5 tips to be better on LinkedIn

By Polina Fomenkova, PR writer at F1V

Linkedin has almost 850 million users, and 84% of them use this platform for professional networking. Investors, for example, often review startup founders’ profiles when they first meet them.

A good LinkedIn profile can tell VCs a lot about the expertise of the founders and their team, and it gives them an opportunity to ask fewer basic questions during the first calls.

Apart from that, LinkedIn helps share key updates on your professional activities, find new business partners, and keep up with the market developments.

Here are 5 tips that will help you be a better LinkedIn user.

1. Describe yourself using facts

On LinkedIn, it’s always better to use facts, instead of adjectives. They speak louder about your experience and your value as a specialist. Hence, substitute words like “experienced,” “professional,” or “creative” with numbers and cases.

The Summary block, in particular, gives a good chance to introduce yourself — it’s like an online elevator pitch. But instead of describing yourself as an “experienced marketing professional” there, write “created a database of 10,000 qualified leads.” And turn “awesome sales manager" into "brought 100 clients with an average check of $1,000 per month.”

If you are a startup founder, in your Summary, focus on the budgets you worked with, the size of the team you managed, and milestones you’ve reached.

If you signed an NDA or have other reasons not to give away specific metrics, you can at least indicate the number of years of experience in your field and, if possible, the projects on which you worked.

2. Share your contact details

A good idea is to mention your contact information on LinkedIn. Investors or journalists often write “pitch me your startup/story at” and give their email addresses. You can also include your Twitter, Telegram or WhatsApp info if you prefer talking to people there.

TechCrunch journalists, for example, often ask people to pitch stories via work email only. It gives an understanding where your pitch will be at least read and that sending it on Twitter or WhatsApp won’t increase your chances at getting a response.

3. Mention only relevant work experience

You don't need to mention all the jobs you had in your life. If you worked as a confectioner, then a data analyst in media, then did PR for an NGO, but ended up in tech, you should only mention the jobs you had in tech.

The last 3-4 jobs are usually enough for a LinkedIn profile. Much more important is what you did there and what experience you gained. So describe your experience: your responsibilities, projects, cases, and achievements. About 5 bullet points for each job are enough.

4. Leave comments, like, share

Being active on Linkedin is not about writing long posts once a week and even hiring a person to ghostwrite them for you (especially if you have just 200 friends). If you are not interested in posting regularly on LinkedIn, that’s up to you.

But it’s a good idea to leave comments, like and share other’s updates, and once in a while, to write posts about your projects. It helps get noticed, stay in the professional field, and farm new contacts.

Review your profile at least once a year and update your work experiences.

5. Be expert in one field

Are you a marketing pro? Then you probably shouldn't write philosophical posts about politics or the monkeypox virus. Your audience associates you with a particular industry and expects relevant comments, posts, and updates on it.

Your assessment of a field in which you are not an expert is likely to be inaccurate, and there’s a risk of harming your reputation (hi, Elon Musk). Plus, covering a plethora of topics will disorient your audience and reduce your chances to get contacted for a partnership or a job offer in your field.

Key points

• Use numbers and cases to prove your expertise.
• Interact with other people on LinkedIn to stay on people’s radar.
• Write about your field of expertise and stay consistent for your audience.
• Update your profile at least once a year.
• Work offline so you can talk about it online.

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