If a possible business partner or employer googled you what would they find? If someone could not locate the link to your blog, podcast, or vlog and decided to use any search engines to find you, would your LinkedIn profile come up on the first page?
On the weekends of October 24th-25th and October 31st-November 1st of 2020 Afrobloggers had a LinkedIn related content creation feature on the Watch. Optimizing LinkedIn for bloggers would be hectic unless someone noticed the tweets then. Today we revisit and expound on this social media platform that is often underlooked.
Why is it vital to have a high-ranking LinkedIn profile on search engines as a blogger?
LinkedIn visibility makes it easier for those seeking to hire or work with content creators to locate you. If properly used LinkedIn gives a blogger content legitimacy and in turn creates the trust aspect from those consuming the content. With this as a basis of legitimacy, LinkedIn will make a blogger an expert on what they tell the world. There is no social medial platform that fosters professional networking like LinkedIn.
LinkedIn may also serve as your online portfolio as a content creator. You may showcase your artciles and writings under its feature section making it easy for prospective clients to check out your work.
How do you position yourself today to benefit from LinkedIn?
Get your Main Intro Box into order. It contains your image, your headline, a background image, and your contact information.
Your Image: Use a good picture of yourself. It should be a bit professional, meaning not a shot from a group night but rather a nice sharp headshot. It should be natural as possible with a simple background and make sure you smile.
The Headline. By default, LinkedIn will use the headline with the title from your most recent job. Your headline is what shows up in LinkedIn search results. Using keywords in your headline will communicate so much more than a title. Even if you are a teacher with a blog, your LinkedIn should include something about your daily work and also your content creation side.
Like Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn allows you to customize your background image. This is your opportunity to include your branding or something about your blog.
Contact Information, intro box is also where you add the information on how people can best get ahold of you. You can add your Twitter handle, email address, and blog link.
The About section is where you show why people should be interested in you. It should be short and creative. If you have more to say, that’s good too, but try to capture attention in the first couple of sentences.
Experience Box is where you lay your professional experience. If you have a full-time job that is not blogging you are likely to already have listings here, but you should add your blog too. Endorsements are a list of skills you master that people have endorsed you for. People can suggest a skill and give you an endorsement for that skill, or you can add a skill yourself and people can endorse you for it. The feature enables probable employers, recruiters, and PR professionals to see what your expertise areas with the added value that other people have agreed as well. Then the aspect is that of Testimonials which are written statements about how great you are.
Share content that you curate or write to your newsfeed. However some content may be more suitable for LinkedIn than other content may be, for example, educational, analysis, research reports as well as a general outlook on sectors will drive constant traffic to your blog forever. That doesn’t mean you can’t do a song review or movie recommendation on the platform from time to time. The focus should always be about reaching out to the best networks that fit your niche.
Highlighting your content creation side on LinkedIn is positive for your blog, podcast, or vlog but it can also be an added advantage in your professional and career paths.