How to ruin your LinkedIn profile in 2 seconds

If you’re posting on LinkedIn but rarely get profile views, struggle to gain followers and would love to get clients…

Your profile is likely the problem.

You can write the most amazing posts, but you still won’t get traction if your profile isn’t designed with your audience in mind.

Most business owners don’t realise their profile is like a sales page; a sales page that drives the most important LinkedIn metrics: followers and sales.

You have a couple of seconds to show you’re relevant to the reader, or they quickly move on.

Are you making these mistakes?

If your profile is polished, respectable, and corporate enough to make your old boss proud…

That’s exactly what makes it forgettable.

These are the most common mistakes I see business owners make:

1. They add a ‘book a call’ link before they’ve given anyone a reason to care…
2. They pin random posts to their featured section…
3. They confuse their audience with beige words like ‘elevated‘, ‘potential‘, ‘aligned‘…
4. They use WE when it’s literally…just…them (and their dog)…
5. They write their about section in the third person…
6. They make their headline a personality test profile: visionary, strategist, changemaker.

All the while blending in with every other person on LinkedIn.

What LinkedIn really wants

LinkedIn doesn’t want you to sound impressive. It wants you to be clear.

It wants to know:

• Who you help
• How you help
• Why they should follow you
• And what action they can take next.

If that isn’t clear in 2 seconds, your audience decides to leave, rather than consider you a trusted solution to their biggest problems.

3 Things you can do right now

If you want to stand out, stop writing like you’re applying for a job and do this instead:

1. Replace your headline with a clear outcome for a specific person
2. Use your banner as advertising space – reinforce why they should follow you
3. Rewrite your about section with a focus on the buyer journey – not your life story.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Keep it simple. Clear beats clever every time.

What to do next

Your profile is just one part of the marketing puzzle when it comes to getting leads on LinkedIn.

If this sounds like great advice but you struggle to write about your business in a way that feels easy to understand, that signals a deeper problem – with your offer, messaging or confidence – that likely needs attention before you try to sell online.

If you want to stop relying on referrals and you’re serious about implementing a weekly LinkedIn system to find and sign clients, I created a 5-day free training so you can:

• Understand how buyers decide who to work with on LinkedIn
• Find out exactly what to say to convert readers into clients
• Learn the six things that must be in place to make sales on LinkedIn

Give me 30 minutes a day for 5 days, and you’ll finally fix your LinkedIn fast.

➡️ Join the challenge here.