Overview
This LinkedIn Profile guide will cover the following areas:
- Overview
- Introduction
- Profile Photo
- Banner Image
- Examples
- Tagline
- Drive Clicks
- Show up in Searches
- Tying it all together
- Featured Section
- About Section
- Example
- Work Experience
- Speaking about your present & past experiences
- More Tips on Work Experience
- Education
- Volunteer Experience
- Skills & Endorsements
- Example
- Recommendations
- Settings
- URL
- Public Visibility
- Creator Mode
- Instructions
- Thank you!
- Follow me on LinkedIn for more social selling tips
- Sales Development & Enablement Managers
- LinkedIn Content Creation Course
Introduction
This guide is designed specifically for people looking to drive sales & revenue with their LinkedIn profile. While it's specifically created for SDR/BDRs, anyone looking to drive sales will benefit from the tips shared here.
To make the most out of this course, take each lesson step by step. The material is super short and high-impact.
Enjoy & feel free to message me with any questions!
Profile Photo
Your headshot should be relevant to your industry. If you’re in social media or tech, a t-shirt might be fitting. For finance, a suit might be more appropriate.
The headshot is pretty simple, but here are a few guidelines:
- You should be the only person or thing in your profile picture.
- Take a fresh photo with a wall as a backdrop; don't just crop yourself out of an old picture with friends.
- Use remove.bg to customize your background. Add color, scenery, etc.
- For teams, it’s best to have uniform backgrounds so people can easily recognize the company you’re a part of. This helps boost brand awareness and affinity. Check out how the team at Chili Piper does it with the red ring around their images:
Banner Image
Your banner is the first thing people see once they visit your profile. I recommend using a company photo here. If your company has materials for LinkedIn, that’s awesome. If not, I recommend creating something on Canva.
Remember - your profile is like the landing page of a website; you want it to lead visitors in the right direction.
Here’s what it should include:
- Your company logo
- What you do and who you do it for
- A call-to-action (CTA)
Examples
Mor Assouline
Tom Boston
Tagline
Your tagline (aka headline) on LinkedIn should serve two purposes:
- Drive clicks
- Show up in searches
Drive Clicks
For the first part, you’ll want to be clear on what you do and who you do it for. You want your ideal customer to say “Hey, they’re helping people like me! Where can I learn more?”
Something like “I help X do Y” is perfect. Or you can use specific words that make it clear to your ideal customer that you are helping them.
Here are a few examples:
- I help SDRs in SaaS social sell with LinkedIn.
- I help HR Leaders measure & track their employee engagement and culture.
- I help B2B founders build scalable, effective sales funnels.
You can also switch up the structure:
- Helping SDRs in SaaS social sell with LinkedIn
- Empowering HR Leaders to put culture first
- Building scalable sales processes for B2B founders
Show up in Searches
You also want to make sure when people (recruiters or prospects looking for your solution) use LinkedIn’s search bar that you’re coming up in the search results.
Here’s what’s next:
- Add your title. Example: SDR at Lessonly, Founder at Lio
- Add keywords. Example: SaaS Sales, B2B Marketing, Demand Gen
- Add an interest. Example: Mental Health Advocate, LinkedIn Enthusiast
Tying it all together
Now it’s time to bring it all together. My favorite tool is the divider “|” to separate different topics.
Here's mine as an example:
Featured Section
The featured section is one of the most under-utilized aspects of the LinkedIn profile. It’s one of the only places where you can actually link to your ideal destination for profile visitors, yet it’s commonly used to promote old successful posts.
Showcasing your posts and content is fine - but it comes second to your main call-to-action.
Before you choose what goes in that first spot in the featured section, ask yourself: where do I want my ideal customer to go once they get to my profile?
Is it a calendar/booking page? A link to the website? A demo? Link to it here.
About Section
Through all the other places in your profile, you should be able to sell your capabilities. Your bio is the chance to tell your story.
Tell visitors more about yourself and how you ended up doing what you do. Tell them why you love your work and the value you can add to them.
Keep it personal, but professional.
Important Tip: I recommend using first-person language unless you want your profile to be a static professional landing page like your resume.
Example
Work Experience
Speaking about your present & past experiences
People usually over-complicate this. Ditch the resume bullets and all the details. Instead, speak like a human.
I recommend this structure:
- 1 sentence on what the company does
- 1 sentence on what you did for the company.
- Include your role, work, and where it fits into the big picture.
- Link to company
Here’s an example:
Company X is a leading sales CRM for B2B startups. As an SDR, I achieved 110% quota attainment & helped hit our $50 million ARR target through unique prospecting and social selling strategies. Learn more at {company}.com
More Tips on Work Experience
Here are a few more tips for the work experience section of your profile:
- Make sure all the company logos pop up! If your company has a company page, make sure it’s linked so that their logo shows up on your profile. If they don’t have a company page, have them create a new one.
- Link to projects and the company website the same way you would in your featured section.
Education
Be sure to add your school as this is an awesome way to find commonalities with your prospects.
Important tips on Education
- Include your University and specific college. Some people only link to the business school, and some only to the general university. When looking for alumni at a specific company or to connect with, you want people from both schools to come up.
- Again - you want all logos to pop up here!
- Link to projects, extra-curriculars, and other activities here as you would in your work experience or featured sections.
Volunteer Experience
Showing others the organizations you work with or nonprofit boards you’re on is a great way to be personal in the sales process.
Write a brief description of your involvement with the organization and make sure the logo shows up when you add the company.
Skills & Endorsements
Skills and endorsements give you an opportunity to showcase your talents. Endorsements allow others to support your skill to increase legitimacy.
You can add up to 50 skills but only add 3 to your Top Skills (which will get seen the most by far)
- I recommend being super flexible with the skills you add. This way you’ll show up for more searches and recruitment.
- For your Top 3 Skills, keep them super relevant and diversify.
You’ll want to get endorsements on your skills to make them more legitimate.
Example
Recommendations
Recommendations are like skills, just a lot more meaningful.
They allow people you’ve worked with in the past to write up a few sentences on their experience working with you. This can be from mentors, managers, or clients.
You can request a recommendation directly on LinkedIn by visiting the person’s profile and clicking on “More.” See below.
Settings
To start, go to your profile and click “Edit Public Profile & URL.”
URL
- The LinkedIn default URL comes with a lot of extra numbers and letters.
- To change it, click “Edit your Custom URL.”
- Then, type whatever you like.
Public Visibility
Turn your profile’s Public Visibility on:
- Make sure your profile photo, name, headline and everything else are all set to “Show.”
- Public profiles get way more engagement and reach than those that are private.
Creator Mode
Instructions
- Turn Creator Mode on (image below) and add up to 5 hashtags.
- Hashtags should have over 10k followers and be relevant to the topics you post about.
Thank you!
Follow me on LinkedIn for more social selling tips
If you enjoyed this course, I think you'd get a ton from my weekly LinkedIn posts where I share tips on booking more meetings with LinkedIn. Feel free to follow me here.
Sales Development & Enablement Managers
I offer live team trainings where I'll teach your sales reps how to book more meetings on LinkedIn by sharing insightful content, joining the right conversations, and social selling.
By getting your entire team active, your company will get exposed to tons of new prospects and stay top of mind for your outstanding leads.
If you're interested in learning more, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or email me here!