The LinkedIn Canvas
The One-Page Tool For Your LinkedIn® Strategy
Career Innovation Toolkit > LinkedIn® Canvas
While you have probably read countless articles on how to optimize your LinkedIn® profile, you’ve probably never been certain you are employing the best strategy, and, as you are no doubt well aware, your competitors are only a click away. In fact, the real challenge is not writing a NICE profile, nor is it learning the newest Linkedin’s tricks. Instead, you need to write RIGHT, know WHY you are writing, know WHAT to write and precisely WHO to target.
The full PDF version of our LinkedIn® Canvas with its detailed questions and tips will help you to quickly select the key concepts you need to build your profile. It will also ensure it is tailored to a specific audience while following Personal Branding best practices: most profiles target the wrong audience!
Do not treat LinkedIn® as little more than an online CV, but to use it as a tool to generate opportunities that are specifically tailored to you. This is true whether you are Networking, Social Selling, looking for a new job or more customers…
The LinkedIn® Canvas is an adapted version of its big brother, the well-known Personal Branding Canvas, used in some of the best business schools and companies in the world and is part of our Career Innovation Toolkit: read the Getting Started With section below and then click the button to download it along with the rest of our Career Innovation Toolkit.
(Read the tool license)
GETTING STARTED WITH THE LINKEDIN CANVAS
To use the LinkedIn Canvas, first, print it out on an A2, or bigger, piece of paper. Then get some Post-It notes and a nice marker. Next write your Goals (top right) and start to “stick” the answers to each of the block’s questions in the following order:
1. Audience (always starts from here!)
2. Profession
3. Competence
4. Identity
5. Credibility
6. Promise
7. Positioning.
Now, move on to the ideas for your LinkedIn® profile. Note that we’ve drawn these ideas from some of the most effective LinkedIn profiles in the world. Use them to inspire you and to generate additional ideas. Of course there are many other options, but while you can organize the resulting information how you like, it’s important to organize it strategically and certainly not according to the general rules proposed by some self-styled LinkedIn “guru” or other. Remember: LinkedIn is not a CV, but a “BOT” working on your behalf and introducing your Personal Brand to other users!
By the way: to further clarify your goals, we suggest using the Personal Business Model Canvas as described in the book Business Model You. Download it together with the LinkedIn Canvas and the rest of our tools in the Career Innovation Toolkit. Incidentally, if you don’t yet have a strategy for Networking on LinkedIn, you’ll find also our Networking Canvas a big help.
Read the tool license and download it with the other powerful tools included in the Career Innovation Toolkit.
NB: LinkedIn® is a brand wholly owned by LinkedIn Inc, USA. BigName® is neither affiliated to nor in any partnership with LinkedIn Inc.