LinkedIn is the biggest and best social network in the world for professional development. It’s excellent for both individuals and businesses. Just look at the use cases:
- People fresh out of university, looking for a job, can network with their peers, instructors, recruiters, and representatives of companies they’d like to work for.
- Skilled workers can network with peers, recruiters, and hiring managers to find new and better jobs in their industry.
- Hiring managers can network with recruiters to find talented workers or can network with those workers directly.
- Companies can build professional networks including their CEO, their managers, their hiring team, recruiters, current and past employees, and prospective employees.
No matter where you are in the corporate world, or what stage of professional development you’re on, you can make use of LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, it’s also very easy to neglect a LinkedIn profile, especially while you’re comfortable working, or while your company has a functional and effective hiring process. When the time comes to make use of the platform, it might be like unearthing a relic of a past age; digital archaeology that requires a ton of refurbishment to make your profile functional once more.
Worse, you have to know how LinkedIn works to properly optimize your profile. Without knowing how the site functions and how people use it, you might not focus on the right things. There’s nothing worse than putting hours of effort into parts of your profile that virtually no one cares about.
It should come as no surprise, then, that there are companies offering LinkedIn makeovers. Want to spruce up a personal profile to help find a new job? Want to network with recruiters and hiring managers to see what opportunities are out there? Need to brush up on that company profile to attract the best and brightest? A LinkedIn makeover is just what the doctor ordered.
With something so critical to your future, you want to make sure you’re getting the best possible LinkedIn overhaul you can. So, before you sign a contract or send a payment, here are twelve things to consider or to ask your potential profile writer.
1. Know Why You Need a Makeover
Before you even begin looking for a LinkedIn makeover service or a LinkedIn profile writer, you need to know why you need one. What do you want to get out of LinkedIn? And no, you need something more specific than “I’ve heard the site is good to use for companies/professionals/job seekers, and I wanted to use it.”
Think of a specific goal you want out of the site. Some examples might include:
- Is your profile woefully out of date, and do you need a complete overhaul?
- Have you simply neglected your profile, and need a comprehensive review to see what needs updating?
- Are you looking to get more clients for your business?
- Are you looking to attract new potential employees for a specific level of role within your company?
- Are you seeking a new job that values your skills more than your current employer?
Any good profile makeover will take your desires into account, whether you’re a business with varying needs or an individual with specific goals. A good makeover expert will ask about your story, so they know what to optimize for when they write your new profile.
2. Ask If They Use Advanced LinkedIn Features
LinkedIn has a surprising number of advanced features that both individuals and companies can use as part of their profiles. Individuals, for example, can add things like certifications, licenses, and accomplishments outside of the scope of regular employment achievements.
Businesses get the advantage here. There are many advanced business features you can use if you know how and when to use them. A makeover expert should be able to implement these for you, but you should be aware that they exist so you can ask for them.
Advanced features for businesses include options such as a section for hiring with specific open roles, required skills, and even the ability to apply directly through LinkedIn. Another example lists the various services you provide, so interested parties can reach out to you and potentially become customers through LinkedIn. They can be very useful, but need to be maintained. So, will your makeover artist do it for you, or will they at least tell you what you should keep up to date? It’s worth knowing.
3. Do They Know How to Target an Audience?
One of the most important parts of LinkedIn is its marketing. A critical component of marketing is knowing who your target audience is. Even in LinkedIn, you need to know who you’re trying to target with the sections and content on your profile. As a company, that might be potential customers, potential employees, potential business partners, potential networking opportunities, or all of the above. As an individual, it might be hiring managers, it might be recruiters, might be company profiles, or more.
A key question to ask, then, is if your LinkedIn makeover specialist knows how to identify a potential target audience, and knows how to use keywords to reach those specific kinds of people or business accounts.
4. Ask About Ongoing Edits and Updates
LinkedIn is only as valuable as your profile makes it. Over time, your profile degrades. How often does it need to be updated? How often are there changes, such as in your open roles, your management, your services offered, or even just the general information about your company?
You must keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, but if you’re hiring an expert to complete a makeover, how do you then keep it updated at the same standard of quality? You can either learn what’s important and maintain it as much as possible, or the profile writer can keep it updated for you. Does your LinkedIn writer offer ongoing updates? If so, for how long, and do they cost extra? These are important questions to know before you invest in their rewrite in the first place.
5. Do They Handle Additional Services Like Reputation Management?
Performing a LinkedIn makeover can help you refurbish a profile and update details, but it alone doesn’t necessarily do anything to refurbish a reputation. Reputation management is a huge part of modern online marketing, hiring, and success. Maintaining a LinkedIn profile is part of that. Thus, a natural question arises; will your LinkedIn writer be able to handle reputation management issues, or will they leave that to another company entirely?
What we’ve found is that if your LinkedIn writer is a LinkedIn writer first and foremost, they probably won’t touch reputation issues. On the other hand, if they are a reputation management company with a LinkedIn makeover service, they’ll be much more aware of reputation issues and can bundle services together, or offer reputation management along the way.
6. Do They Have a Questionnaire?
Every good LinkedIn profile rewriter or makeover service needs to be able to get information about you or your business to fill out every relevant field in your profile. How do they get that information?
We’ve seen examples of freelancers who use a combination of public information, research, and a constant flow of questions in emails to their contact within a company. This works, but it’s inefficient, and it means gaps can happen and coverage can be spotty. Maybe your company has certain values you want to be portrayed, but they don’t know that because they don’t have access to your internal documents. How would they know?
A good profile rewriter has a questionnaire that they use to harvest all of the relevant information in one go. They can then read through it, ask specific questions as a follow-up to fill in gaps or clarify statements. It’s a more comprehensive and efficient way of working and is a sign of a good professional.
7. Do They Have Satisfied Clients as Examples?
Any time you’re hiring someone to complete a service for you, one thing you should look for is their portfolio of successful past work. Artists have portfolios of work they’ve done. Writers have portfolios of pieces they’ve written. Academics have citations. A LinkedIn writer should have a list of past clients, whose profiles are updated and effective.
A truly good LinkedIn writer will have a list of clients they can show off, but more importantly, will have data to showcase what those changes did for the individual or business in question. Did they increase customers, clients, hires, or profits, and if so, by how much? This is useful data to have, and if a rewriter can’t provide it, maybe they aren’t the one you should hire.
8. Can They Help You Network?
Part of success on LinkedIn is the breadth and depth of your network of connections. Especially as an individual, building up connections is critical to success with your various goals, be it employment, networking, consulting clients, or something else.
Can your LinkedIn writer help you with this? Sure, their primary goal is to refurbish the content and information on your profile to better achieve your goals. But, if they’ve been in the business for a while, and have a roster of established customers, can they help you network with any of them? Can they introduce you, help you build connections, and benefit your profile in that manner?
9. How Quickly Do They Complete Their Work?
Every service should have a defined schedule. How long will it take for your LinkedIn writer to complete their work? There will be some variability depending on the scope of your needs, the level of services you require, and the time it takes you to fill out their questionnaire and answer any follow-up questions. However, there should still be a good estimate as to the turnaround time on a successful project. What is it?
10. What Does It Cost?
Sooner or later, everything comes down to costs. How much does your LinkedIn writer charge for their services? Do they offer different levels of service depending on your kind of profile, the size of your network, the goals you have set, whether or not they follow up and keep your profile edited, or other additional services? Pricing is important, of course, but knowing what you get for the money is also critical.
LinkedIn Premium gives you access to a wide range of useful features, both as a business and as an individual. You might consider paying for it to gain access to those features, especially before you contract a LinkedIn profile writer to buff up your profile, so they have access to all of those features and can integrate them seamlessly into your existing profile.
It can be a useful question to ask whether or not the writer has experience with the premium features, and how much value they can add to your profile if you pay for an account. Are they optional, or essentially required? Get their opinion.
12. Have Your Brand Assets Ready to Go
This one is less of a question and more of a general tip: have your brand assets available and ready to go. Your marketing team likely has a brand asset pack already, so it shouldn’t be difficult to have the files for high-res versions of your logo or other brand assets on hand. Having all of these on hand also helps when your LinkedIn writer needs to create new content using them; they won’t have to ask for the assets, they’ll have them available already.
There you have it; twelve tips and questions you can use as launching points for discussions with LinkedIn profile makeover companies. As long as you lay your groundwork, ask the right questions, and pick the right writer, you’ll be able to boost your LinkedIn performance through the roof. It is a surprisingly effective social network when used properly, it’s just that there are millions of accounts of people who only log in once a year cluttering up the place. Don’t be one of them; use the network as you should, and reap the rewards.
