A LinkedIn profile is a great opportunity to showcase who you are and what you can do for others. To effectively showcase yourself with your LinkedIn profile, you need to be able to tell a story that is credible and engaging. How do you tell a story on LinkedIn with your profile? There are 8 steps you need to take to optimize your profile for storytelling.

1. Creating a Great Headline

A headline is equivalent to the title of a book, essay, or story. The headline should be engaging. Like a story, the reader decides if they want to read more or move on. Using the automatic headline that lists your job title is a mistake. It is boring and makes you just like everyone else. It demonstrates that you lack creativity.

Your headline should be a short introduction showing how you help others in your current role. This is key if you are happily employed or if you are looking to advance in your current field. If you are looking to change careers, the title should demonstrate how you can take the skills and insights that you have developed and apply them to the career that you aspire to obtain. In other words, the headline should be able to answer the question “What are you looking to do or what do you want in your next role?” 

2 Uploading a Photo

LinkedIn profiles include large amounts of text. Similar to a story, text alone is not visually appealing. This is where a photo can help. When you upload a photo to your LinkedIn profile, your profile comes to life; similar to cover art on the front cover of an autobiography. Remember your profile is your story and brief career autobiography.

When you chose a picture, make sure that it is clear and makes you look professional.

3. Recording an introduction

LinkedIn also lets you record a 30-second introduction to your audience.

4. Crafting and Creating a Summary/Presentation

Your summary should reflect and expand on the headline. This is the place where you provide a brief overview that supports the headline, thesis, and title of your story. Your summary is a place to introduce yourself to your audience. It is important to keep your audience in mind. Put yourself in the place of the reader. Would you want to read your profile if the roles were reversed?

Once you introduce yourself, tell your story. Explain your background, where you are today, and where you want to be in the future. Make sure to include how your current skill set and experience have helped others and how these skills can be applied to a new role. When you list your work experience, make sure to back up your headline and summary. Think of this as your body paragraphs.

You can also share links to a digital portfolio, website, or whatever boosts your profile appearance.

5. Describing your work experience

As I mentioned above, the work experience section of your profile is the body paragraphs of your essay and story. It should be listed in chronological order. Each position that you describe should have specific examples of how you helped others in the role. LinkedIn also allows users to upload presentations and videos of their work. This can serve as a digital portfolio of your work that people can view. The next thing that I would do is obtain recommendations. You can also share your presentations from Slideshare on LinkedIn as well.

6. Obtaining Recommendations and Endorsements

A LinkedIn recommendation serves as proof that you have done excellent work in your position. These recommendations should be from coworkers, supervisors, and customers that you have served. They should serve as the conclusion to your story and essay where your claims are verified and validated. Recommendations should not be given away freely; doing that will undermine your credibility.

Endorsements are a quick way for someone to say that you are good at a particular skill without needing to write a recommendation. LinkedIn allows users to list up to 50 skills that connections can endorse.

7. Open to Work/Open to Hire

LinkedIn allows users to share if they are open to working or looking to hire. This is a nice addition to their job seeker and job posting experience. I am currently looking for work. 

As you can see, LinkedIn allows you to list 5 job titles along with your desired work type location, etc. While I chose to make my job search public, LinkedIn allows users to make their open-to-work status visible to only recruiters to protect the anonymity of job seekers. 

Recruiters and hiring managers can also share that they are hiring for roles by using the Open to Hire frame. 

8. Creator Mode

LinkedIn allows you to display 5 topics on your LinkedIn profile to show potential followers when you turn on creator mode. Creator mode also allows you to reach your audience in new ways with tools such as LinkedIn Live, Audio Event, Newsletters, and follow on LinkedIn.

Putting it all Together

Using these 8 steps will allow you to create a LinkedIn profile that can help you tell a credible and engaging story to potential customers and employers.

How have you used your LinkedIn profile to tell your story?

Share your thoughts.

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About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill-sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference.

I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today a blog covering industry events and trends.

I’m seeking a full-time role in:

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement Enablement, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing.

Open on title, industry, company, location, and level. Reach out on LinkedIn or at dan@dangalante.com to start a conversation.

Advertising Week Turns 20: Highlights from Advertising Week 2024

This week, I covered Advertising Week in New York. Advertising Week is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year. Advertising Week offers insights on many topics beyond advertising, including marketing, e-commerce, media, retail media, AI, Generative AI, technology, creativity, and beyond.

Smokey the Bear celebrated his 80th Birthday at Advertising Week.

The conference was held at the Penn District in New York City. Panels were held on different stages that were centered on the themes of scaling up, innovation, creativity, the marketplace, technology, media, great minds, podcasting, CMOs, excellence, and women’s empowerment.

There were many great exhibits as well. I enjoyed using Meta’s AI which turned me into Super Man and Iron Man.

Meta had great AI Ray Ban sunglasses that enabled me to use the internet for many tasks.

Attendees also had a chance to make their reels on Meta. 

Advertising Week looked back and looked to the future as well. The founder of Advertising Week Matt Scheckner, shared how he started the conference with an idea. He shared his story from the parade in Times Square in 2004 to today; describing how Advertising Week grew to have a presence with conferences across the globe. Matt Scheckner assembled a panel of leaders from business and entertainers On a panel he shared with Susie Essman of Curb your Enthusiasm, Tim Armstrong, Kim Kellehner, and Claudio Romo Edelman. The panelists shared their journeys and their keys to success: embracing change and growing.

There were many panels about using AI, Data, Storytelling, Global Marketing, public speaking, pitching deals, and selling advertising. Additional panel pictures can be found on Instagram.

I learned so much. If you are interested in trends in advertising, marketing, AI, and beyond, attend Advertising Week.

I want to thank the organizers of Advertising Week for having me as their guest. 

Key Ideas from WOBI 2024 In New York

I covered the World Business Forum in New York this past week. World Business Forum or WOBI for short is a global conference that shares the leading trends in Business. WOBI brings industry thought leaders together to share insights on business topics such as Creativity, Marketing, Innovation, being creative, Leadership, Management, and more. 

My favorite talks were from Gary Hamel, Angela Ahrendts DBE, and Jon McNeill.

Gary Hamel shared an idea called Humanocracy which is the title of his latest book. Gary shows that employees and not just executives should lead at all levels to get things done and improve outcomes. Gary states that AI will not solve organizations’ productivity issues instead he says that productivity issues need to be solved by people which is a different opinion.

Angela Ahrendts DBE shared her insights from leading at Apple and Burberry. One point that stood out is that Angela said that Profit and Loss (P & L) statements do not tell the whole story, instead, she said that leaders need to examine the People and Impact (P& I) along with the (P& L) when examining the performance of the organization and its employees. 

Jon McNeill was the former head of innovation at Tesla. He shared how he used innovation when he was tasked with increasing Tesla’s Digital Sales 20X and the steps he took to reduce customer friction in Tesla’s Online Buying Journey; reducing it from 63 clicks down to 10 clicks to achieve his 20X Digital Sales Goal. 

I enjoyed the lunch and learn by Texas Tech where Gary shared even more insights on how his management and innovation ideas improved healthcare outcomes for patients at a healthcare system.

Attendees did more than just go to talks, attendees had a chance to network, connect with event sponsors, meet the speakers, and get their purchased books signed by speakers at the Barnes & Noble station right after their talk.

Additional pictures can be found on Instagram.

I learned so much at WOBI.

WOBI, thank you for having me as your guest.

If you want to learn more about the latest business trends from industry thought leaders, attend WOBI.