Five must-haves for your LinkedIn profile

1. Biography
Your biography or summary should be two to three paragraphs. It should contain salient, to-the-point details. Your profile should explain why you are a financial advisor, your areas of expertise and how you excel at your job.

If you already have a biography on your website, you might consider using it on LinkedIn as well. But you may have to shorten it.

2. A professional photo
You may think your appearance plays no part in your skills. Jeanjean disagrees.

“People will judge you on how you dress,” he says. “That’s the reality, especially in a professional industry.”

Potential clients want to see if you look like someone who can be trusted with their money, he says.

Use a high-resolution photograph that gives the impression of experience and polish. LinkedIn is no place for vacation photos.

3. Website links
Your profile can hold up to three links, which have designations such as “personal,” “company” or “other.” Jeanjean recommends choosing the “other” option, which will allow you to write in your company name, so that name will be displayed. So, for example, instead of the link reading “company website,” it will read “Smith and Associates Wealth Management.”

This strategy can help with search engine optimization, Jeanjean says. Because Google considers LinkedIn to be an “authority” domain, it is more likely to list your website in a query if somebody types in words that happen to be in your profile’s website field.

4. Company page
Many advisors fail to make use of the “company page” option, Jeanjean says.

If you are an independent advisor, you can build a company page on which you can add a logo, a description of your business, a list of core services, your website links and testimonials.

This tool provides another way to tell your story to potential clients doing some background research on you.

5. Certifications, degrees, publications and awards
Be sure to list these attributes, Jeanjean says, because they add to your credibility.

Prospects who are looking you up want to know about your background, your accomplishments, your qualifications and whether you have the experience required to take care of their finances.

The advantage of listing those items on LinkedIn is that the site has company pages for many educational institutions. So, if you indicate you graduated from Queen’s University, LinkedIn will provide the school’s logo, which adds another professional touch to your page.

5. Groups
“Groups take a little bit of work,” Jeanjean says, “but they provide a huge pool of prospects.”

Look for groups with members who fit your target market, are in your geographical area, or share your interests.

Just make sure you spend some time building a rapport with members before you start referring to your services.

This is the third installment in a three-part series on LinkedIn for advisors.