How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

written by Houston Golden
Founder & CEO, BAMF Media
May 13th, 2021
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The LinkedIn featured section is important.

It’s one of the first things that your prospects see when they visit your profile and it’s essentially a showcase of everything you’ve done.

So, how do you use it?

In this guide, we’ll not only show you how to use the LinkedIn featured section, but we’ll also outline best practices and tweaks to make it work to your advantage.

The LinkedIn featured section is the space below the fold of your LinkedIn profile.

You can use it to showcase publications that you’re in, articles and posts that you created on LinkedIn, and even documents or photos.

Think of it as a quick portfolio for your prospects to check out before they get to the meat of your profile.

Its placement alone makes it a highly critical area of your profile to optimize. Regardless if your prospect leaves your profile halfway through, you know that they’ll already have gone through the area.

Another thing that we like about it is that it shows thumbnails of the things that you share.

In platforms such as LinkedIn, visual elements are important because it’s easier on the human eye than long-form text.

The featured section allows you to post any link or content that you want giving you a lot of headroom to be creative.

The first thing that you have to do is click on “Me” and head over to “View Profile” to access your profile.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

Once you’ve gained access to your profile, all you have to do is click “Add section” on the top.

On the drop-down menu under “Add section”, click on Featured.

This will give you the option to feature posts, articles, links, and media.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

If you haven’t used the featured section before, you can alternatively scroll down and click on “Add featured” under the “Featured” section.

It’s essentially the same process as above.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

There are four types of featured content:

  • LinkedIn Posts – these are previous posts that you’ve published on LinkedIn.
  • LinkedIn Articles – anything you’ve published using LinkedIn publishing.
  • Links – links outside of LinkedIn. You’re given free rein to put in your website, landing pages, or any other publication.
  • Media – this can include photos, videos, documents, and even, presentations.

These choices pretty much cover everything and LinkedIn even allows you to edit your featured items after you’ve published them.

What Should I Be Featuring?

Now we get to the fun part.

Since you can basically feature anything on your LinkedIn profile, you’ve got a lot of ways to strategize the featured items that you have.

High Performing Posts

Why not give your existing high-performing posts more traction by featuring them on your featured section?

Not only do you get to drive more traffic to them, but you also show people that you get a lot of engagement on the things that you put out.

You don’t have to include every single one, pick those that have a high engagement and conversions rate.

This particular feature from author Simon Sinek actually includes a link to a landing page on the original post.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

Your Publications

Publications are a great trust signal because it shows trust by association.

Your prospects know that it’s difficult to get recognized and published by a large-scale media house and that they take their time in choosing their stories.

Having a large outlet recognize you is a sign that you’ve gained their trust.

Dr. Angela Duckworth’s LinkedIn page is a good example.

Here she highlights an article about her on the Wall Street Journal and a TED talk that she gave.

Given that she’s a star in her own right, having these links here further reinforces her position to someone who could have accidentally stumbled on her profile.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

Photos

Photos are a great conversion device because they engage with a prospect immediately.

Take a look at Russell Brunson’s – a client of ours – featured section for instance.

Instead of using links, he’s posted a couple of photos where you can immediately pick up what he’s about.

We like this approach because you don’t have to make the client leave LinkedIn for your featured section to have an impact on them.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

If you want to drive instant conversions, you can link out to your products directly from the featured section.

In this example, Grant Cardone provides two main links, one to his sales training and the other to a free copy of one of his books.

The great thing about this is that you can showcase what you have to offer quickly further drilling down the concept of turning your profile into a landing page.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

Even though I keep a variety of content in my featured section, I also include links to our products to provide prospects with quick access to what we offer.

linkedin featured section, How to Use the LinkedIn Featured Section

Videos

Video is always one of the first choices for engaging content, and it also works well as a featured item.

However, your LinkedIn profile doesn’t have a dedicated place to showcase videos.

The featured section gives you a great area to show prospects videos that you think your prospects will find interesting.

Case Studies

We like featuring case studies because they are professional pieces of content that show the technical side of the company.

If you’re trying to build trust with a prospect, a case study is a good way to go because it can show them a real-world example of your solution helping someone else.

By doing this, you can increase trust between you and a potential customer, and even highlight a former client at the same time.

Lead Magnets

We’ve talked about creating lead magnets embedded in your posts in the past, but why not take it a step further and start featuring ones that can actually help your prospects.

Lead magnets aren’t just designed to bring in prospects, but they’re also there to provide tonnes of value.

By providing value upfront, you establish yourself as a thought leader and problem-solver that is confident enough to give out information for free.

Placement and Variety

Don’t just feature one type of content.

You want to give your prospects a variety of things to look at.

Remember this section is a mini-brochure that also can also serve as a basis for social proof.

Focus on three things that you want prominently featured. This could be a link to your website, a photo with a CTA, and a publication you’ve been featured in.

It’s a good mix, keeps things balanced, and helps add a little flair to the entirety of your profile.

Typically, LinkedIn will arrange things chronologically, you can always rearrange featured items after you’ve posted them, so keep an eye out for this.

Takeaways

The LinkedIn featured section helps you personalize your profile.

It forms a major portion of your profile, and it can serve as a great trust signal depending on how you strategize the placement.

Here’s what.

Take advantage of the highly customizable areas of your profile. These areas really help break the monotony of LinkedIn and help drive conversions.

Think of the featured section as your own personal showcase.

Don’t just tell them that you’re worth it, show them!

About the Author

The name's Houston Golden. I'm the Founder & CEO of BAMF — a company I've grown from $0 (yes, really) to well over $5M+ in revenue over a span of 5 years.

How did I do it? Well, it's quite simple, really. I've helped hundreds of business owners and executives get major traction (because when they win, we win), I tell all on this blog.

Growth hacking is a state of mind. Follow along as I explore and expose the unknown growth strategies and tactics that will change the way you think about marketing.
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