A step by step guide: How to create the perfect LinkedIn profile (and why everyone needs to do it)

EDIT: This blog was updated on 4 August 2022.

Love it or loathe it, your LinkedIn profile needs to be impressive.

Why?

Because some potential clients will visit your profile (either by accident or design) then make judgements about whether you’re the right adviser or planner for them.

Even if you’re not a regular on LinkedIn, Google will index your profile and it will appear in the search results for your name. Potential clients run these searches, including those referred to you by existing clients or professional connections.

After the search, they typically browse the results, click selected links, and make judgements about your suitability as an adviser/planner based on what they see. Every link they could click needs to impress them.

That includes your LinkedIn profile.

Naturally, if you’re active on LinkedIn distributing content, commenting on other people’s posts, and interacting with other users (there are 33 million in the UK alone!) you will welcome visits to your profile from prospective clients.

Again though, judgements will be made, and conclusions reached.

Irrespective of how prospective clients land on your LinkedIn profile, it needs to impress them.

The key parts of a LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is made up of several sections which we’ll deal with broadly in the order they appear.

You can amend each of these sections by clicking on the small edit icon as shown in the image below:

Your profile URL

Think of your LinkedIn URL as a website address.

Unless you’ve changed it, LinkedIn will have allocated a URL to your profile. It’s usually pretty ugly and instantly forgettable.

You can easily solve the problem by personalising your URL. It’s a quick, easy way to differentiate you from other LinkedIn users, boost your credibility, and look more elegant when sharing the URL with others.

To customise your URL:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: Edit public profile & URL in the top right-hand corner of the page
Click: The blue edit icon to the right of your existing URL and type in your preferred URL to see if it’s available when you find one that is, click ‘Save’

The URL can include letters and numbers and be up to 100 characters in length. Although, you can’t use spaces or emojis.

We do recommend separating each word within your URL with a hyphen. It looks cleaner, and is easier to read.

Ideally, you should use a combination of your name and your business name.

Banner image

The banner is the section at the top of your profile, and it’s prime online real estate seen by everyone who visits your LinkedIn profile. However, it’s often overlooked and blank, or includes an ineffective if attractive image.

Instead, we recommend putting it to work by including the following in your banner:

Your logo (unless it’s for a corporate page where your logo is your profile picture)
Social proof; for example, an award, client testimonial, VouchedFor rating and so on
Contact details and website address
A short statement showing what you do, and who you do it for.

Click here to visit my LinkedIn profile and see this in action.

To change your banner image:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: Click on the edit button in the top right-hand corner of the banner image
Follow the steps from there

If you’re struggling to design an eye-catching banner, we can help. Simply email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk and we’ll be in touch.

Picture

According to LinkedIn, profiles with a photo get up to 21 times more views than those without.

Ideally, your photo should be professional and clear. Remember too that it’s small and round so make sure your face fills most of it.

To add a new image:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click on your photo
Follow the steps from there

You can now add a green or purple banner to your image to indicate that you are hiring or, alternatively, looking for a new position. It’s a new feature which might be handy from time to time.

You can also upload a profile video, instead of a profile image, if you really want to stand out!

Name

This might seem like an obvious one, but there’s an opportunity to be had.

As opposed to “Phil Bray”, my name on LinkedIn is “Phil Bray – Financial Services Marketing Specialist”.

Now, whenever someone tags me in a comment, anyone who reads it will know who I am and what my specialism is.

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click the edit button to the right of your name
Add your specialism or job title after your surname
Click: ‘Save’

Headline

Your headline is prominently displayed below your image, so it’s important you get it right.

Traditionally, the headline has only included a job title. That’s because it’s the default option offered by LinkedIn and because many people probably don’t understand why it should be more descriptive.

Instead of simply including your job title, you have 220 characters which means you can be more creative.

For example, include your job title e.g. Financial Planner, and explain three key things using terms and keywords potential clients might search for:

What you do
Who you do it for
Why people work with you

Getting your headline right is so important because:

It’s displayed prominently and it’s a way of sharing key information with people who don’t read the rest of your profile
It’s used by LinkedIn’s algorithm to decide your place in the search results
It appears next to your name in those search results
Google includes the description in its search results

To change your headline:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: The edit icon next to ‘More’, below the banner image
Scroll down: Complete your headline
Click: ‘Save’

Contact info

Too many LinkedIn profiles are missing basic contact details, which makes it harder for prospective clients to get in touch or learn more about you.

The contact details on your profile can include:

Your website address (you can add multiple websites, so include links to pages where clients can engage with your social proof, for example, the client stories page on your website or your VouchedFor profile)
Telephone number
Office address
Email address
Links to other social media channels
Your birthday (which always encourages messages from connections and potential clients)

To edit your contact details:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: The edit icon next to ‘More’, below the banner image
Scroll down: Click the edit icon next to ‘Contact info’
Click: ‘Apply’
Click: ‘Save’

Providing services

This feature offers a great way to showcase the services you and your business offers, right at the top of your profile.

The options are pre-determined by LinkedIn, and organised into 16 categories, one of which is “Finance”.

You can choose up to ten services. You also have up to 500 characters to describe the services you offer and the option to select a work location (including remote).

You can also request a review specifically for one of the services you offer.

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: ‘Open to’ and ‘Providing services’
Browse the categories or use the search bar to find the most relevant option(s)

About

The ‘About’ section on too many profiles is hard to read because even the most basic of formatting (italics, bold etc.), to break up the text isn’t possible.

That means many people who find your profile won’t read all the information in the ‘About’ section, skimming it at best.

To solve the problem, use sub-headings to highlight key information, including:

Who you work with
Your differentiators (there are no USPs in financial services)
The benefits of working with you (ideally including social proof)

Then, make your sub-headings stand out even further by:

Highlighting them in bold: There is no formatting functionality in this section of LinkedIn, however, you can copy and paste headlines in bold or italics by using YayText.
Adding icons or graphics: It’s also possible to cut and paste icons and graphics from Emojipedia into your ‘About’ description to make the sub-headings stand out. Choose carefully though. You don’t want your LinkedIn profile to look like a teenager’s latest WhatsApp or Snapchat message!

These tools and techniques mean visitors to your profile will take away key information even if they just skim read this section.

You can click here, then scroll down to the ‘About’ section to see how I’ve used the techniques and tools mentioned above to create engaging sub-headings on my LinkedIn profile.

Our head of content, Nick, also wrote a fantastic blog about the power of headings and sub-headings.

Featured

This is often overlooked, but it’s incredibly important as it allows you to showcase your work to people who visit your profile.

You can add:

Your latest or best LinkedIn posts
Articles that you’ve written and published on LinkedIn
Links to your website, perhaps to an important page or your latest blog
Media including images, documents, and presentations
Videos; it’s the perfect place to show off your client videos and demonstrate the value of financial planning. We’ve not seen any financial planners do this, so if you have client videos, now’s the time to add them and stand out!

If you don’t yet have a ‘Featured’ section on your profile, you will first need to:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: ‘Add profile section’
Open the ‘Recommended’ drop-down
Click: ‘Add featured’

If you already have this section, and simply want to add to it:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Scroll down to the ‘Featured’ section
Click: The Plus icon (+)
Select: Either Posts, Articles, Links, Media and follow the instructions

To remove or reorder items in the ‘Featured’ section:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Scroll down to the ‘Featured’ section
Click: The edit icon
To reorder items: Use the drag and drop functionality by hovering over the three lines and moving items
To remove items: Click ‘Remove from featured’ and confirm your choice

Activity

This pulls through your latest posts, likes, shares, and comments and shows how active (or not) you are on LinkedIn.

There’s nothing for you to edit or change here when you’re building your profile.

Just remember that people who view your profile will make judgements based on what they see you’ve posted, said in comments, or shared with others. So, keep it relevant and professional!

Experience

This section of your profile is where you list current and previous roles.

Keep it relevant though to potential clients who might view your profile and use the section to highlight key achievements in those roles.

Use the same tools and techniques that you did in the ‘About’ section of your profile to make key points stand out for those people who skim your profile.

To make changes:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Scroll down to the ‘Experience’ section
Click the edit icon
Complete the sections as required

This section also allows you to add links to documents, photos, sites, videos, and presentations, which can be useful to showcase the work you’ve done or things you’ve achieved in a particular role. It’s also a great place to add client videos you might have produced to show the benefits of working with you.

Before clicking ‘Save’ you can choose whether or not to notify your network about the changes you’ve made. If you’re making basic tweaks to your profile, we’d recommend turning this off. However, if you’re changing jobs then leave it on. Just be careful with the timing though, you don’t want to announce your new role too early!

Education

This is an important section for financial advisers and planners to complete.

Again, you need to keep it relevant, but it’s a great place to highlight higher level accreditations such as being Chartered, a Fellow, or Accredited.

If you haven’t yet added the Experience section:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: ‘Add profile section’
Open the ‘Core’ drop-down
Click: ‘Add education’

Then, to make additions:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Scroll: Down to the ‘Education’ section
Click: The plus (+) icon
Complete the sections as required

You can even add links to your certificates in this section.

Again, you can decide whether or not to alert your network to changes. The same rules apply; if you’re making small amends, they probably aren’t worth announcing. If you’re adding your newly achieved Chartered or Accredited status, they certainly are!

Recommendations

We advocate using Google and VouchedFor to collect your online reviews. However, recommendations on LinkedIn will help to impress potential clients who make it down to the bottom of your profile.

The fact you can’t display ratings and reviews from other platforms on LinkedIn make recommendations on here all the more important. That said, we don’t currently see a time when LinkedIn recommendations become more important than Google or VouchedFor reviews away from the platform.

If you need to add the Recommendations section:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Click: ‘Add profile section’
Open the ‘Recommended’ drop-down
Click: ‘Add recommendations’

Then, to request recommendations:

Sign in to LinkedIn
Click: ‘Me’
Click: ‘View Profile’
Scroll down: Down to the ‘Recommendations’ section
Click: ‘Ask for a recommendation’
Then type in the name of the person you are asking for a recommendation and follow the steps

Everything you need to build the perfect LinkedIn profile

If you’ve got a LinkedIn profile anyone can find it.

That includes potential clients.

Therefore, it needs to be as impressive as possible.

Our step by step guide is designed to help you do just that.

If there’s anything we’ve missed, please let us know. Likewise, if you need our help, please get in touch by emailing hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or calling 0115 8965 300.