7 LinkedIn Profile Tips For Business Owners To Stand Out

How do you know your LinkedIn profile looks good?

Simple.

When people reach out to YOU to work with you because of how your LinkedIn profile looks!

This is a great sign your LinkedIn profile stands out and is attracting potential clients to you.

In this guide, you’ll learn the best ways LinkedIn profile tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile so that it stands out from everyone else.

LinkedIn Profile Tips (Key Points)

If you’re short on time, to optimize your LinkedIn profile you need to:

• Add a professional profile picture
• Explain how you help people in your LinkedIn headline
• Add calls to action to your sales funnel to generate leads on LinkedIn
• Get LinkedIn recommendations to build trust with prospects
• Write or share content on LinkedIn to build brand awareness
• Optimize your LinkedIn summary section with high converting sales copy

How to use LinkedIn to generate leads is covered extensively in Week 2 of my lead generation online training program. To learn more about what’s included, watch this video.

How can I make my LinkedIn profile stand out?

Here are 7 best tips to make your LinkedIn profile stand out:

1. Add a professional profile picture

Your LinkedIn profile picture is one of the first things people see and it’s important to make a good first impression.

In fact, studies have found your profile is 14 times more likely to be viewed if you have a profile photo than if you don’t.

That’s not surprising when you consider we’re human and naturally find other humans more captivating than a pictureless piece of writing.

However, not all profile pictures are equal.

It’s important you choose a professional LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn after all is a professional social networking channel for business and work. It’s very different to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels.

Here are some tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile picture:

• Smile (as naturally as possible)
• Look straight at the camera
• Don’t have distractions in the background,
• Have good lighting
• Your face should take up at least 60% of the frame
• Make sure the photo is in focus (not blurry)

You don’t need expensive photo software or a professional camera to have a professional profile photo. If you need help creating a profile picture, use your smartphone to start and then edit it using online graphic design software (perfect for beginners).

2. Use a descriptive profile job title headline

A big mistake LinkedIn users make is to use the LinkedIn headline for their job title. Instead, your LinkedIn headline should be more than just your professional job title.

Your LinkedIn headline is your chance to be succinctly expressive about who you are, what you do, and most importantly how you help people.

It’s really a great opportunity to make a unique headline that entices people to know more about you.

There are lots of variations to creating an effective LinkedIn headline, but in general, I recommend explaining at least one of these things:

• Who you are
• Who you help
• How you make their work/life better

For example, “Organisational Psychologist who helps realtors work smarter” or “Tax expert helping business owners save thousands of dollars in taxes”.

Your headline is also read by LinkedIn, and headlines that read well – and include keywords about what you do – will increase your ranking in LinkedIn searches by other people.

3. Add calls-to-action to your sales funnel

If you’re a business owner using LinkedIn to generate leads, it’s important you have links to your sales funnel.

If you only send people to your website, it’s unlikely to get a lot of conversions (the average is 1-2%). But if you send people to your sales funnel, you’ll get a lot more conversions (the average is 20%).

So on my LinkedIn profile, I have links to my funnel saying something along the lines of “Watch my free masterclass training“.

You can add a link to your sales funnel by editing your LinkedIn profile. Then scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see the option to add a link to your website at the top of your profile, as seen here:

I get a lot of people who view my LinkedIn profile and convert to leads just with the links to my funnel on my LinkedIn profile.

You can also add a link to your sales funnel using the “Featured Content” section on LinkedIn as seen here:

The featured content section on LinkedIn allows you to attach an image, headline, and description to your sales funnel.

Remember, the more people that go to your sales funnel, the more leads, appointments, and clients you’ll get off the back of that.

4. Get LinkedIn recommendations

There’s an option on LinkedIn where you can send notifications to others you’ve worked with to ask them if they can write a recommendation for your profile.

So, if you have had success with lots of clients, don’t be afraid to ask some of them to write a LinkedIn recommendation for you.

LinkedIn recommendations go a long way in building trust so that people are more likely to connect and work with you.

5. Describe achievements, not just skills

Instead of just listing your abilities or responsibilities in each job, list examples of evidence where you’ve made a clear impact at work, e.g. “Negotiated a restructuring of key operations in the business, which increased productivity by 15%”.

For example, instead of saying we help businesses with marketing, we say we help businesses get 10, 15, 30 or more appointments each month. This is a lot more specific and gets people more excited in learning more.

This will make your experience more credible and impressive than if you used buzzwords like “motivated” or “effective” without further explanation.

Buzzwords are overused and therefore less convincing.

6. Write or share content on LinkedIn

Writing or sharing LinkedIn posts is a simple way to display your knowledge and reputation.

For example, when I discovered a way to get a huge discount on a LinkedIn premium account, I posted this to my LinkedIn feed, as seen here:

You’ll appear like an authority if you make a habit of sharing your published – or original – content on LinkedIn.

Unfortunately, posting content alone doesn’t actually generate a lot of leads, but it does help with brand awareness. If you need help with generating leads on LinkedIn I recommend you watch this free training instead.

7. Customize Your Profile URL

Customize your URL so it’s easy to recognize, remember and type in.

It’s simple, really – just go to Edit Profile, click on the setting icon next to your URL, do the same on the next page in the right section titled “Your public profile URL”, and give it an appropriate name (e.g. your own name).

Using this URL in your email signatures, on your website or business card is also an excellent way to share your professional profile widely.

Make a start on these, and you’ll instantly gain an advantage over your peers who haven’t made an improvement in these areas.

8. Optimize your LinkedIn summary

One of the best tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile is to optimize your LinkedIn summary section by treating it as a mini sales page.

A lot of business owners completely ignore the LinkedIn summary section or they’ll just use it to describe a few skills and abilities.

Instead, I recommend writing short sales copy that explains how you help clients. If you need help with what to say on your LinkedIn summary page, I recommend using an AI writing marketing assistant.

Additional tips for your LinkedIn summary page:

• Think about what sets you apart from the competition
• Explain how long have been in the industry and any other relevant experience
• Feel free to use metrics, stats or quotes from past employers/clients

Conclusion

In the business world, networking is key. And there’s arguably no better platform for building relationships and showcasing your skills than LinkedIn.

Now that you have a professional-looking LinkedIn profile, it’s time to start using LinkedIn to generate leads and sales appointments.

With the right strategy, you can generate anywhere from 5-30 leads and sales appointments each month using LinkedIn without spending a penny on paid advertising. How? Click here to find out more.

P.S. Like this article? Feel free to also connect with me on LinkedIn.