profiles

Got some more tips, share them below. All the best!