Optimize Your LinkedIn for 2024

My one-person business recently turned 4.5 years old.

As I look back at how I started, there was one really lucky choice that I made in late 2018:

I decided to build my personal brand on LinkedIn.

While X/Twitter is widely considered the sexier platform, LinkedIn is still the best place to build a brand that fuels a business.

As I began advocating for LinkedIn, big creators from X, Instagram, and YouTube started taking it seriously. Even Snoop Dogg signed up and followed me. Who would have thought?

So with all of these new faces and voices, how can you stand out?

Today I want to show you how to build a LinkedIn profile that people will pay attention to in 2024.

Let’s dive in.

How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

I want you to think of your profile as your “sales page”.

It should do the heavy lifting of getting people to follow you, engage with your content, and eventually become a customer of your business.

Every person who visits your profile should be able to understand what you do, who you help, and what outcome they can achieve by working with you. But that’s not all.

On a crowded platform with over 600M users, you’d better look the part.

Your Banner Image:

The biggest piece of real estate on your profile is your banner image. This is your opportunity to share more about your business, products, newsletter, etc.

Take a look at Chris Donnelly’s banner image: It’s clean, specific, and easy to understand. I can quickly see that he has a newsletter, what it’s called, what it’s about, how many people already subscribe to it, and how often he sends it out.

Your Profile Photo:

Your profile picture is your digital first impression.

Skip that blurry selfie you took in your car, or that old shot from 2007. Use a professional photographer, have a friend use portrait mode on their iPhone, or use one of the many new AI headshot tools.

These days it’s easy to make a photo look great, so there’s no excuse for a bad profile image.

Your goal is to invoke the right emotion. How do you want people to see you? Trustworthy? Kind? Serious? Funny?

I love Jay Clouse’s profile photo. It’s warm, inviting, and exudes his friendly, creator-first attitude.

Invest in a great photo so your brand imagery aligns with your business goals.

Your Tagline:

So many taglines on LinkedIn are confusing. I read them once, twice, and think “What the heck does this person do?”

Attention spans are short, so remember — Your tagline is your opportunity to be clear. Not clever.

If you’re struggling to write something effective, try one of these models I’ve used and like:

The Value Statement: Who, specifically, do you help? What, specifically, do you help them do? What outcome should they expect?

The Curiosity-Inducer: What unique and interesting project are you currently working on and what can people expect if they give you a follow?

Dan Go does a great job of combining both. I know what he does, who he helps, the outcome people can expect, and why to follow him.

Skip being cute or clever. Just be clear.

New Community Top Voice Badges:

One of the newest features to hit LinkedIn is the Community Top Voice badge (in gold, below). People like Dave Gerhardt are able to display their competency.

Acquiring one of these badges lends credibility to your profile, and they are pretty easy to get.

Step 1: Start by going here and finding the topic that most aligns with your brand.

Find a topic from the list on the right side of the page that most aligns and check out the articles assigned to that topic.

Step 2: Pick one article a day, and add your thoughts and opinions.

And that’s it. Within 3-4 weeks (maybe sooner) you should have a nice little badge you can add to your profile to show off your expertise.

Featured Section:

Your featured section is an opportunity to send people off of LinkedIn, to a place where you control the conversation and narrative.

For example, you might want to link to your newsletter, website, products and services, or another social media channel, like YouTube or Instagram.

I recommend that you don’t use your featured section to show off your best LinkedIn posts.  Because people can’t do anything with that. They’ll just go around in circles on your LinkedIn content but never end up on your email list, or browsing your offerings.

Here’s how I use my featured section.

Since I have the best-selling LinkedIn growth course with 20,000+ students, I feature that product in my featured section, because it makes sense for the platform.

My best practice is to highlight one or two places people can go from my profile, so I don’t overwhelm them with choices. Make it easy.

About Section:

The about section of your profile is where you have the most room to share more information about your brand or business. So take advantage of this opportunity.

Invest the time to do two things:

Tell your story: What’s your founder story or back story? How did you end up in your current position? People love a good story, and this is your opportunity to bring them along on your journey or movement.

Here’s my About Section, for example:

Over the last decade, I helped build two companies past a $1B valuation and raise over $300M in venture capital.

Then, in 2019, I burned out.

So, I decided to walk away from my high-paying executive job.

But, before I could, I had a hypothesis.

I believed building an audience online would be an incredible asset. That attention was the new currency and would play a major part in my success as an entrepreneur.

So, I started building my brand on LinkedIn in early 2019. And the results were pretty phenomenal.

In just 6 months I grew from zero followers to over 20,000.

And on August 1st of 2019, I walked away from my executive role at a fast-growing startup.Since that day, I've spent my time building a number of one-person Internet businesses.

My mission is to be the "Diversified Solopreneur."

Brag: I know, I know…we’re not supposed to brag about ourselves. But, why? This is your chance to tell people why they should pay attention to you. How does your story turn into tangible results for you and your clients?

My results:

→ $6.7M+ in business revenue at a 90% profit margin.

→ 500k+ people following my journey on LinkedIn

→ 450k+ people following my journey on Twitter

→ 200k+ people read my weekly newsletter

→ 600M+ impressions in the last 4 years

Conclusion:

LinkedIn is a gold mine for creators and business owners. Having 520,000 relevant followers on LinkedIn has helped my business 10x more than having 465,000 followers on X/Twitter.

But, before you can play in the game, you need to make sure your profile is ready to compete.

Implement some of the tips I’ve shared here, and I guarantee your content will be taken more seriously. And you’ll see a boost in your LinkedIn impressions and follower count.

If you want to get really serious about LinkedIn (as I am), consider my course, The LinkedIn Operating System. In this 120-minute course, you’ll learn the complete system I used to grow from 0 to 500k followers, and earn $6.7M+ in income with zero advertisements.

Join 20,000+ students and 40 LinkedIn Top Voices from around the world here.

That’s all for today.

See you next week.