Unless you’re job hunting, there’s a good chance you set up your LinkedIn profile a few years ago and never gave it a second glance. But LinkedIn isn’t just for headhunters and job seekers, so it’s time to give your profile another look.
While your typical content marketing efforts are focused on telling the story of your brand, don’t forget that you are part of that story. This is especially true for small business owners and entrepreneurs, whose personal brand is more tightly interwoven with their company’s. Your LinkedIn profile has an important story to tell—yours.

Here are a few tips on how to develop a professional, engaging LinkedIn profile:

• The “Summary” section of your profile is the perfect place to create a short narrative about yourself that goes beyond the typical resume information in the rest of your profile. Keep it to the point, but spice it up!
• Create opportunities for further connection:
  • Include a call to action at the end of your summary
  • Provide other places people can find you—Twitter, Facebook, Google+, wherever you’re active
  • Add a link to your blog
• Use the media options that allow you to upload a video or image. This’ll help visually break up your profile and highlight your related content.
• Include a good photo. This means more than just cropping an old shot of yourself from last summer and making it your profile image. Take the time to get a good shot of yourself, whether that means calling a pro, a friend, or even turning the camera on yourself (yes, there can be such a thing as a professional-looking selfie. Keep your arms out of the pic, and no duck faces allowed). A profile with a photo is 11 times more likely to be viewed, so it’s worth the few minutes it’ll take to get this done.
• While the styling within your profile is limited, use bullets and line breaks to make copy more visually appealing.

With just a few simple fixes you can have a LinkedIn profile that gets attention. For more advice on how to leverage LinkedIn, check out this post on LinkedIn’s content marketing power.