LinkedIn Optimization Tools & Tricks (+5 Steps to Create a Profitable Presence)

When you're thinking about optimizing your LinkedIn profile, you've probably seen what you're trying to get: influencers or creators with beautiful profiles that stand out, have great content, plenty of relevant connections and followers, and a rich-seeming presence.

You're right to want this! A well-designed profile means:

• Your chance of finding clients through LinkedIn increases dramatically
• You get more connect requests and followers because of your premium presence
• Your profile looks professional, which increases your chances of closing deals and building trust with clients
• Your profile will be found for relevant keywords when people are searching for what you offer

1. Start By Reviewing Your LinkedIn Profile Analytics

Start your optimization journey with audience analytics. Why start with analysis? You can't improve if you don't know where you're starting from, and where you're headed.

First, evaluate the demographics of people who are following you:

Here's what you can do with this:

1. If you're mostly followed by one segment of people, such as founders and CEOs, but you're marketing to someone else (like corporate directors), you know you have to do some rebranding and reconnecting. If that's the case, consider pruning your network of 5–20% of your most irrelevant connections, to start with.
2. If you're followed mostly by people you want to follow you — great! That means you can double down with confidence on who you're speaking to with your content, and who you're engaging with.
3. Pay attention to Company Size, too. The biggest segment of followers tells you what level of company and what stage of maturity you should address in your content. If you're talking about big company problems but mostly followed by 1–10 person founders, you may need to reconnect with more relevant people.
4. Consider adjusting what time you post based on the location of your followers. If you're mostly getting traction on the US East and West Coast, schedule your content right as the NY'ers are headed to lunch and the CA'ers are getting to their desks.

Next, look at your overall metrics dashboard:

The key metrics to track: Posts, Content Views / Impressions, Shares, Engagement Rate, Comments Received, Likes Received, Comments Left, Likes Left, New Followers, New Connections, and Messages. This will help you develop a clear picture of how your metrics look, see what's working, and where you need to improve.

2. Consider Your LinkedIn Post Performance

Another important part of your LinkedIn optimization strategy is to analyze your content and make optimizations based on your key findings.

You can optimize your content for:

• Post views/impressions — The number of impressions your post has generated, aka "Reach"
• Likes/Reactions — The amount of people that have responded to your post with Like, Love, Celebrate, etc.
• Comments — The number of comments under your post (your own comments are counted)
• Engagement rate — Calculated from the sum of engagements (reactions, shares, and comments) divided by the number of impressions

Many people measure the success of a post solely in terms of achieved reach. But engagement rate is more important — viewed in context:

1. Low-reach posts often have a very high (8–10% or more) engagement rate, because they were only shown to a cherry-picked audience of close connections
2. Medium-reach posts typically see a 2–5% engagement rate, because they were shown to that close group plus a next-closest group
3. Viral posts with 50k+ impressions often see a hyper-low engagement rate of <1%, because once they went viral, the post was shown to a broad and not necessarily relevant audience

Depending on your goals, filter your content to find out what works for you:

3. Refresh Your Style With LinkedIn Graphics & Carousel Design

Once you have an idea of who's following you and whether that matches who you want to follow you, the snazziest part of profile optimization is design and branding. Let's go through a brief primer.

Overall Design Feel

What do you want people who visit your profile to feel and think? Your goal should be to appear stage-appropriate for the size of company they work at and the problem you help clients solve — causing them to view you as a premium, ideal solution.

Carousel & Infographic Design

When it comes to your carousels and infographics, you don't have to be a graphic design professional. But make sure that not only do you enjoy the look and feel yourself, but that it fits with how your typical client would perceive a high caliber professional solving the problem that you solve.

In this example, the classic carousel design works great for a founder-focused audience. It's calm, warm, and intelligent yet understated. The design matches the creator's personal brand and is appealing to their Founder client base — whereas a loud consumer-oriented or stale enterprise-focused style wouldn't fit.

The combination of authentic design complementing your offer is what you're aiming for.

4. Publish On-Brand Posts With a LinkedIn Scheduling Tool

You can draft posts and schedule them, either by hand or with an AI post generator that learns from your voice:

As you're scheduling, keep asking yourself:

• Are you scheduling your content at the best time of day based on your followers' location?
• Are you speaking to the needs and goals of the types of people, and sizes of companies they work at, of the people who follow you?
• Is your imagery style actively helping you optimize your profile — or is it hurting you?

Including media that is both comfortable and engaging for people in your target market can make a real difference. Re-read the section above if your imagery style isn't working as hard as it should.

5. Build Optimized Feeds With a LinkedIn Engagement Tool

Optimizing your profile is in large part about who you're engaging with. Who you engage with matters much more than who follows you, and who you follow. It's right up there with who you're connected to, in terms of relevance to your content performance.

The right LinkedIn engagement tool lets you build custom feeds of anyone you want — prospects, influencers in your space, potential partners. It's a great way to stay active and prospect in a non-invasive way, building value-added relationships in public:

As you're building your custom engagement feeds, ask yourself:

1. Are you paying attention to who you're adding?
   Don't just add prospects — add influencers in your industry. If you need to rebrand yourself into a somewhat new industry, the first thing you can do to optimize your profile is to start engaging with those new influencers, with comments.
2. Are you adding enough people?
   Data shows that successful LinkedIn creators have at least 40–80 profiles or more added to custom feeds.
3. Are you actually using the feeds?
   Don't default back into using the LinkedIn feed natively for engaging — that quickly becomes an unprofitable, anxiety-inducing time suck. Create calendar reminders to do your morning commenting through your engagement tool. Try to write 30 comments in 20 minutes or less, by using feeds that are targeted and curated to who you want to engage with to develop your business.

Main Takeaways

The big things to keep in mind as you optimize your profile:

1. Keep in mind who is currently following you, and shift who you connect and engage with if that doesn't align with your ideal client profile
2. Analyze your current performance and figure out where you might need to improve — such as more connecting, more engagement, or more reach
3. Consider how your top performing content, and your graphical media style, interact to further optimize your brand
4. Engage strategically with the right people — not just randomly according to what LinkedIn's native feed shows you — if you want to really fine-tune your profile growth for maximum revenue potential

LinkedIn is a professional network, not a vending machine where you put in X number of coins and out pops Y number of clients. Consider who buys from you and what they need. Orient and optimize your profile on that — and don't listen to everything the gurus say.