How to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile [& What to Post on Social Media]

Whether you’re promoting your personal brand or a corporate one, you’ll need to rely on your personal LinkedIn profile. People want to connect with people, not faceless brands.

Here’s your guide for optimizing your LinkedIn profile for visibility and engagement, along with pro tips for posting across your social media channels.

Sections

How to boost your LinkedIn profile

The more information you feed the LinkedIn algorithm, the better it can work to surface your profile in relevant searches and promote your posts throughout the feed. So, step one is completely filling out your profile. As you do so, pay particular attention to the following fields.

Profile Picture

Humans are visual creatures, and we can all agree on the importance of a good first impression. Choose a headshot that shows you in a professional setting, and makes you look approachable and friendly. Your face should take up the bulk of the photo. Use good lighting, but stay away from the filters.

According to LinkedIn’s research, simply adding a photo increases your profile views by a factor of fourteen!

Headline

Your headline is the next thing people see whenever you post or engage on LinkedIn. Forget the jargon and corporate lingo. Instead, the first part of your headline should use keywords that describe what you do, especially if you are looking for a job. Then, use the rest of your headline to showcase your humor, personality, or key accomplishments.

About

For everything that doesn’t fit in your headline, there’s the about section. Use this area to provide an overview of what you do and what your company does. You can include quotes from clients, highlight awards you’ve won, and share insights into what it’s like to work with you.

Pro Tip: LinkedIn only shows a preview of your About section, so make the first two lines as compelling as can be. Think of them as your elevator pitch. Here’s an example from our co-founder Ishani DePillo.

Background Photo

When people click through to view your profile, your background photo can give them more information about you in an instant. Use yours to convince them to connect with you. You might provide more context about who you are as a person, by adding your city skyline or showing a collage of things you’ve done.

You can also use this space to provide social proof, such as a photo of you speaking at a conference or logos of places you’ve been featured.

Skills & Endorsements

Fill out your Skills section. This gives you an opportunity to not only show what you’re good at, but establish a connection with your followers since they get to endorse you.

You can highlight specific services you and your company offer in the Services section, like our co-founder Alisha does:

Accomplishments

This is your place to show off! Where has your work been featured? What blog articles have you written? Have you been quoted in a press release?

Think beyond the realm of traditional print or digital media, too. You can list publications, patents, courses, projects, awards, test scores, languages, and organizations. You can even upload a video from a recent podcast or webinar you hosted.

Finally, here’s our top tip for boosting your LinkedIn profile: Engage with other people! LinkedIn isn’t just about making connections; it’s about fostering them. Join groups, like and comment on posts, and provide and ask for recommendations among your network.

What to post on social media

When it comes to social media, there’s always an easy option: simply reposting the same thing across all your networks. But if you want to give your followers a good reason to follow you on multiple networks — and boost your engagement at the same time — then it’s a smart move to cater your posts to each network.

Here’s an overview of the types of posts that perform particularly well on each channel.

What to post on LinkedIn

Questions: Start your morning with an open-ended question, or encourage healthy debate with an either/or.
Share a story: Reflect on your career. What’s something you’ve learned that others could benefit from? Frame it as a short story and share.
Industry insights and market data: LinkedIn is the perfect venue for data. Post interesting insights and ask people to comment.
Text-based posts: LinkedIn is unique in that text-only posts tend to outperform images and videos. Remove image previews from articles you share, and use emojis to break up your text and add visual interest. Invite engagement by adding a CTA at the end.

Pro Tip: Don’t rush to respond to activity on your posts. Like and comment on a few, and then come back a few hours later to like and comment on the next set of comments. This steady trickle of activity helps keep your post active in the feed.

What to post on Instagram

Contests: Create a company contest, where people can tag and comment to participate, driving followers for your page.
Behind-the-scenes content: Share photos of your work-from-home setup, or post an Instagram Story showing your team at the office.
Photos, photos, photos: Instagram is the place for visual content. Brush up your photo editing skills and make those photos look great. Share product photos in a lifestyle setting, or overlay them with quotes.
Tips and tricks: Short, how-to videos are great for Instagram Stories. You can save them to your Instagram Story Highlights profile for posterity.

What to post on Facebook

Memes and GIFs: Unlike Instagram, Facebook is a place where you can be a little less polished. Memes are fun and casual, and are sure to give your followers a chuckle.
Events: Promote upcoming events, from your webinars and podcast episodes to conferences and speaking opportunities. You can create event invites and post regularly to boost attendance. (Pro Tip: Share Headliner videos for your webinar and podcast content).
News: People expect your Facebook page to be up-to-date on anything they need to know. Share important news updates, from closures to shipping delays, on Facebook asap.