In this article you will see what mistakes our customers make on their profiles, and how can you avoid that. Important, that these are not 3rd party data, everything you will read is 100% true and comes from our quick in-house research that we did on a random day using data of the latest 10 customers. All data that you will see in the article are representing the state of the customer’s profile before he/she used our services.
We deal with a lot of LinkedIn profiles on a daily basis, so we’ve decided to do a research among our customers, to see what the most common mistakes on their profiles are. While reading this, please check your profile and fix the highlighted problems. It helps you be more successful on LinkedIn!
- Profile pictureThere are still many people who make the very first mistake with their profile picture.
10% don’t have a profile picture at all
20% don’t look into the camera, don’t have eye contact with the visitor
20% use small, blurry or somehow bad quality pictures
50% are perfectWhat do we mean on perfect: A professional (looking) headshot with formal dress, looking at the camera, smiling. What is not perfect: Company logo or full body photo, where the face is not or barely visible, grump face while wearing a trainer. Which is fine if you are a personal trainer or an athlete. - Background photoYou can not just personalize your LinkedIn profile and express your personal values but you can also use the background image as a visual medium to transmit your message to your visitors.
0% used the background picture for something smarter than a meaningless picture there
50% have a custom background picture
50% have the default (sad) background picture - HeadlineThis is the very first contact with not just your profile visitors, but most importantly with those people who find you in the search results. They decide to visit your profile or not, based on your headline.
30% have custom (hand written) headlines
70% have default headlines, including the job title and company name - SummaryFortunately, 100% of our customers have summaries, which is, unfortunately, less highlighted lately because the new LinkedIn user interface shows only the first 180 or so characters (on mobile even less) of the summary without clicking the “see more” link.
20% attached rich media into the summary, such as references, portfolio, etc.
80% used just text, which is also fine - ActivityOur customers are not only newbies. We have people contacting us with old, well established LinkedIn profiles too. It’s surprising that most of them are absolutely not active on LinkedIn, not interacting with other members at all. Without that, it’s not surprising that they are not found by others, and might miss out business/job opportunities.
30% posted articles on LinkedIn Pulse
30% only liked/commented/shared posts in the news feed
40% didn’t do anything at all. - Experience / EducationThis is one of the most overlooked part of a LinkedIn profile. While most of the people list their work experiences, they didn’t put effort into customizing it, fill the entries with meaningful information, such as: What did you actually do there? What were your responsibilities, and achievements?
50% listed only the roles without any additional information
50% added some extra information at least to the current role
30% didn’t list any education
70% did list education, but without any extra information - SkillsOn LinkedIn, you can have maximum 50 skills listed. It’s absolutely free, so why don’t you list as many as you can? With more skills listed the chance that you will be found by others are bigger if they are searching for someone with the particular skill set.
40% have less than 20 skills listed
60% have more than 20 skills listed - RecommendationsAs mentioned earlier, our customers are not only newcomers on LinkedIn, some of them were using it for a long time before contacting us. Surprisingly they barely have any recommendations.
10% have at least one recommendation
90% don’t have any recommendations - GroupsLately, LinkedIn abandoned the groups, cut back their functions, most of the group members/owners started to think that LinkedIn will disable this function completely. Even if it’s uncertain what is LinkedIn’s plan with the groups, while they are available people can leverage from them, by joining as many as possible. You can be a member of maximum 100 groups on LinkedIn at the same time, meeting new people who can help you reaching your goals.
60% have at least 1 group membership
40% don’t have any group membership - ConnectionsOn LinkedIn, the best strategy is to have as many connections as possible. The only people who are telling you the opposite are those who already have 10.000+ 1st-degree connections, so they can tell you anything they want from their ivory tower. If you don’t know why is it good to have a lot of connections, please visit our “Buy Linkedin Connections” menu, where it’s explained in detail. Let’s not waste characters here to express the same thoughts.
In average our customers have almost 1000 connections.
40% have less than 500+
60% have more than 500+ - Accomplishments (awards, honors, publications, certifications, etc).This is the section where you can spice up your LinkedIn profile a little bit more, by adding more information, expressing how and why you are different from all other people. What did you do, what did you accomplish?
80% have something added in this section (we didn’t count the languages)
20% have nothing listed here
This was the quick checklist, we hope that you will take action and fix what’s necessary to make your LinkedIn profile more compelling.
