Why Your LinkedIn Profile Matters More Than Your Posts (2026 Update)

If LinkedIn had to explain you in one sentence, do you honestly think it would get it right? Welcome back to the podcast everybody. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and for those of you new to the podcast, don't forget to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know you're a listener. It has been awesome to get to know so many of you over the last couple of years and honestly this week listeners, I wanna talk about something that not too many other people are talking about because there is always so much focus on LinkedIn around what you should be posting, when you should be posting it, what kind of format works best and with all the changes on LinkedIn right now to the algorithms and how the feed displays.

I don't think that that's really the most important conversation that we should be having. We should be talking about why your LinkedIn profile matters even more than your posts right now. And the same applies to your company page. So if you're a page admin listening, listen to what I'm talking about about profiles and apply that back to your company page because the same rules apply and those rules have changed.

Honestly, I have been loving the changes that have been going on on LinkedIn Right now. I'm actually finding myself enjoying scrolling on LinkedIn. I'm seeing more information that is useful to me. It's topics that I wanna learn about.

I just am actually really enjoying things, and if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know, towards the end of last year, I wasn't feeling it. So it's actually refreshing and I'm kind of excited because for those of you who listen to the podcast, Implement some of the recommendations. You are starting to see some cool results and that is the whole point of why we're doing this kind of topic is so that you can go and take actions. So I'm gonna be talking about what's happened with LinkedIn, what parts of your profile you should be paying attention to and we're gonna do this one pretty quickly because I want you to focus on taking those actions.

What has changed on LinkedIn exactly? Well, I can't say that it's any one small change. There's been a couple of major changes that have happened over the last six months, and some of them even more recently. But if you take a look at them all in conjunction, whether we're talking about the way the algorithms work, so 360 Brew or the way the new home feed works.

We've kind of moved away, as I've said in recent episodes, from it being a professional networking platform as the priority to more one where you get to be an expert on particular topics and LinkedIn is doing their best to connect people who are Experts talking about particular topics with people on the other side who are interested in learning about those topics. I know mind blowing, right? But it does take a bit of a shift on our side to understand these changes and adapt our behaviour because For the last 20 odd years, it's all been about your connections.

Who is the community you're building? Who are your networks? And I'm not saying that you don't have to focus on that because ultimately you wanna be the expert on your area and have the right community that is interested in that topic. So it is still a part, but just the way things work.

And with AI coming to the party and LinkedIn's being cited by AI more and more. The focus is definitely on topics more so, which this is a good thing because it makes it really easy to win this game. So you've got systems now, whether it's LLMs or AI or search engines in general now looking for information to try and put you into a box. Now this all comes back down to Have you actually given it the right information?

Is it working on current information? Is it working on the whole picture, or is it working on outdated info? And some of this is related back to your profile, back to your company page. It can also be your content and also your activity.

But today's episode, I want to talk mostly around Why your profile matters even more than posts. So let's have a look at this and let's break it down into what's changed and more importantly, what you can do about it. Why am I saying that profiles now are even more important than your posts? Look, I like to try and simplify things down.

You know that that's what I love doing on this podcast. So I don't wanna get into the nitty gritty. There's plenty of episodes that I've done around deep dives into the tech behind this thing, but think about it just in general, your posts that you do however often each week, and hopefully it's at least two or three times a week. They are different each time.

So there's signals about topics and you might cover a few different topics, but it's always changing depending what you post. If you think about your profile though. That is a stable signal that LinkedIn can read. So if you think about it, posts are all over the place as far as the data's concerned, but your profile is a really structured explanation of who you are, what you do, and what makes you different.

And so if your posts are kind of talking about what you are doing. Your profile tells who you actually are, and so it's really important that we put some effort into our LinkedIn profiles. Now, most people that I come across fall into a couple of categories. You're very happy in your job.

Yay. Go you and you think, what is the point? I'm not going for a new job. That's the only time when I update my LinkedIn.

And that often happens when people change jobs and we get those big announcements, Hey, I got a new job. And that is the last we hear of them. So on one hand we have the job seekers or people that have just updated their careers. On the flip side, I also work with really busy business leaders who, let's be clear, updating their LinkedIn profile is the last thing on earth that they have time to do, and I love working with these particular people so we can get it fixed.

But ultimately it's just down the priority list. And then we've probably got a third bucket if I think about it. And those people are the ones that actually just hate talking about themselves, or you're not clear around how you wanna show up. This is why sometimes outsourcing to an expert like myself to get this sorted for you makes the whole thing quick and easy and painless.

'cause I can tease out those cool little stories that make you you. And obviously also make sure that it's optimised so that LinkedIn and all the tech behind it understands exactly who you are. So the cool thing about when you update your LinkedIn profile is it doesn't expire, whereas posts they're kind of disappearing in a few days, maybe a few weeks, but it is always there to remind the AI of exactly who you are. So that is the cool thing, that it's not something that you have to work on all the time.

The thing that I would say is if you have a misalignment between how your profile's showing up and the post that you're doing, then you are confusing LinkedIn and if you confuse them, you'll lose them. You can hear me say that a lot over the coming weeks because getting our positioning and messaging locked in so that then our content aligns with that. Then the more clarity that these tools have, but more importantly, your audience has as well. So I kind of liken it to putting up some guardrails so that you can actually stay on track.

That is the thing that I think is really working well for me right about now. This kind of brings us back to why posting more isn't going to fix your problems. I know that when reach drops, the immediate thing that people think to do is, Hey, let's go put more content out there. Yeah.

It's not actually gonna help you if you're confusing the algorithm around who wants to see that content. So the answer isn't always do more. Sometimes the answer is, stop. Take a minute and work out am I really clear to my audience and to the algorithms and AI who I'm showing up for what I'm an expert in.

When I start working with busy business leaders to update and optimise their LinkedIn profiles, the thing that I love most is all of a sudden we see the metrics go up. It's their search appearances climb, their impressions climb their engagement climb. Why? Because now there's no more confusion on either side.

People are really clear why you're showing up. You are really clear, More importantly why you are showing up, and then we build that community around it. So posting more rubbish that is not aligned with your profile or is all over the shop or your profile is really half baked, doesn't get you closer to your goal. So after the short break, I wanna talk about what to fix, but more from a strategic point of view than a practical point of view.

But I think it's important if you get the strategy right. No surprises here Listeners if you get the strategy right. The tactics become much easier. So let's do that next.

Before you log onto LinkedIn and actually try and update your LinkedIn profile or even your company page, as I said, this applies in exactly the same way. Before you even start doing that, I want you to take a moment to actually Get clear around who you actually for, and no, I don't just mean the job title. So for me, I love working with B2B marketing leaders, not just that. And not generic info, but what is the clear audience and the problem that you solve for them?

So who are you actually showing up for? So for me, it's not just those B2B marketing managers. Normally they're senior marketing managers. They work across industry.

So I'm not industry specific, but the problem that they're having Is that they're either new to LinkedIn and just looking to leverage the platform for the first time in the business and don't know where to start, or they've been doing it for a while and not really getting anywhere and it's stuck. So I have those two personas that I typically show up for, and it's important that when I am updating my LinkedIn profile, whether it's my banner, whether it's my headline. Most importantly, my about section that before I even try and do it, I've got those people in mind.

So when you land on my profile in no uncertain terms, you should know that I'm the kind of person that can help somebody like you, or we have similar interests that you are interested in. And the positioning then becomes the second most important thing that we need to work on. Again, before we even log on to LinkedIn. When you get your positioning sorted, and what do I mean by that in its simplest terms for me?

What are you actually known for? And could somebody else summarise you in one sentence? And I asked you that in the intro? Could LinkedIn do it is one thing, but could somebody that knows you do it in one sentence?

And this sounds Easy. And you think, yeah, of course they do. Michelle. Like everybody knows.

I've been posting for years. I've got lots of friends. Yeah. I don't know, like I have been doing this for a long time and I remember a very important lesson when I first started this business, when I just thought everybody knew what I did and I didn't talk about it because you know, the rules are don't be salesy on LinkedIn.

And I watched somebody who had engaged in all of my content for a long time, and I thought I was particularly close to go and then work with one of my competitors. And when I asked them about it, they were like, oh, sorry, Michelle didn't know you did that. That was like a knife through the heart, like that one killed me, and it's a lesson I have to remind myself. So I think this episode is as much for me as it is for you listeners, but making sure that everybody is really clear.

And for me, I've only just come up with my tagline that makes sense of what I do. So company page led growth scaled with employee advocacy. That's me. That's taken me six Years to get that little sentence sorted and clear in my brain.

And what do you know? All of my podcast episodes now align with that and as does my profile. And I did some work on that over Christmas to make sure that my banner reflected this new positioning, and it was really obvious for people in my headline and also in my about section. So make sure that you understand.

Would other people, not just you, understand what you do in one sentence and be able to share that back to you. You might actually be really surprised, and if you can ask some people to give you that feedback, it'll be amazing. So let's go to the third thing that I think is really important that I just alluded to, and that is consistency. So making sure that the updates and changes that you do on your profile are aligned with the content that you put out.

And is it the same idea that you are repeating over and over again? So for me it's the power of two. Company page led growth scaled with employee advocacy. That is exactly what the power of two is, and I need to keep repeating that in my content.

So what idea are you repeating over and over? And I know that repetition is the key, and consistency is the key. Why? Because I'm speaking at Social Media Marketing World in a few weeks time, and the first thing people ask me, Michelle, are you bringing the Tim Tams?

Why? Because I've done it every time I've visited and I talk about them every single Friday. So if you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, I do Tim Tam Tips, which Tim Tams are an amazing, chocolatey piece of goodness that is a cookie here in Australia, and I just love them and I share about them, and so it's become my thing. Tying it back to LinkedIn Tips for marketers.

So repetition and consistency is really important. The problem that I see with a lot of people. It's my target audience being those marketing managers don't love to talk about themselves and certainly don't love to talk about their achievements or what they've been working on in the business. Quite often they think I'm not the subject matter expert within the business.

I don't have a right to talk about it, which is crazy because you're the expert on marketing for your business. So everybody's got a place on LinkedIn that they need to own. On the flip side, we've also got people that chop and change because of what the business and the internal requests that come through keep telling them to do. And so your strategy starts off and then you drift off course, and that happens.

I did it to myself in my own business. I don't have anyone else to blame as a, at the time, a solopreneur, if we go back a few years before Lil was working with me. Yeah, I didn't realise that Just how easily the feed would influence what I wanted to talk about, because I would see other people winning business and I think I can do that, or maybe I could do this or I could do that. And honestly, like the more I drifted, the fewer the opportunities that came through.

And you know, it always comes back to getting that consistency. The last thing that I would say when it comes to updating your LinkedIn profile, which is most important, is backing your expertise up with proof. I know that it can be painful going back and updating your profile and putting a lot more meat on the bone, so to speak, in your work experience section or your skills or your certifications or all of that other area of your LinkedIn profile that you probably think, who cares?

Nobody reads it. Well, guess what? Now AI tools are reading it, and so it's become even more important to make sure that you've done the work to make sure that you sound credible so you are not just talking about it in your content, but your profile backs things up. As we wrap up today's episode, the simple way to think about this is if LinkedIn can't understand clearly what you do, then it can't confidently show your content to the right people or show you in the right search appearances.

Therefore, you are behind the eight ball from the very beginning. So before you post again, do some work to go back and review your profile and look for areas that you can improve that clarity and credibility and back things up. It is worth the effort. And the good news is when you refresh that information.

It kind of gives LinkedIn a bit of a nudge, Hey, this is what I wanna be shown for, and update things so that it can get things back on track. So hold off posting, spend a bit of time this week on updating your profile. Now, if you are somebody that is listening to this and you fall into that category of, I'm too busy, or I don't want to talk about myself, or I need some help getting clear, that is something that I can help you with, whether it's in a power hour or whether it's the profile optimisation that I can work with you on.

I have services that will help you with these things. So don't put it in the too hard basket. That is exactly why I'm here to help. So my question is, what would LinkedIn say you are known for right now?

Would you agree with it? If the answer is no, you know what you've gotta do this week, so if you take action on this, I would love to hear from you. Either let me know in the comments or connect with me on LinkedIn and drop me a DM and say, Hey Michelle, listened to this episode. Here's the actions that I took, and let me know what you've been working on.

I'd love to cheer you on, and I'm open to also, I will give it back to you in one sentence. What I think that you do. So if you want that free advice, very happy to help you out with that. So until next week, listeners, cheers.