Do you want to truly be successful with LinkedIn? LinkedIn is becoming one of the biggest social media platforms the world over. Just look at the search results every time you look someone up! Trevor McClintock, Belfast Marketing director presents this handy guide to successfully optimizing your LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn can do much more than find you the right connections; it can help increase conversions, increase B2B sales, and land you that dream job you've always wanted. Social media is king of the world right now, and Trevor McClintock shows you the easy way in a step-by-step guide how to fully optimize your LinkedIn profile.

1. Optimizing LinkedIn
Profiles
Trevor McClintock, Belfast | The Essential Guide to Optimizing LinkedIn profiles
In this guide, you will learn how to properly utilize certain tags to help boost your own profiles, and at
the same time help generate leads for C-R-L. This includes how to write a professional headline, and a
professional summary.

2. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profiles: Easy Step-by-Step Guide
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

3. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
LinkedIn is the web’s biggest professional network, and sometimes it’s pushed
aside for other social media sites like Facebook. But if you are a professional or
own any type of business, then LinkedIn is essential for boasting your personal
business profiles, as well as, company or business pages. LinkedIn can create solid
leads, and allows you to build business relationships that can get you noticed by
customers.
PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPH
Obviously having a professional headshot is a great way to attract new leads. This
allows for a more personable approach – putting a face to the professional so to
speak.
Facebook and LinkedIn differ greatly, so if you still have your high school photo in
your profile image, it’s probably best that it be removed and replaced with a more
professional looking picture.
WRITE A PROFESSIONAL HEADLINE
Your LinkedIn Professional headline will be a few sentences of bold text – LinkedIn
allows for 120 characters maximum, and for the most part that’s all you really
need.
The professional headline can be found below your name on your LinkedIn
profile, and can really help increase connections, whether potential clients or
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

4. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
other B2B connections. The Headline is often overlooked because LinkedIn
automatically populates it with your current job. However, if you want to increase
how “searchable or findable” you are, then enticing potential connections
through a well thought out and optimized header is essential.
A few examples:
It’s best to have your job title first, example:
“In House SEO, social media, marketing and advertising Manager at ABC Company
| Your home for amazing things”
Or
“The Belfast Marketing Company | Digital Marketing Manager | Belfast”
This particular character key – ‘|’ (long bar) is a great way to separate words so
you can add more essential tags.
MAKING YOUR PROFILE SEO FRIENDLY
Even though there are billions of searches each year on LinkedIn for a name or
company name, we have to keep in mind they are still searching for particular
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

5. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
keywords. LinkedIn search results are sorted by relevance (importance) – this is
LinkedIn’s very own algorithm. Please remember that although you might be
tempted to accept every connection that comes your way, you should still be a bit
picky – I’ll explain further…
Your 1st degree connections will always show up first, because they are
“completed profiles” – SEO heavy and keyword enriched. The next category is 2nd
degree, then of course, 3rd degree. Following on the heels of 2nd and 3rd degree
connections is people connected through groups – this is why joining groups is so
important.
So what does this all really mean?
Because most people are unaware of the potential for LinkedIn, and that you can
even optimize LinkedIn for better connections, it is extra important to be:
a) A 1st degree connection to as many people as possible (grow your network)
b) Have a profile that’s 100% complete (this even includes your profile
picture)
LIST CONTACT INFORMATION
You will find this at the bottom of the profile but it’s still important to list the
appropriate contact information.
LIST ALL SKILLS
Take full advantage of the skills section, list as many skills as you can. LinkedIn
Skill search can help you out here – type the skill into the “skills search box” and
LinkedIn will compare that term to a list of other similar terms, showing you how
popular each is. Edit your profile and use the most popular terms. Show everyone
your stuff and what you are made of – here is a sample below:
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

6. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

7. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
ENDORSE AND BE ACTIVE
As you can see from the image above, endorsing one another is also very essential
–so please give generously when it comes to endorsements.
GET RECOMMENDATIONS
Find previous clients who were very happy with your service or product and ask
for a recommendation – including existing clients, previous work places etc.
SHOWCASE ACHEIVEMENTS
If you just knocked them dead so to speak in B2B sales for the month, then
please, shout it out loud. Display in your profile under achievements – even in a
status update for everyone to see and share.
LinkedIn also give you the option to add projects, languages, publications,
honours & Awards, test scores, courses, patents, certifications, volunteering and
causes to your profile – take advantage of all. The point to remember here is if
you have taken a course for example that puts you in front of the competition
then people need to know that.
LINK YOUR COMPANY PAGE TO CURRENT WORK INFORMATION
By linking your current company’s page to current work information, you are
given a great opportunity to cross promote or brand yourself along with your
company’s services.
KEYWORDS
The keywords you will be using should be targeted – this means you will be
placing keywords in specific spots to get the most attention possible. Use as many
keywords as you can that relate to you, your brand, service or product.
The keywords you will be using are to be used in different sections of the profile.
Keywords in your Name, Headline, CompanyName, Job Title and Skills will rank
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

8. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
higher in the search results. If these key fields are left empty or filled with generic
terms, you will lose out in more ways than you ever thought.
Using All Fields will give you the Advantage
You have the option to join 50 groups (not counting subgroups), join and
take advantage
You have 120 characters available for headline – use them all and create a
descriptive, interesting and keyword enriched headline
You have 2000 characters available for summary – use them (more on this
below)
There are 1000 characters available for interests – make use of it
In summary:
Make full use of all the fields and sections you have available and paint a detailed
picture to reinforce your own brand, as well as, a great picture of your company,
product or service.
Please Note:
Keywords in the “Advice for Contacting” section is excluded from LinkedIn search
– don’t worry about this section when it comes to keywords.
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

9. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
AVOID THE SAME OLD DESCRIPTIVES
The following “Buzz” words have been way over used – try and avoid them:
Creative
Organisational
Effective
Motivated
Extensive experience
Track record
Innovative
Responsible (honestly if you weren’t responsible you would more than
likely never hold down a job)
Analytical
Problem solving
Communication skills
Dynamic
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

10. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
SAMPLE SUMMARY
USING A VARIETY OF KEYWORDS THAT MEAN THE SAME THING WILL
HELP YOU BE FOUND
Just think about all the different ways of saying the same thing, and then vary
those ways throughout the summary, and the rest of the profile. Make
meaningful sentences, and please avoid just keyword stuffing – this makes the
profile look very spammy and unprofessional.
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing

11. Trevor McClintock, Belfast | Optimizing LinkedIn
By Trevor McClintock
REMBER SEOBENEFITS EXTEND BEYOND LINKEDIN
A fully optimized LinkedIn profile can have far-reaching effects. By branding
yourself and your company, your LinkedIn profile can appear in top results, simply
because you are connected to the company. A recent analysis done by
BrandYourself, found that LinkedIn was the social network most often appearing
at the top of the Google search results.
What does this all mean for you?
Simply put, this means more opportunities, including job offers, clients, business
deals, etc., could literally start pouring in from your personal LinkedIn profiles.
Please don’t forget to take full advantage of all LinkedIn has to offer you –
including the amount of characters you use…
Use them all!
Trevor McClintock, Director of Marketing