Grow Your Business Using LinkedIn’s Showcase Services Feature

Help clients find you and your business by adding key services to your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn wants to help small business grow and one new feature to help you do just that is designed to highlight your key services.

LinkedIn reports, “Small businesses make up 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms*, making them a vital part of the economy. They also report to have over 10 million U.S. small business leaders using LinkedIn tools and services to help reach and engage their clients.

It’s also worth mentioning that the freelance or gig economy is growing. According to CNBC, “the gig economy is now composed of 60 million workers, and it is now an ever bigger slice of the American workforce. By 2027 the majority of workers in the U.S. will be contract workers.”

Those contract workers will want to build their brand and make people aware of their services and your LinkedIn profile is the ideal for branding and building yourself as a resource.

LinkedIn Showcase Services Feature

The feature is being rolled out to small business leaders and freelancers who have a premium business account in the U.S.

Visit your profile page from your mobile app or desktop, and if this feature is turned on for you, you’ll see a box under your profile photo/headline that talks about how to showcase the services you provide. 

Click “Add Services,” and then fill out the form to provide details about the services you provide. Be as detailed as possible so members who view this section have a good sense for what you provide. 

Click “continue” and this will automatically be added to your profile.

You will then select a business category from the dropdown list LinkedIn provides.

The challenge here is that this section does not offer free form to fill in the blank, there are pre-written categories that are chosen by LinkedIn that you either select and it populates the category or leaves it blank.  You can choose up to 10 and I encourage you to choose 10 if you can. Also, you can only choose one category on your profile.

Once you have selected your 10 services you click ‘Add to Profile’

LinkedIn Keywords Leveraged

Remember, LinkedIn is a search tool and people search by keywords. Your LinkedIn profile also comes up when being searched in Google, Bing or Yahoo.  By adding an additional set of keywords to your profile, you are increasing your odds of being found in all searches. They key areas in your profile in addition to this new feature that should be optimized for keywords is your headline, titles, experience and skills.

Conclusion

If you don’t have the services feature as of this writing, it will become available to all small business leaders and freelancers in the U.S. later in 2019.  Anyone who are interested in gaining access to the feature can sign up the waitlist. https://business.linkedin.com/grow#

LinkedIn for business is critical for branding, reputation management and positioning your expertise. Learn More: https://linkedinforbusiness.net/done-for-you-profile-update/

*Small Business Association