20 steps to a better LinkedIn profile in 2024

 Professionals – particularly salespeople – invest a lot of time and resource in building brands. We’re trained at it – and we’re good at it. But how often do we apply those skills to building our own personal brands? For many of us, it’s nothing like as often as we should. I know that there’s more that I could be doing to build my own profile on LinkedIn – and I know that I’m not alone.

We don’t get around to it because we’re busy, and because it can sometimes feel selfish or egotistical to invest time in marketing ourselves. However, when we neglect personal branding, we don’t just sell ourselves short – we also miss a big opportunity, from a sales perspective. The impact of employees who share content is huge. And the most effective employee sharers are those who’ve built their personal brand on LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn profile page is the foundation for your personal branding. And we regularly add features to increase its capabilities as a personal marketing platform and give you new ways to signal your skills and motivations. If you haven’t checked your profile page recently, you might well find new ways to build your personal brand.

Here are 20 profile features you should check and update for 2024. Some of them are very quick wins, some of them may take a little bit of time – but all of them are very worthwhile. They will help to give you the LinkedIn profile and personal brand that you deserve.

1. Choose the right profile picture for LinkedIn.

Your profile picture is your calling card on LinkedIn – it’s how people are introduced to you and (visual beings that we are) it governs their impressions from the start. There are some great posts explaining how to pick the right profile picture on LinkedIn – but here are some quick tips to start with: make sure the picture is recent and looks like you, make up your face takes up around 60% of it (long-distance shots don’t stand out), wear what you would like to wear to work, and smile with your eyes!

2. Add a background photo.

Your background photo is the second visual element at the top of your profile page. It grabs people’s attention, sets the context and shows a little more about what matters to you. More than anything, the right background photo helps your page stand out, engage attention and stay memorable.

3. Make your headline more than just a job title.

There’s no rule that says the description at the top of your profile page has to be just a job title. Use the headline field to say a bit more about how you see your role, why you do what you do, and what makes you tick. If you’ve got sales reps at your company who are on the ball with social selling, then take a quick look at their profile page headlines for inspiration. They will almost certainly have more than their job titles in there.

4. Record and display your name pronunciation.

Tired of having your name mispronounced? You can help solve that by recording and displaying your name pronunciation on your LinkedIn profile. With it, people can listen to how you pronounce your name, so they can say it correctly. Learn more about adding this feature here.

5. Turn your summary into your story.

The first thing to say about your LinkedIn summary is – make sure you have one! It’s amazing how many people still leave this field blank when creating their LinkedIn profile. Your summary is your chance to tell your own story – so don’t just use it to list your skills or the job titles you’ve had. Try to bring to life why those skills matter – and the difference they can make to the people you work with. Don’t be afraid to invest some time, try a few drafts, and run your summary past people you know. This is your most personal piece of content marketing – and it’s worth the effort.

6. Declare war on buzzwords.

Buzzwords are adjectives that are used so often in LinkedIn headlines and summaries that they become almost completely meaningless. Our regular rankings of the most over-used buzzwords include terms like ‘specialized’, ‘leadership’, ‘focused’, ‘strategic’, ‘experienced’, ‘passionate’, ‘expert’, ‘creative’, ‘innovative’ and ‘certified’. Now I’m not saying you can’t describe yourself as these things – or that they don’t matter. However, just using these words won’t convince people that you have these qualities. You need to demonstrate them as well – both in the way you describe yourself, and in the way you use LinkedIn profile features to show what you’re about.

7. Grow your network.

One of the easiest and yet most relevant ways to grow your LinkedIn network is to synch your profile with your email address book. This enables LinkedIn to suggest people you could connect with. It’s amazing how effective this can be at surfacing relevant people for you to reach out to – and no connection requests are sent without your permission, so you can vet all of the potential connections. Beyond this, get into the habit of following up meetings and conversations with LinkedIn connection requests – it’s a great way of keeping your network vibrant and up to date.

8. List your relevant skills.

It’s one of the quickest of quick wins on LinkedIn – scroll through the list of skills and identify those that are relevant to you. Doing so helps to substantiate the description in your Headline and Summary, and provides a platform for others to endorse you. However, the key here is staying relevant. A long list of skills that aren’t really core to who you are and what you do, can start to feel unwieldy. Take time for a spring clean of your skills list every now and then.

9. Spread the endorsement love.

Endorsements from other members substantiate your skills and increase your credibility. How do you get endorsed on LinkedIn? For starters, go through your network and identify connections who you feel genuinely deserve an endorsement from you – that’s often the trigger for people to return the favour. Don’t be afraid to reach out with a polite message asking for endorsement for a few key skills as well. Remember though – relevance matters. Reach out to people whose endorsement you’d really value.

10. Manage your endorsements more proactively.

Once endorsements start to come in, you might find that they skew the emphasis of your LinkedIn profile in ways that don’t reflect who you are. It could be that your core area of expertise is content marketing for example, but the people who’ve worked with you on events are more enthusiastic endorsers. Be proactive in managing your endorsements list using the edit features in the Skills section of your profile – you can choose which to show, and which to hide.

11. Request recommendations.

Endorsements give people viewing your profile a quick, visual sense of what you’re valued for. Recommendations take things a step further. They are personal testimonials written to illustrate the experience of working with you. There’s a handy drop-down menu in the Recommendations section of your profile that makes it easy to reach out to specific contacts and request recommendations. Take the time to think about who you would most value a recommendation from – and personalize your request. It’s worth the extra effort.

12. Showcase your passion for learning.

When you complete a course on LinkedIn Learning, you’ll have the opportunity to add a course certificate to your LinkedIn profile. You do this from within the Learning History section of your LinkedIn Learning account – where you can also send updates about your learning to your network if choose.

13. Share media and marketing collateral.

The marketing collateral that you produce for your business can add an extra dimension to your own profile as well. Sharing case studies, white papers and other brand content helps to show what the business you work for is all about – and helps people understand what makes you tick. It demonstrates passion and commitment as well.

14. Share relevant content from your LinkedIn feed.

It’s one thing to have a network of connections on LinkedIn – it’s far better to have an active role in that network, appearing in your connections’ LinkedIn feeds in a way that adds value for them. Sharing relevant content with your network is one of the most accessible ways of doing this. You can make a start by keeping a close eye on your LinkedIn feed, and sharing content that you find genuinely interesting – and that aligns with your point of view.

15. Add comments.

Sharing is great – but it’s just the starting point. When you add comments to your shares, you give yourself greater prominence within the feed and start to express why you think a particular piece of content matters. Well-expressed comments also enable you to share a broader range of content. It might be that you don’t agree with a point of view but still find it interesting, for example. A comment that can express that viewpoint starts to establish your opinion and thought-leadership. It’s also more likely to draw additional comments, which then raise your profile across LinkedIn. Bear this mind when you’re writing your comment – and make sure you’re saying something you’re happy for people to associate with you.

16. Follow relevant influencers in your industry.

Following relevant influencers on LinkedIn helps to put a range of interesting content in your feed, which you can then share with others when you think it adds value. It also helps to give context to your LinkedIn profile, demonstrating your passion for what you do.

17. Turn on Creator mode.

Creator mode is a profile setting that can help you grow your reach and influence on LinkedIn. You can turn on creator mode to get access to additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base on LinkedIn.

18. Spotlight the services you offer.

Consultants, freelancers, those working for smaller businesses, and others can showcase the services they offer via a LinkedIn Service Page. LinkedIn Service Pages are dedicated landing pages that showcase your services and businesses at no cost and operate on a request and proposal model. Learn more about Service Pages and how to set them up here.

19. Check out collaborative articles and share your contribution, if invited.

Collaborative articles are relatively new on LinkedIn. These articles begin as AI-powered conversation starters, developed with our editorial team, but they aren’t complete without insights from our members. Professionals are asked to contribute their thoughts to their area of expertise in them, ultimately resulting in an article showcasing a variety of perspectives on topics relevant to the professional community.

Here’s an example of a collaborative article. You, as a member, can react to each contribution or the article overall. Additionally, you might be invited to provide your perspective on a collaborative article. If so, it’s a great opportunity to share your knowledge and a path toward earning a “Top Voice” badge.

20. If you are looking to grow your business on LinkedIn, consider Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you get more conversations with the people who matter most. Compared to members who don’t use it, LinkedIn Sales Navigator users build 4.3x more connections on LinkedIn, and it leads to 42% larger deals, 17% higher win-rates, and 15% more pipeline.

4 Things You Need to Do Weekly to Grow Your Business

With goal-setting activities underway, you need to start coming up with ways to show results and that you are trying to achieve your goals. When it comes to growing your business and ensuring the right blend of the market, there 4 Things you need to be doing Weekly (if possible, Daily) to continue to grow your business. 

Now you might be asking – Why Weekly? Why not monthly? Or Quarterly? To be honest, if you want to see a patterned growth that can become predictable to future targets, you need to be in the habit of doing these at the very least weekly. Otherwise, it leaves a lot of gaps in the procedure as time passes, plus you end up missing opportunities more often if you don’t regularly and frequently check-in.

Prospecting/Connecting with New Clients

Now, this might seem like a no-brainer, but is it? It takes a great deal of work, as you have experienced, trying to get your product or service out, so your niche client sees you. The key is not to stop doing this once your doors are open. It doesn’t have to take long; it could be 15 minutes a day – it could mean engaging on social mediacold pitching a new vendor/client, or even going to a breakfast networking event once in a while. These are all great opportunities to expand and meet others.

There are a lot of amazing “systems” out there to help you in the process if you need help implementing it.

Keeping your relationships warm with your Existing Clients

By taking this time and implementing it, it, in the end, becomes priceless. Some of the ways to keep your relationships warm could be email marketing, special promotions, thank you events for certain groups of clients – the sky is the limit. This also doesn’t have to cost an arm-and-a-leg to do either – it can be as simple as a personal email to a client to ensure they know they are appreciated to “customer gratitude” events. These show to your clients that you are not only appreciative of their money and time, but also that they have in some way added value to your business as well – for without their comments or feedback, you might not be in the place you are right now!

Engaging relationships with Media

Now, I’m not just saying “take out an ad in the paper,” I am meaning having engaging conversations with their marketing teams to see if there are missed opportunities (sometimes they will strike a deal if there are costs applicable). There are also opportunities for publications that distribute to readers for free that you could reach out to. If you are in a cottage country area – do they have a magazine that they spread to the seasonal residents that could update them on what is new in your business and showcase you? I’m thinking of resources like the Cottage Country Connection etc.

They also have many connections that could maybe help you in your branding updates etc. if you are not satisfied with your current suppliers etc. They also can share your business with their network if they see a need and make this something of a reciprocal relationship.

Referral List Building

This is touched on in your conversations with media and keeping your conversations warm with your current clientele a little, but what harm is there to ask for referrals from your existing client base. What about Affiliate credits? Does it make sense to monetize your referrals through Affiliate Status?

It is an effective strategy to utilize their already built network of connections to expand your outreach further – and you could return the favor to them as well as time passes as to create a symbiotic relationship of growth and exchange. 

It never hurts to better support local businesses (particularly in a time of crisis) to keep them open and to keep asking and to share in return as you find clients as well.

Is that it?

No that isn’t it, but that is it for now – let’s face it – by doing these steps every week, not only are you helping to keep your business top of mind, but you are also opening up opportunities to monitor and track the different niches in case there was one that was missed, as well, it helps you identify where you need to put more effort/time into related to your marketing as to ensure that you can keep these conversations flowing, often and with favors returned.

Did we miss anything? Are there some other Must-Dos each week? What about programs to help you set up and implement but down the road, brings value to your business as well for future goals. We look forward to hearing what you think!