LinkedIn Glow Up: With Portia Obeng
A few weeks ago we were luck enough to welcome social media strategist and LinkedIn expert Portia Obeng for a LinkedIn Glow up session. She provided numerous exciting tips and tricks to take your profile to the next level. If you weren’t able to attend, the link is attached here.
Let’s look into some of her advice!
Cover Photo
It’s important to make you cover letter relevant to your major or the industry you aspire to be a part of. You can either choose a free stock image from somewhere like Unsplash.com or you can create your own in Canva or Illustrator to make it more personal. Adding keywords, your name and your website can draw attention from the right audiences!
Profile Photo
Having a profile photo on average gets LinkedIn users 21x more views than one who has no photo! It’s important that the image you put on your profile truly reflects yourself and how you would normally be presented. A suit and tie are not necessary unless that is how we would find you on a daily basis! Portia Obeng recommends a pretty background and to go out during golden hour (about 1 hour before sunset) to get the best lighting on your outdoor profile photos.
Headline
The headline is a very important space on LinkedIn as it is a space to add your keywords to get people to your page. Use this space to write what you do for more visibility. While the limit is 250 characters, somewhere between 150 and 170 is ideal for all of the content to be visible even from the mobile app. There are four common and successful methods to format your headline (Portia Obeng goes into much more detail in her presentation); pick what feels right for you!
- Sentence Format
- All Keywords
- Sentence & Achievements
- Value Proposition
About Section
A great way to get started on structuring this is:
- What it is that you do?
- How are you doing it?
- Why are you so good at it?
The section can be up to 2600 characters so its important to utilise them. You can include: A fun fact about why you are studying what you are; What are some skills you use regularly; What action do you want people to take when they see your LinkedIn profile.
Experience
All experiences you have had whether jobs, internships or volunteering are all very important to mention in this section. The CAR method can be used when considering what to add for the descriptions:
- C: Explain the challenge/ problem/ task at hand
- Action: What is it you did and how
- Result: Explain the outcome of the situation and make sure not to sell yourself short!
Don’t Doubt Yourself
You have more experience, skills and credentials than you would think and its important not to downplay all of your wonderful achievements! It’s important that you make it easy for employers to not only see your skillset but also why they need your help.
Never sell yourself short!