You’ve finally got a LinkedIn page. Congratulations on taking the next step in advancing in your career and promoting your brand as a professional. Now more than ever, more employers and professionals are utilizing the internet to research businesses, companies, and potential job candidates. This means it is critical that all professionals have a solid online presence and a brand to represent best represent them.
Customizing your LinkedIn URL is one small change that you can make today to start professionally branding yourself within your LinkedIn profile. Part of creating a professional brand includes ensuring you have a consistent name across all social platforms (if possible). This allows companies, recruiters, hiring managers and networking connections to find and connect with you in multiple online locations. Customers will be able to easily search and identify you without the hassle of going through multiple search engines.
Now that you understand why you should customize your LinkedIn URL only one question remains, “How do I share my profile with others without the complicated and long automatically assigned default URL?” (Example: www.LinkedIn.com/JaneDoe52467893). Good news! In LinkedIn you are able to change the URL allowing you to customize it to fit your brand. Follow these simple steps, you will be able to customize your URL to match your personal brand.
Steps:
Once you are signed into LinkedIn account, click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Next, click View profile.
3. On your profile page, click Edit your public profile and URL in the right column.
4. Click the pencil symbol under Edit URL
5. Type in your new personal URL name and then click save.
Congratulations - You did it! You have now customized your URL name.
Additional Useful Tips to Consider:
Since you will be sharing this with people, it is recommended that you use your name or the name of your brand so your profile can be easily found.
Your URL is not case sensitive, so using variations of capital letters and lower case letters will direct you to the same place as not using them.
URL’s are first come first serve. The name you pick may not be available. In this case, you will have to choose something different.
Try using descriptive words with your name. Keep your brand in mind when choosing an adjective.
Try incorporating a short phrase or statement. We recommend that this phrase be no more than 15 characters in length. If you have a brand, consider your tag line and abbreviate words where possible or consider using an underscore
Your URL may contain letters and numbers but with the exception of hyphens and underscores, symbols are not permitted.
You have now changed your URL name. Don’t forget to update your resume with your new URL. Happy networking!