Fix my LinkedIn profile

A profile is read in a fixed order by somebody who has already decided to be curious. They saw a post or a comment, they clicked the name, and now they are deciding in a few seconds whether this person is worth following.

Most profiles answer a different question. They are written as a CV, for a recruiter, in the third person, and the visitor who arrived from a post is not that reader.

Step 1: work out who lands here, and from where

The arrival changes what the first line has to do:

• From a post or a comment. They liked one thing you said. The profile has to tell them whether there is more of it.
• From search. They have a problem and are checking whether you solve it.
• From a message or an introduction. They are checking whether to reply.
• From your own link. They were sent, and the profile is a landing page.

Ask which of these dominates before rewriting anything.

Step 2: the headline

This is the only part that travels. It sits under your name on every post and every comment you leave, so it is read far more often than the profile itself.

It has two jobs: say what you do in the words the reader uses, and give them a reason to click. Common failures:

• The job title alone, which means nothing outside the company
• A row of nouns separated by pipes, which reads as a search query
• An abstraction about helping people unlock their potential
• Keywords packed in until the line stops being a sentence

Test it by reading it aloud directly after the person's name. If it does not survive being said out loud, it will not survive a feed.

Step 3: the first two lines of About

Everything after them is behind "see more", and most About sections open with a warm-up paragraph nobody gets past. Those two lines carry the whole section.

They should say who you help and what changes. Not your career history, which is what the experience section is for.

Step 4: the rest of About

In this order, in first person, in actual sentences: who you work with, what changes for them, the proof, and what to do next.

Proof means something checkable. A number you can source, a name you have permission to use, a thing somebody can go and read. Adjectives are not proof.

Step 5: featured

Three items at most, each earning its slot. Ask one question: if a stranger read exactly one thing here, which would you want it to be? Then check whether that thing is first.

Step 6: say what to leave alone

Name the parts that are already working and say why. A review that rewrites everything is not a review, and it usually ends with a profile that sounds less like the person than the one they started with.

What this will not do

It will not promise search placement. LinkedIn does not publish how its search ranks people, and anyone quoting you a formula for it is guessing.

It will not stuff keywords. A headline written for a matching algorithm reads exactly like one to the human who arrived from a post, and that human is the one who was going to follow you.

What changes when VoiceMoat is connected

A profile written in a voice the posts do not share is the mismatch a visitor notices first:

• get_voice_profile gives your LinkedIn register, so the About section sounds like the post that brought them here.
• get_voice_insights shows the subjects and patterns you actually publish on, which is usually a sharper answer to "what do you do" than the one people give when asked directly.
• score_voice_match scores the rewritten About against your profile, which catches the drift into brochure voice that this exercise invites.

VoiceMoat also runs three free LinkedIn profile tools at voicemoat.com/tools: a headline analyzer, a headline generator and a summary generator. No account is needed for those either.

VoiceMoat is at voicemoat.com. The connector needs the Pro or Enterprise plan.