5 Simple Ways to Showcase Your Expertise on LinkedIn [updated 2023]

Standing out on LinkedIn can be challenging when there are over 930 million members worldwide and approximately 46% are considered active users.

But fear not, here are 5 simple ways to showcase your expertise on LinkedIn, drive visibility and build influence.

1. Create a Compelling Headline

First impressions matter.
If your LinkedIn profile headline is too long and is disjointed meaning you try to communicate everything you do in one headline, all that does is confuse people.

Remember the old saying, “A confused mind never buys.”

I also think a confused mind will skip by you because you are not an expert, you are a generalist in too many things.  People pay for expertise not for the ‘jack of all trades.’ Focus on the one thing you most want to be known for.

I suggest you draw people in with the first 5 words (yes you can have up to 200 characters but should you use them all? Not necessarily particularly if you’re just running on.  This is a great exercise in learning to use the most meaningful and compelling words that traditionally let people know exactly what you do OR strategy two is a clever headline where someone will want to learn more. The latter is risky unless you are really unique.

Here’s an example of a unique headline for an accountant who most people think are boring people and one accountant is just the same as the next one:

Accountant, Optimist, Tech Geek, Pro-Wrestler (3 out of 4 are true)

This headline definitely sets this person apart and you want to know more about him.  So humor when done well can be effective.

Your headline doesn’t communicate anything beyond a job title

In my article “6 Reasons Your LinkedIn Profile Isn’t Attracting Prospects” I say that no one knows what you do beyond your title!
You are more than a job title, so unless you want to be clumped into the same bucket with everyone who has your same title, you want to edit your headline title to stand out.  I suggest you add a few words that communicate a result or what happens because of you. 

My headline currently has 17 words, here’s why the first 3 key words have brought me business from people using that search term, so I know it is effective. The next 8 words are part of my brand statement and speak to the results my ideal client wants.

LinkedIn Trainer Worldwide-> Helping professionals become seen on LinkedIn so your prospects find YOU, not your competitors!

Changing up your headline from time to time has benefits. You stay fresh and relevant. It refreshes your search results and why not always be testing what is getting you more profile views and connection requests.

2. Update Your Skills

Not being found in a search for your ideal skills – this is probably because you don’t have your skills positioned in your profile to work for you and with the LinkedIn Algorithm.

LinkedIn tells us that the important areas for keywords or search terms you want to be found for are your primary headline, your title field in your experience section, and your skills section.

What has been rumored to make a difference are the top 3 skills you position at the top of the skills section. I encourage you to make this change and see if your results improve for people interested in those skills. If you haven’t reviewed your skills in 2023, I suggest you do. You can not attach a skill to a specific section of your profile. These skills display under the description of that section. LinkedIn values skills primarily for job seekers and recruiters, but remember – if people are searching to hire someone that has your skills to do a job, they search for a skill. In my case, people might be searching for a ‘LinkedIn Trainer.’

Skills are important to LinkedIn and that means it should be important to you should you want to have the algorithm work for you!

3. Write Posts Based on Your Expertise

Writing posts can be intimidating and so many people ramble about nothing relevant to their expertise or create what I call a self-promotional advertisement.  

When you continue to write posts that have no relevance to your skills and expertise you are not the ‘go to’ person in your field, you are again a generalist and never position yourself as the expert.

Creating a content marketing strategy where you are an authority will drive more inquiries and business your way.

A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Includes two key components: First, content builds your brand so isn’t it time to build a brand that builds your business?

Second, engagement builds influence. If you aren’t building influence ask yourself these questions, do you have a lot of connections, but not a lot of revenue? And do you struggle with knowing who to engage with or how to get others to engage with your content?

Your messaging in the form of posts should be directed to the people you want to influence. So before crafting a message, how will your post help or inform?

Does the content show your expertise?  Showing vs telling is very different. Adding to the conversation is also very different.

Here are a few tactical tips:

• Adding a photo to your post increases the comment rate by 98%
• 57% of LinkedIn’s traffic is mobile, so make your posts mobile friendly
• Use only three-five hashtags per post and be sure the hashtags are relevant and have over 10K followers

4. Showcase Your Best Work in the Featured Section

The ‘Featured Section’ is a graphic billboard to show off your best work and appear toward the top of your profile. You can choose the content you want to feature including your latest post or a link to your website or a landing page as long as it pulls a good image (sometimes websites don’t).

Think of this section as ever-changing as is what you want people to learn from you, so change up this section as you add a new service, receive an award, update a marketing brochure or add a new video.

Everyone has work they should be featuring, think about what you can be leveraging in this space.

5. Stop Collecting Names and Start Building Relationships

If I ask you how many connections you have on LinkedIn would you say 500, 1000, 2000?
and then if I asked you how many of those people do you stay top of mind with and/or have some kind of relationship with, what would you say?

Now I know it’s not realistic to know everyone in your network, heck there are probably people you accepted into your network 10 years ago that made sense then but not now.

But let me try to offer a different perspective for a moment…

If you are looking to grow your business or even change your career, you will get faster and better results based on who you know.

Here are few ways to get connected to your network:

• Reach back out to 5 people a week in your network with a friendly message that just says something like this which I have been sending out to my network:

Hi {firstname}

I was looking through my connections recently and I noticed we have not been in touch for a while (or a long while – yikes!) which so often happens here on LinkedIn, so I thought I would drop in just to say hello and happy summer!

I have no expectation except to reconnect with some people in my network. By reaching out to 5 people a week, I now have reconnected with 20 people a month, some of those 20 may result in a conversation.

• Be intentional about commenting on a post of someone in your network you may want to get top of mind with again. Whenever you leave a thoughtful comment, that person will respond.

• Share a resource with someone in your network that you know would find some value in it. When I am looking at posts on LinkedIn I will see a post that I know a client of mine is an expert in and I send them the link to the post and suggest it might be something that would want to comment on.

These 5 ways to show your expertise are simple and believe it or not a small percentage of users will implement making it a competitive advantage for those who do.

Need help with a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy or Profile Update?

Schedule a free call with me. https://joannefunch5-5.youcanbook.me/