Competition in the professional services world is fierce, which makes any edge you gain extremely valuable. At this point in our collective marketing evolution, it’s probably unnecessary to sell the value of LinkedIn for professional networking—after all, over a billion of us are using it in 2024.

However, LinkedIn’s power as a sales tool is often underappreciated. In fact, LinkedIn reports that 78% of “social sellers”—people using social media for sales—outsell their peers who are less active on social.

Before you dive in and get started, there are a few prerequisites you have to meet and essentials to put in place. Chief among them is a dynamic—and human—LinkedIn profile. A litany of your work accomplishments is great, but you should elevate it beyond an online resume. 

Here are three tips to help you get started.

Tip 1: Start with the “Why” and Ask Yourself This Question

If you’re like me, it can be hard to talk about yourself in glowing terms. This can make it hard to write a LinkedIn profile, which is why everyone defaults to thinking of it and using it as an online resume. But it can—and should—be so much more.

We’ve been using this question to help people identify their why, which helps everything on LinkedIn fall into place. Why do you do what you do, why are you motivated to pursue a certain career path, and why have you been successful?

Ask yourself this question: What has been the guiding philosophy throughout my career?

I’ll give you an example. When I asked this question during an interview with a principal at a management consulting firm, he said he is very active with the Salvation Army. Their tagline is “Doing the Most Good,” and that idea really resonated with him, both personally and professionally. He said he tries to live his life by that guiding principle, and also brings it to his interactions with clients. He challenges himself to do the most good for them and their organization. It’s been the key to his success and helped him build a reputation as a trusted partner.

Those clients know he has their best interest at heart. They gave their business to him, not his organization.

Once you identify your own guiding philosophy, weave it into the storyline you develop about yourself on LinkedIn. Get stuck on how to describe something you’ve done? Go back to that one key point and rework it.

Additional questions to ask yourself to help round out your profile once you figure out your “why”:

• What value do I bring to clients and my team?
• What’s my elevator pitch?
• What keywords are important to my role and my firm?
• Is all of my experience represented accurately?
• Is my education represented?
• Do I have honors and awards listed?
• Have I included thought leadership pieces and other media?

The goal is to have your personality shine through. The best profiles open the door to further conversation. Like meeting someone at a networking event, you build a relationship before asking for business.

Tip 2: Make the Sale Above the Fold

We all do it. You have a conference call with someone new or you’re meeting a prospect for the first time. Checking out their LinkedIn profile is part of the research you do beforehand.

But how often do you dive into the fourth or fifth bullet of one of their jobs from 15 years ago on that profile? If you’re like me, pretty much never. You’ll read their headline, get an impression of what they do, scroll through the experience section to see where they’ve worked, and maybe glance at their schooling.

So, you really need to make the “sale” in your profile above the fold. This means focusing on your headline and the summary section.

A few best practices we’ve found help us create more effective LinkedIn profiles:

• Write a headline that draws attention: Sure, you can default to your job title in the headline, but it’s not really a standout move. You’re leading with what you do instead of why you do it. A better approach is to offer a glimpse of yourself and frame it in terms that answer the question “what’s in it for me?” for your profile viewer. Think of this as a billboard on the highway … you have about three seconds to get someone’s attention flying by at 70 m.p.h.

• Spend time on the summary: The summary is where you tell the story of you. I like using a lead-in sentence (almost a “summary of the summary”) followed by a few short paragraphs that capture your value as a professional.

Tip 3: Humanize Yourself

Let’s be clear. LinkedIn is still a professional network. I’ve seen a bunch of non-professional nonsense making its way into my newsfeed recently. It’s not a dating site, it’s not Reddit, or a place to talk about your latest medical mishap.

That being said, you can humanize yourself in your profile in a professional way. Volunteer to save dogs? Lead a Girls on the Run group? Sit on a corporate or non-profit board? Work that into your profile in the Volunteer section. Likely, whatever you’re doing outside of work aligns in some way with your guiding philosophy, so it’s perfectly appropriate for your profile.

Here’s another practical tip for being a little more human. Check out your public profile URL. If it has a long random list of numbers at the end of it, there’s an easy way to get rid of them and customize your URL. Take a look at the simple instructions here.

Bonus Tip: Control the Updates You Share with Your Network

Maybe you’re revising your LinkedIn profile for the first time in years and realize you have a lot of updates to make. The worst thing you can do is notify your network of every single update you decide to make.  They’ll show up in your followers’ newsfeeds if you’re not careful.

To make sure you’re not sharing each and every profile edit, click Notify my network to “No.” When you’re updating your profile, you’ll find it at the top of the section you’re editing, right above the Save button. Use it wisely!

I know updating your LinkedIn profile is laborious, and it’s so easy to push it down the to-do list when things get busy. But it’s important, because as they say, everyone is in sales. Even you.