10 ways to make your LinkedIn profile the best it can be

You’ll earn a lot more attention for yourself or your organization if you have a robust profile on LinkedIn. Here are the boxes to check.

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LinkedIn is booming. It has more than 313 million members in more than 200 countries and territories. Professionals sign up to join LinkedIn at a rate of more than two members per second.

As part of my job, I have had the opportunity to teach a 30 minute LinkedIn 101 class to hundreds of employees. Here are my top 10 tips detailing what every professional should do to optimize his or her LinkedIn profile.

1. Update your profile information.

Make sure you add all of your basic info: full name, title at your company, location, industry, and organization (linked to your organization’s page).

Some key points to remember:

2. Customize your public profile URL.

When customizing your LinkedIn profile, aim to have your full name without anything else. If you have a more common name (sorry, John Smith) then you might have to resort to a slight modification. If you can’t add your full name, consider adding your middle initial or your company name at the end. If you leave your company, you can always edit the URL.

3. Add important links.

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