1-Minute Wins to Elevate Your LinkedIn Profile and Professional Personal Brand (6 Tiny Tips)
Boost your personal branding on LinkedIn with 6 quick, yet powerful, profile updates that refresh your presence, sharpen your positioning and help you instantly stand out.
Your LinkedIn profile is more than an online resume; it’s your digital stage, where your first impressions are made in seconds. The smallest tweaks can instantly shift how recruiters, clients or potential connections perceive your personality, credibility and expertise. If you’re short on time and your profile feels flat, with a few quick wins, you can instantly elevate your professional presence and strengthen your personal brand positioning, starting today.
1. Find your featured posts
Find a few past posts most relevant to desired personsal brand positioning and pin these to the Featured section of your profile. Don’t let your best messages get lost in archived posts; give them centre stage.
2. Reset your ‘Activity’
Don’t simply stick to the default settings of your LinkedIn profile. The Activity section automatically shows your latest activity (e.g posts, reposts, comments or likes), unless you instruct it to do otherwise. This could do little for the unique value proposition for your personal brand. Select the editing icon and choose the option that best sells your skills, personality or expertise. You can choose from:
Posts
Comments
Videos
Images
Articles
Newsletter
Events
Documents
For example, prioritising your articles or videos might add instant excitement, colour and expertise to your profile.
Depending on your activity in any of these options, making this quick switch is one of my favourite ways to shift the energy of your LinkedIn profile and strengthen your personal brand positioning in a matter of minutes.
3. Reformat your headline
If you're maximising the 220 characters LinkedIn allows for your profile headline, this can get messy. Optimise the allowance, while helping the reader cut through the clutter.
A well-crafted LinkedIn headline can take a little more time than you might have right now. When you have the time to spare, get some tips from my earlier blog on Write a Better LinkedIn Profile Headline for Your Personal Brand.
In the meantime, use some strategic reformatting to make your value proposition pop on the page:
Capitalise key components: Capitalisation adds visual hierarchy. Show the reader, likely skimming your profile, what to prioritise.
Create contrast: Use different formatting types to make different sections stand out. E.g. Full sentences complemented by keywords.
Add symbols: Use symbols to separate sections or words and add visual interest.
4. Refresh your profile photo
Your profile photo is the shop front window for your professional personal brand on LinkedIn. Is it inviting, or does it turn off potential connections or recruiters?
If you don’t have a professionally taken headshot, for a profile photo quick win, take your existing photo and upload it into Canva:
Click Edit
Under fx Effects, in the left-hand menu, select Auto Focus.
Select Adjust, also in the menu, swiping to Foreground and adjust the brightness up as required.
In seconds, you have a bright and inviting image with a subtle depth-of-field effect, adding professional polish to your photo.
When you want to take your LinkedIn profile photo to the next level, see my earlier blog, Refresh Your LinkedIn Profile Photo to Elevate Your Professional Personal Brand.
5. Cut the clutter in your professional experience
When you confuse them, you lose them. If you’ve packed the roles in your professional experience with points, select the least valuable ones and hit delete. Ideally, keep no more than 5 points. Make the most important achievements, keywords and skills stand out to recruiters or potential contacts.
6. Package your personal brand with your LinkedIn banner
If you use the default setting for your LinkedIn banner, this can signal a lazy approach to your profile.
Open up Canva again and search for a template for LinkedIn profile banners. Picking and customising the right template well can take time. For a quick win, pick a blank template or delete all the existing content on any template and:
Hit Elements in the left-hand side menu.
Search for an image relating to your field and under Photos, scroll through the options.
Select your favourite free photo and add it to your template.
For more on how to elevate your LinkedIn to tell your personal brand story, see my blog Create a more engaging LinkedIn Profile Banner for Your Personal Brand.
From lacklustre to looking alive on LinkedIn
A standout LinkedIn profile doesn’t always require a full-scale rebrand. Sometimes it’s the simple updates that transform how others see you. Think of your profile as your brand real estate: the more alive it looks, the stronger your personal brand positioning energy becomes. Try any or all of these tips to makeover your LinkedIn profile in a matter of minutes and have LinkedIn start working harder for your career growth and personal brand.
