How to Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Promote Yourself and Your Books

Jorge Olson

June 23, 2023

LinkedIn Profiles for Authors

How to Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Promote Yourself and Your Books

Your LinkedIn profile is an important tool for promoting yourself and your books. It can be used to connect with potential readers, publishers, and other professionals in the industry. With a few simple steps, you can maximize your profile’s visibility and create an effective platform for promoting your work. 

Book authors can use their LinkedIn profile page as a wonderful way to market their book, their ideas and build a following for their current and future books. The days of writers only working on their novels, books, and short stories are long over. Every publisher now requires their signed authors to get a following, and self-published authors can get thousands of readers and even big contracts if they have a following, a platform. A great way to supercharge your author platform is with a simple, free LinkedIn writer profile.

The number one question in the LinkedIn Book Writers Group is, “How do I build a platform?” This is asked in different ways, such as: How can I get more sales? How do I get noticed by publishers? How do I get people to read my book? It all has to do with building a platform. This is for fiction and non-fiction writers, although they get two different things from their platforms.  

Fiction writers building a platform can get sales of their books, interaction with readers, and even a publishing deal based on their following. Non-fiction writers, especially business writers, can get business deals from their platform, not just book sales.

Why Use LinkedIn Profiles as a Platform?

The first thing we need to address is the power of LinkedIn to help book writers build their platforms. Why does it work, and why should you use it? LinkedIn is a very powerful marketing tool inside and outside of LinkedIn. Inside LinkedIn, you get seen by people searching keywords, contacts in your network, and many more.  

LinkedIn even has an external internet influence, which means outside of LinkedIn, such as with search engines. For example, when I type my name on Google, I get around one million hits, and my LinkedIn profile is on top, ranked number one in the search. It’s up there even before my personal website or my Amazon books or Amazon profile. If my LinkedIn profile is not up to par, people looking for me will be disappointed. That’s why you need to update your LinkedIn profile and use the correct catchphrases and keywords. Imagine if a big-time book agent or publisher is googling your name, and they can’t find you. Or if they find your LinkedIn profile with a funky picture, your book titles are not listed, and you don’t have any biography in your description. They might think it’s another person or move on, or they might think you don’t know how even to start building a platform and look for the next person on the list.

We currently have more than 80,000 members in the LinkedIn Book Writers Group. Only around 15% of the profiles I’ve seen are fully finished, let alone tailored for their target audience. You need to complete 100% of your LinkedIn profile and tailor it to the people you would like to read your books, in other words, your target market.

How do I set up my LinkedIn author platform?

When setting up your LinkedIn profile, you must first complete the 100% meter to an All-Star level. This is how LinkedIn guides you through completing your LinkedIn profile. After this is complete comes the actual work: ensuring everything in the description and title of your profile is targeted towards your target audience, the people who will buy and read your book.  

Your main tools for this are:

  • Your Professional Headline 
  • Your LinkedIn Summary

Other tools are:

  • Photo
  • Background photo
  • Industry
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Recommendations

For this article, we’ll focus on the first two, the essential parts of your LinkedIn profile, professional headline, and profile summary.  

Your Professional Headline 

I recommend changing your professional headline, located right under your name, at least every month, sometimes every week, or twice per week. Why? Because you might be working on a project that needs to attract a different target audience.  

The marketing reason I constantly change my headline is that it is keyword-driven, and LinkedIn will take the keywords in my headline and show them in any search on LinkedIn. Also, changing your headline and most things on your profile notifies your connections, creating more profile views, interaction with connections, and maybe more followers and book sales.

Here are some professional headlines to avoid:

  • Writer
  • Author
  • Published Author
  • CEO
  • Executive
  • Consultant
  • Founder
  • Manager

Instead, be creative, be exciting, entertain, or describe how you change lives. You’re a writer; captivate the reader. If all fails, you can use keyword research to find out what your potential audience is looking for on Google and use those keywords in your headline. Just type “Google keyword tool” on Google and find a tool that will help you do keyword research.

Here are examples of headlines you can use if you’re a writer:

  • Author of “Name of your book.”
  • Writhing the next edition of “Name of your book.”
  • Changing the world one word at a time with “Name of your book.”
  • Have you ever wondered (something interesting discussed in your book)
  • I write fantasy, and I live fantasy
  • Writing science fiction books – get my book for free
  • Let me entertain you and captivate you with my stories
  • I’m writing about “Say something interesting!”

Your LinkedIn Summary

Your LinkedIn Summary is where you can feel “free” to write. Write about yourself, your book, your story, characters; you can even start a story or scene. Another good idea is to use it for your Author Biography and Book Description. Ensure you place a link to your book and your Amazon author profile, maybe even your Twitter and Facebook Author pages if you have one. If you don’t have one, get one. We’ll go over that in future articles!

Your summary also allows you to upload documents, photos, presentations, and videos. You can use this section to upload the cover of one or more of your books, a chapter of your book, maybe your book trailer, and even a short slide presentation. If you’re a non-fiction writer, take advantage of SlideShare and upload a few short presentations per year from your book. 

If writing is not your full-time job, combine your professional summary with your author bio. That’s what I do. I tell visitors what I’m up to in my business while ensuring they also know I’m a writer. We are not our job, so sharing the many things you do is perfectly acceptable. Individuals with many talents and interests are much more interesting than one-trick ponies.

As with many parts of your profile, your summary is also keyword relevant. That means you will use keywords that your target audience might look for, such as science fiction books, Mergers & Acquisitions books, or romance books. You get the picture. Don’t use “big words”; use words that people use in their LinkedIn and search engine search. This ensures more people will find you. For a test, go to LinkedIn.com and type the words relevant to you, your books, your topics, or what words you would use when looking for yourself. If your profile is not in the number one slot, you need to work that keyword into your profile. You won’t get immediate search results; it will take a few days for search software to find and index your new keywords. After implementing the above simple tips, your profile should now be 80% better!

LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for authors looking to promote their work and build an online presence. With its powerful networking features, authors can easily connect with other professionals in their field, as well as potential readers and customers. It also provides a great platform for authors to showcase their writing skills and get feedback from a wide audience. Additionally, LinkedIn offers a variety of tools that allow authors to track and measure the success of their content marketing efforts. With all these features, it’s no wonder why LinkedIn is so popular among authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jorge S. Olson is a bestselling business book author. He is also writing science fiction novels. He’s globally recognized as an expert in branding, consumer goods, and Mexico & LATAM mergers & acquisitions. 

Jorge is the founder of Promocave.com, a place for authors to find readers and for readers to find books. He’s been CEO, COO & VP of public and private companies for 15 years in the USA and Mexico. When he’s not starting social enterprises, he’s writing, reading, or working on non-profit ventures.

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