Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to this beginner's tutorial on how to create a professional LinkedIn profile. These are the topics that I'll be covering in this video and I'm really excited to share my insights and get you way more than just an all-star profile. Now, try to complete as many as you can. It's a one-time effort that will help you get many interesting job opportunities, even when you sleep. Now, if you want to, you can skip certain topics by using the timestamps in the description. Alright, so as you can see, I've cleaned my LinkedIn profile just so we can go through the whole process step by step. Now, the first thing that I would like to do is disable key profile updates because I don't want my connections to be bombarded with notifications on their feed. So, go to settings and privacy, visibility, scroll down and over here you need to toggle this off. Okay, and then I would like to edit my custom URL because a customized URL not only allows others to easily find and recognize you, whether it be on LinkedIn, Google or on your resume, but it also helps you to build authority online. So, over here you can edit your public profile and URL. Enter your first and last name with or without a hyphen in between. If those are taken, pick the first letter of your name, followed by your surname like this. Now, my name starts with an accent, but it's better to avoid it. Let me show you. When I copy and paste my LinkedIn domain name to, for example, my resume, it will pop up with all these different letters and signs in it, something we obviously don't want. So, try to avoid signs, accents or other special characters. So, next up, we need to take a professional photo using a smartphone so we can upload a LinkedIn profile picture. Now, I chose to wear something formal, but for most professions, a shirt or t-shirt is just fine. I let my iPhone 11 balance on the door handle near the windowsill because you want to take the photo in a bright environment with a lot of natural light. However, trying to avoid direct sunlight. Now, keep in mind that smartphones have a wide-angle lens, so you need to keep a distance of at least one meter to shoot a photo that actually looks like you. Now, give yourself some time to experiment with different poses and facial expressions. I took, for example, pictures with and without glasses. Oh yeah, and just in between, these are not edited or color graded yet. And in this photo, I closed one of my curtains, which, you know, gave me this shadow on the side of my face. I think it contributes to the somewhat serious look that I want. However, for most jobs, I would discourage you to use shadows and encourage you to smile and show a bit of your teeth. Okay, so once you've picked your favorite photo, send it to your desktop and enter Remove BG in the Google search engine. I would like to use the free online background remover called Remove BG. Upload the image you are sure if you want to use because you get only one chance to download an HD version. Now, there are also some other free alternatives like Adobe. But anyway, after that, we go to Canva.com, a free to use online graphic designer tool. Now, create an account and then click on Create a design. Search for LinkedIn profile and pick this 800 by 800 design. Or what I would recommend you to do is pick a custom size of 1600 by 1600 pixels for a more crisp look. As you can see, I've already uploaded my transparent picture. So let's click it, zoom in a bit, expand it, but not too much because we want to keep its sharpness. Drag it to the middle. Perfect. Okay, next up, we need to style it. And one of the things you can do is go to elements and search for gradient square. Let me choose this exotic one as an example. Let's drag it over here and cover the whole square. Okay, right mouse click to send it backwards. And over here, you can change the colors. Now, I would recommend you to avoid flashy colors, unless you are active in the creative sphere, like for example, an art director, photographer, graphic or fashion designer. Or maybe you want to include the company's brand colors. Another thing you can do is go to elements and search for a nice visual to use as a background. If you can't find one, use Pexels or Pixabay to download free stock photos. You can easily download and upload them into Canva and then just move and expand them around like I'm doing right now. Let's see, I want my head in between the skyscrapers. Okay, and then we go to edit image, adjust, and you can play around with these settings. Let me add some blur and or transparency to, you know, make my profile stand out from the background. Now when you click on the first layer, you can play around with the brightness, contrast, and saturation and see what you like most. Now once you're done, give your design a name and download it as a PNG file. Then we go back to our LinkedIn profile so we can upload the profile picture. Okay, zoom in like this. I know it's quite a close up, but that's good. Okay, there we go. And as you can see, we need three more steps to achieve an all-star status. For this video, we are going beyond an all-star status. Okay, so next up, we need to upload a LinkedIn banner. Just follow me along. Click on create a design, enter LinkedIn background photo, and pick this one, the 1584 times 396 pixels. Now over here in templates, you can find many pre-made templates. I would like to search for a template that suits my industry and profession. So in my case, I need like a computer, pencil, or whatever things I use to create content. Now if you are, let's say an accountant, then you can search for visuals with a calculator or a computer with Excel on it. Okay, let's pick this one and zoom in a bit. Okay, so I want the background color to be somewhat similar to my profile picture. Okay, and then we need to edit and readjust these elements. Then I enter the industry I'm active in and my job title because we want to reinforce the profile, the candidate that the recruiter is looking for. All right, now let's move and readjust everything. Also the shadow element. Okay, that's fine. Then I would like to add a white border. Now we are basically done with the banner. If you want to, you can make the box a bit more transparent, but it's fine like this in my opinion. Okay, now download the background photo. And then we upload it to LinkedIn. And that's it, a simple yet informative banner that looks good on both desktop and mobile. Now keep in mind that many recruiters use LinkedIn on their smartphone. So don't let your profile picture overlap elements on your banner, like what happened to this example. Okay, so next up, we need to edit the intro section. And most things are quite self-explanatory. So just follow me along. Scroll down. Over here, you can add the pronouns. I skipped the headline for now. We will do that later on. And then add a new position. So I'm a content creator, self-employed, and the company name is Datacent Media. So over here, you need to add the location. Very important because that's the criteria recruiters use to find candidates in the area. LinkedIn also uses this data to show jobs nearby. Enter the start date. Okay, scroll down, enter the description, and then add some links or media files. Let me fast forward a bit. Okay, click on Save. Now scroll down and click on Add New Education. Now enter all the information you want to be visible on your profile page. That's why I skipped the grade and extracurricular activities. Now once you're done, click on Save. Now if we scroll down, you can see that our experience and education section have been added to the bottom of our LinkedIn page. Now for both sections, I would recommend you to add a value proposition and highlight your most important achievements. In the intro section, you can also enter a website URL. You can pick a website type, whether it be your company or personal website, does not really matter. Because with a normal LinkedIn account, it won't appear in the intro section anyway. But LinkedIn added this new feature for content creators and influencers. So they can link to their portfolio in the intro section. And then the link will appear over here. Now most people, however, don't really want or need this feature. I actually do. And if you want me to check out your profile, then feel free to follow or connect with me on LinkedIn. Okay, now before I continue with some of the other sections, I want to emphasize the importance of performing keyword research for an optimized LinkedIn profile. You see, LinkedIn is a search engine, just like Google. So we need to focus on specific words that we want to be found on. So what you want to do is search for some of your favorite vacancies on LinkedIn. So let's enter content creator, click on jobs, and then we copy and paste the responsibilities, tasks and qualifications of each vacancy. Let me fast forward a bit. And now we click on generate cloud. And then you reiterate and reinforce some of the most important keywords like in this case, social media content writing to all of your sections, so they will find you via LinkedIn's recruiter dashboard, which is a paid service or use LinkedIn's free search bar over here. Now if you want to notify recruiters that you are open to work, then you need to use LinkedIn's open to work feature. So let's say that you pick the first one, then you will get this hashtag open to work frame on your LinkedIn profile picture, which is visible to all LinkedIn members. And the other one is only visible to people using LinkedIn recruiter. Okay, so let's write a headline while taking these keywords into consideration. And I'd like to start with my profession, hold shift and press the vertical icon on your keyboard, writing evergreen articles and creating easy to follow videos using WordPress and Adobe Premiere Pro. Now hold ctrl command and spacebar to open the character view and add one max two related icons to make it visually appealing. Okay, and click Save. So this is what my headline looks like. First the job title, followed by a value proposition or unique selling point, and then the tools you use to execute the tasks and responsibilities. As you can see, I've also included some important keywords. Now if you are a job seeker with no experience, you might want to include the words aspiring and seeking just so you can also include the keywords that you actually want to be found on. Or maybe you are a recent graduate with a bit of experience, then you can add junior before the job title like you see right now. Or what about unemployed candidates with a lot of experience? Now you can highlight your most notable achievement in your headline that will certainly catch some attention. Or maybe you are an employed candidate with experience, then you need to be careful that you don't settle for a common headline like job title followed by the company name, like most people do, but provide a bit more information on what exactly you do, like you see in this example. Okay, so next up, we need to write a LinkedIn summary for the about section. Now click on add profile section, add about. Now what should you include in this white box you may think? Well, I'm going to show you several templates and examples so you get some inspiration and actually know what to do. Now this template features the most important elements for a perfect LinkedIn about section for job seekers with no experience. Now let me show you a LinkedIn summary example based on this template for recent graduates. Now I would recommend you to use bold highlight titles, preferably also include some emojis to make it more appealing. Now by default, you can't add bold or cursive text in the about section. So you need this tool called Unico text converter. So let's say you want to highlight 300 plus attendees, you basically enter the text in here and then click on show. Now you just copy your favorite style and paste in here and then click on save. Now this is a template for job seekers with experience. There are some minor differences like there's no interest section and a hard or technical skill section is included. Thing is, once you have some experience under your belt, it's most important to focus on what's most important to recruiters. Now this is what an example summary based on the template for an experienced software developer would look like. Now in the character view, you already know how to add emojis, but you can also search for some bullet points and double click to add them in here. Now I use this template to write my summary, which is focused on sales and branding. And this is what the end result looks like. Pause the video if you want to read it. If we refresh the page, you can see that the first three sentences are visible without clicking on the see more. Now try to encourage recruiters, hiring managers or clients to continue reading by showing your value proposition or USP in these sentences. Okay, now go back to add profile section recommended because I want to add a featured section. You can use the featured section to showcase your posts, articles, media, or what I like to do is use links to redirect viewers to my most important pages on dalesyn.com. Okay, so the second one to my top 100 interview questions and answers. Okay, and the third one to my resume examples page. If they don't show up, just refresh the page and use this icon to reorder them. If we go back, let me refresh real fast. You can see them over here. Now the first three tiles are visible. A fourth one is only visible by using this arrow. Okay, now go back to the plus sign. Now you might be wondering, how do I add a post? Well, then you have to go back to your channel page and click on start a post. Now, I must confess, I don't have a lot of experience creating posts on LinkedIn. I should, however, spend more time in doing so because LinkedIn rewards engagement on the platform. Okay, so next up, I want to talk about connecting with professionals and growing your network on LinkedIn. Go to settings and privacy, sign in in security, and make sure you sync all of your email addresses. That way, LinkedIn knows which people to suggest you in the widgets on your profile page. And it also keeps this area vibrant as your email list grows. It really is a great way to start connecting and get that important 50 connections threshold as soon as possible. However, keep in mind that you can send around 100 connection requests per week, which is an average of 20 invitations per business day. Now, if you want to connect to someone you don't know, you need to add a compelling note as to why you want to connect and get them interested to hit that accept button. Send them a note like Hi name, surname, I hope you're having a great day. Your story posts or profiles stood out to me because of a particular reason I know or this connection request might come out of the blue, but I want to followed by call to action or your question. And then you end the note with regards followed by your name. Okay, so next up, it's time to gain credibility and build authority around your name on LinkedIn by adding skills and receiving endorsements. So you need to add like five to 10 skills related to your profession and find a way to get them endorsed. Okay, I'm a content creator. So content management, save, add skill, web content writing, and video production are just a couple of logical choices. Now, after that, you need to find at least one endorsement for each skill because LinkedIn will only rank in skills that have at least one endorsement. Meaning if you add a skill in here and it doesn't have any endorsements, you simply won't appear in the search results for that skill. And the funny thing is, almost nobody knows this. So you should start off by asking former colleagues, relatives, clients, or your former boss, ask at least 30 people to leave an endorsement. Now, if you don't know that many people on LinkedIn, think outside of the box, you can call them or send them an email. And this is the template you can use. Now, as you can see, you should focus endorsements on your top three skills. You don't want others to spam click like 10 of your skills, because the algorithm will notice and you won't show up in as many relevant searches as you want. Now make sure you reorder your most important skills to the top. That way, they will be visible right away without someone having to click on show all skills. Also, LinkedIn makes a distinction between who endorses you for what skill. So if social media is one of your skills, and you get endorsed by others who are also skilled in this area, and LinkedIn will immediately recognize this and even call it out on your profile. Now asking for recommendations can be really easy and difficult at the same time. Easy in the sense that you just search for the person, fill out the blank spaces, click on send, and wait. But difficult because it feels a bit weird, a bit awkward to ask. To alleviate the pressure, but also for conversion reasons, I would recommend you to start asking close friends, relatives, or colleagues. And after that, you just start spreading the love to people you don't know that well by recommending others that you feel deserve a recommendation. But be genuine and clearly explain why you gave a recommendation just like Austin did in this recommendation. And after that, you just let the power of reciprocity do its work. And I'm sure that you will receive some recommendations in return. Now if you feel embarrassed, just remember what I said in the beginning. It's a one time barrier that will help you drive ongoing traffic to your profile, even when you sleep. Now if you want to, you can add some additional sections. They are simple to complete and not that important compared to the other sections. That's why we'll leave it out for now. Now I hope you found this video helpful. And if you have any questions, comment down below or connect with me on LinkedIn. Now good luck creating your professional LinkedIn profile and see you in my next video. Bye.