A designer’s guide to LinkedIn 13/08/2019, 8:04 PM

A designer’s guide
to LinkedIn
By John Luu

This story was originally published by AIGA Houston.

People ask me which social media network I prefer: Facebook or Twitter. I usua
them and tell them that I prefer LinkedIn. Without question. For designers and
creative professionals it’s the most overlooked and probably the most powerfu
can have in your personal branding/digital marketing toolkit.

I first joined LinkedIn when I was a solo designer 10 years ago. At the time it wa
than an online Rolodex that allowed you to add contacts and your work experi
couple of years I simply treated it as such. Whenever I exchanged business card
someone, the first thing I did was simply transcribe the information to my con
send an invite via LinkedIn. The card got stuffed inside my old Franklin Plann
archived at the end of the year.

Over time though, LinkedIn evolved to become the professional profile of reco
white collar professionals and became the primary means for me to credential
prospective clients and showcase relevant work, experience, and expertise tha
apart from the competition.

In recent years LinkedIn has incorporated many features that makes it a perfec
for designers and creative professionals. The ability to add visual polish to you

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A designer’s guide to LinkedIn 13/08/2019, 8:04 PM

profile and incorporate various types of media formats to showcase your work
unparalleled opportunity to market your skillsets directly to prospective client

For those of you that set up a LinkedIn profile way back and left it to languish,
some tips to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is doing everything it can to
your career or design practice.

1. Choose the right profile pic

According to LinkedIn, adding a profile pic makes your profile 14 times more li
viewed by prospective clients, recruiters, and employers.

Your profile pic needs to show you in the best possible professional yet creative
Without a doubt, LinkedIn is business oriented; in a heartbeat you have to esta
credibility and trust if you expect people to click on your profile. Profile photos
heavily into this since a thumbnail of your photo is probably the first thing peo
when they come across your profile. Eye tracking studies show that the majori
devote approximately 20 percent of their time spent viewing a person’s profile
the person’s photo.

Avoid any photos that are unprofessional in tone; party pics, bar photos, selfies
or honeymoon photos. Those probably belong on your other social media profi

If possible try to get professional headshots done by an established photograph

benefit of being a graphic designer or creative is that you’re probably know a lo
photographers within the industry and can usually get a good deal worked out
creative head shots.

The actual file size and format of your photo should be a 1200 x 1200 pixel jpeg
Keep it under 10 MB.

2. Craft the perfect headline

Next up in importance is your “Professional Headline”. Eighty percent of peop

LinkedIn skip over profiles after reading the headline. If your headline is simp
title and company name (default) then you might be missing out on an amazin
opportunity to position and market yourself and articulate within 120 characte
help your clients.

Most people don’t realize that your profile headline is editable and you can twe
time to showcase your most marketable expertise, your personal value proposi
aspirational work passion.

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A designer’s guide to LinkedIn 13/08/2019, 8:04 PM

When writing your LinkedIn headline, be sure to speak directly to the audienc
to hire you. If you are a junior designer looking to work at a firm or agency, you
most likely a senior art director, creative director, and/or firm principal. If you
to work in-house at a large corporation, chances are your audience is someone
marketing or corporate communications background. If you are a freelance or
designer, there’s a good chance your audience will be small business owners an
assorted entrepreneurs and director-level folks.

3. Embed samples of your work

This recent feature is what I consider a turning point for LinkedIn with graphic
Prior to LinkedIn rolling out the ability to embed media into your profile, desig
only integrate 3rd party apps like Behance to display their portfolio on LinkedI
designers, the rigmarole required to do so meant that the overwhelming major
designers only had a text based profile to showcase their personal brand.

Now you can easily showcase work samples on your Summary, Experience, an
sections of your profile.

If you work in motion graphics, you can embed your demo reel and samples of
here. If you do a lot of public speaking, you can post videos of your talk, and/or
SlideShare version of your presentation on your profile.

4. Solicit and give recommendations

Although not crucial to your LinkedIn profile, recommendations are a great wa

your profile and provide potential clients and recruiters a positive third party a
of your skills, capabilities and character. They function as modern day job refe

With that said, many people familiar with LinkedIn take recommendations wi
salt; they’re almost always solicited and always very positive. Where they do co
their own are when recommendations comes from prominent and trusted prof
recommendations are written by a mutual contact of a recruiter or client you a

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A designer’s guide to LinkedIn 13/08/2019, 8:04 PM

In instances like this these recommendations function the same as invaluable

about your work history.

Also the ability to curate references and showcase recommendations (and late
endorsements) creates a very powerful form of “social proof” that can really he
balance in a designer’s favor if they are being considered for a project or a job.

The other thing to consider, writing recommendations for others, in most case
as receiving them. If a colleague or vendor has gone out of their way to make yo
or business a success, pay it back by writing a sincere LinkedIn recommendati
their work.

5) A detailed LinkedIn profile is SEO gold

If you have a fairly unique name and a LinkedIn profile, chances are your Link
shows up in the number one spot when someone searches for you on Google. T
pretty powerful personal brand management tool when you think about it.

Keywords are very important in how recruiters and clients connect with profes

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A designer’s guide to LinkedIn 13/08/2019, 8:04 PM

LinkedIn.

6) Personalize your connection invites

A pet peeve with many people on LinkedIn is receiving automated invites with
message. No one likes to be shotgunned: take the time and customize the invit
why it is you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn, a reminder of how yo
them.

Also, cut to the chase. If you’re wanting to set up a meeting with a specific pers
an introduction to someone, say so in your invite.

7) Never lie

This one should go without saying, but even slight exaggerations and/or taking
creative projects you were not involved in can come back to haunt you.

In 2015, everything you post can be easily searched, reverse image searched, an
authorship ever comes into question, people are pretty easy to get a hold of.

Long term, your professional reputation is invaluable. Don’t take shortcuts to g

want to be.

8) If actively job hunting, turn off “activity broadcasts”

This one gets designers into trouble all of the time. Designers who are unhappy
current job situation are often highly motivated to seek out new opportunities.
a natural magnet for this energy. Unfortunately many are unaware that the ma
your activity on LinkedIn is broadcasted to all of your connections, often in the
email notifications. If you don’t want your current employer to see that you jus
dozen different studios, updated your profile, and are now connected to a half
recruiters, you can simply mute your activity.

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To turn off “Activity Broadcasts” go into your Privacy & Settings controls near t
and under “Privacy Control” click on “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts.”

9) Associate an alternate personal email address to your LinkedIn accoun

Occasionally I’ll get a LinkedIn invite from someone I’m already connected to,
they somehow created another duplicate account. I like to keep my network re
tidy so when I ask them about it, in 99 percent of the cases it turns out the pers
between jobs and their previous LinkedIn account was tied to an old employer
address they no longer have access to.

To avoid the above scenario, associate a secondary personal email address that
allow you to access and control your LinkedIn profile when you need it most. Y
your profile well established when you need it, not the other way around.

10) Celebrate anniversaries, promotions, and new jobs

LinkedIn makes it exceedingly easy to stay informed of career changes taking p

your network and to also send notes to congratulate them on a new gig or work
anniversary.

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It only takes a few minutes and keeps the professional relationship positive, ke
of mind, and generates goodwill.

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