Your LinkedIn profile is a landing page, not a CV

The profile is the half of this that nobody works on. Reach is the interesting problem, so people fix their writing and leave a page underneath it that was last updated for a job search. Then a post finally travels, a few hundred of the right people click the name at the top of it, and they land on a CV.

The profile is the second half of every good post

What we see across the accounts we run is that the two move together. A post that works sends people somewhere, and where it sends them decides whether anything happens next. The post creates the curiosity. The profile is where the curiosity either becomes a connection request, a DM, or nothing at all.

You cannot watch this happen in any satisfying way from the outside, which is part of why it goes unfixed for years. What you can see is the shape of it: profile views climb after a good post. What those views turn into depends entirely on what is at the top of the page when they arrive.

The headline is a positioning line, not a job title

Founder and CEO at the company whose post they just read tells the reader something they already knew. It is the most valuable line of text you control and most people spend it on their business card.

The version that works says who you help and what you know that they do not. Not a slogan, and not a list of nouns separated by pipes. A sentence a stranger could repeat to a colleague. If your headline could sit on ten other people's profiles without anyone noticing, it is not doing anything for you.

It also travels. The headline appears under your name on every post you publish and every comment you leave, which makes it the one part of your profile that most people read without ever visiting your profile.

The about section is two lines long

Technically it is longer. In practice a reader gets the first two lines and a see more link, and most never press it. That is the number we plan around. The rule that governs a post governs this box for the same reason: nothing below the fold is assessed by someone who did not get past the fold.

So put your most specific claim in those first two lines. Not your mission. The thing you have done that the reader would want done for them. Then write the rest for the person who did press see more, and end it by telling them where to go next: how to work with you, what to read, what to ask.

Write it in the first person. The third person biography reads like it was produced by a communications department, because it usually was, and it puts a wall between the reader and the person they just decided they were interested in.

Featured is the most wasted space on the platform

The featured section sits directly under the about box, it takes images, and on most profiles it is either empty or full of company announcements from three years ago. It is the one place where you get to decide exactly what a stranger reads second.

Three things belong there: the post that best explains how you think, the thing you actually built, and the place you want them to end up. If a link is not worth someone's next thirty seconds, it is taking the slot from something that is.

The rest, in the order it matters

• The photo. A recent photograph of your face, in decent light, cropped close. This is not a taste question and it does not have to be expensive. It has to look like the person who would show up to the call.
• The banner. The strip behind your photo is the largest piece of free space on the page and most people leave the default gradient sitting in it. One legible line explaining what you do is enough to beat what is there now.
• Experience. Write the current role for the reader you actually want, not for a recruiter. It is the only entry most people read. Everything older than it can be one line each.
• The custom URL. Thirty seconds in the settings, and your profile link stops looking like a serial number every time it goes in an email signature or a conference bio.

The same page, different readers

The structure does not change by profession. What changes is the question the reader arrives holding, and the top of the page has to answer that one rather than a general one.

• Female founders. The profile gets checked between the intro email and the reply, and it is doing the work of a first meeting you were not in the room for. Getting it specific before you need it is the whole premise of LinkedIn for female founders.
• Content creators. The audience you built elsewhere does not arrive with you, so this page is talking to someone who has never seen a single thing you made. Writing for that cold reader is where LinkedIn for content creators starts.
• Nonprofit leaders. A program officer checks the leader, not the organisation page, and they are deciding whether you are a person worth an hour. That is exactly the gap LinkedIn for nonprofit leaders is written to close.

Next steps

Open your own profile in a private window, on your phone, and stop reading after the headline and the first two lines of the about box. That is what a stranger gets. Everything below it is a bonus that most visitors never collect.

Rewrite those three lines this week and change nothing else. Then post something worth reading, and see what the page does with the attention it gets.