Get sixteen LinkedIn profile tips to attract high-paying freelance writing clients. Stop chasing after clients. Get them to chase you.
As a freelance writer, the #1 thing you must do to work less, make more money, and get a steady stream of new clients knocking on your door is to differentiate yourself.
You need to show clients you’ll get them the results they’re looking for while setting yourself apart from the competition.
Why should I hire you over thousands of writers that provide the same service you do?
That’s the questions you need to answer!
The best place to build a unique personal brand that makes you stand out from the competition is LinkedIn.
“Successful freelancers don’t chase after clients; they invest in their personal brands.”
— Richard Clayton, Head of Content at Payoneer
Why Freelance Writers Must Be on LinkedIn
In 2023, LinkedIn has over 875 million members from 200 countries and regions worldwide.
For freelancers, this platform is one of the best ways to build a compelling personal brand, get in front of decision-makers, and land high-paying jobs.
“If you’re looking to connect with ambitious, successful, high-fee B2B clients, LinkedIn is the place you will find them.”
— Ellen Melko Moore, America’s top LinkedIn thought leader
Wondering why?
Here are some key LinkedIn stats that reflect how important it is for freelancers:
- There are over 58 million companies listed on the platform.
- LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies.
- Eight people are hired per minute on LinkedIn!
- 72% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find talent and 67% say that the professionals they hire through LinkedIn are of higher quality than the ones they find through other methods, according to Finances Online.
- 40% of B2B marketers claimed LinkedIn is the most effective for high-quality B2B lead generation.
- 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn compared to 13% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook.
- 50% of all social traffic to B2B blogs and websites comes from LinkedIn — in comparison, Twitter and Facebook combined only generate 40%.
- 4 in 5 people on LinkedIn drive business decisions — this is exactly the type of people you should be targeting.
16 LinkedIn Profile Tips to Attract High-Paying Freelance Writing Clients
Now that you know why this social media platform is crucial for freelancers — or any other B2B brand, for that matter — let’s take a look at 16 tips to create the perfect LinkedIn profile for freelance writers.
“Instead of making your personal LinkedIn profile about you, or about your company, make it for your most important target audience, client, or partner.”
— Ellen Melko Moore, America’s top LinkedIn thought leader
1. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Don’t Skip the Basics — How to Create a Professional LinkedIn Profile
Businesses with a complete and active LinkedIn page get:
- 5x more views
- 7x more impressions per follower
- 11x more clicks per follower
The moral of the story?
If you want to have the best LinkedIn profile possible, fully complete it and keep it updated.
1.1 Choose a Great Profile Picture
“Members who include a photo receive up to 21 times more profile views and up to 36 times more messages.”
— John Nemo, Founder and CEO of LinkedIn Riches
Here are the tips John shared on his Inc. feature:
- Be professional: no goofy selfies or cropped group pictures
- No clutter: use a clean background
- No sunglasses!
- Smile: smiling puts strangers at ease and immediately makes you more likable
- Get a professional photographer to take your picture: those who have a professionally taken headshot get 14x more views than those who don’t.
Don’t let this whole professional-photographer-thing hold you back, though.
If you can’t do it right away, just get someone to take your photograph against a white wall with good lighting — you’ll be fine!
Also, the ideal picture size is 400 x 400px and the file size must be lower than 8MB.
1.2 Add a Banner Image
Your banner or background image doesn’t need to include your picture.
You should make it memorable in some way. Plus, it should give the visitor some more information about you or your services.
Below, is an example of a simple, yet professional, LinkedIn banner image. You can easily create something similar using Canva.
⚠️ Leave the left side of the image clear since it’ll be cropped by your profile pic.
1.3 Write a Descriptive & Eye-Catching Headline
Your headline is the first thing other users see — you have 120 characters to make a great first impression.
Here are your headline best practices:
- Show potential clients what services you offer
- Clearly define your niche
- Try to convey why they should work with you
- Add the most important keywords
1.4 Tell Clients What You Do in Your About Section
Not writing anything in your “About” section is a big mistake.
It’s your chance to show clients what you can do for them and pass down a message that (hopefully) resonates with them.
Here are some quick tips for a successful “About” section:
- Write as if you’re talking to your ideal client
- Show the value you bring to the table (i.e. how you can help them; the results you can produce)
- Use it to start a conversation
- Listing/talking about your services is optional — you could add a “Services” section to your profile, instead
- Finish with a clear and strong CTA that tells people what to do next if they want to talk to you
1.5 Add Your Professional Work Experience
Filling up your “Experience” section allows other users to evaluate your past and current experiences and accomplishments.
It also helps you build trust by showcasing your professional development over the years — especially if you’ve worked with reputable companies in the past.
Aside from adding your work experience, you can write about what you did in each job and include images, videos, or presentations to spice it up.
1.6 Include Your Education Background
Even if your education is irrelevant to your freelance writing career — like mine — you should still include it in your profile to let visitors know a little more about your background.
1.7 List the Languages You Speak
This is particularly important if you offer services in multiple languages.
1.8 Add Your Licenses & Certifications
Adding your licenses and certifications shows that:
- You’re knowledgeable in your industry
- You’re a freelancer who invests in continuous learning and staying up to date with the latest industry knowledge
Plus, you can use them to back up your skills, which I’ll talk about later in this post.
1.9 Add Your Volunteering Experiences & Causes (Optional)
This is optional but you can use it to show your interests outside of work.
If you had a management or leadership role in an organization outside of work, you should defo include that.
2. LinkedIn Profile Tips: How Should Freelance Writers Optimize Their LinkedIn Profile?
Optimizing your profile for search — both LinkedIn and Google search — is the key to attracting potential clients.
How else will they find you and your services?
After nailing the basics in your freelance writer LinkedIn profile, go the extra mile and optimize it for search.
2.1 Add Keywords to Your Profile
One of the most important profile-optimization practices is to include keywords that your ideal freelance writing clients search for when looking for the services you offer.
Plus, LinkedIn has outstanding domain authority, meaning there’s a chance you’ll rank in Google Search as well.
For example, if someone in the US searches my name, my LinkedIn page is the third organic result on the first SERP.
Side note: I use Bright Local’s Local Search Results Checker to know where my blog and my name rank on Google in different countries.
This is not LinkedIn-related, but you should also try to manage and own Google results for your name.
I changed from “Ines Tavares” to “Ines S. Tavares” recently because I had (unsuccessfully) been trying to rank for the former for two years.
💡 Another tip: If you don’t want to take full or part-time writing jobs (only freelance jobs), don’t forget to add “freelancer” to your headline.
2.2 Get a Custom URL
Similarly to optimizing a blog post for search, you can change your LinkedIn URL to include the target keywords you want to rank for — keep it simple, though.
To get a custom URL, click “Edit Public Profile & URL” in the top right corner of your profile.
3. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Buzzwords Aren’t Enough
“Buzzwords are adjectives that are used so often in LinkedIn headlines and summaries that they become almost completely meaningless.”
— Jane Deehan, Senior Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn
Some of the most used buzzwords on LinkedIn include:
- Experienced
- Strategic
- Certified
- Specialized
- Innovative
- Leadership
- Creative
- Focused
- Expert
- Passionate
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use these words. It just means they’re not enough to convince someone you’re what you say you’re.
You need to back these claims by providing proof in the remaining sections of your LinkedIn profile.
4. LinkedIn Profile Tips: List Your Skills & Back Them Up With Experiences, Education, Certifications & Endorsements
Your skills are one of the most important things you need to include in your freelance writer LinkedIn profile.
Adding more than five skills makes it 27x more likely that you appear in search results.
Know that endorsements by people who work in your industry or have endorsements for the same skills have a lot more weight than other people’s — so, no, asking your family and friends to endorse you isn’t a great strategy.
Also, only your 1st-degree connections can endorse your skills.
In addition to endorsements, you can back up your skills with work experience, education, and certifications.
To do this, open your “Skills” section and click on the editing icon for each skill.
Then, you can tick every box that applies to that skill. Click “Save” and you’re good to go.
💡 A note on endorsements: you can choose which ones you show or hide. If you got a lot of endorsements for a skill that doesn’t reflect what you currently do, be proactive, and hide it.
5. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Use Your Featured Section Wisely
Use the “Featured” section to highlight whatever you want visitors to see first (e.g. your website, content you previously published on LinkedIn or elsewhere, your content writing samples, etc.)
💡 Pro tip: create an image with a CTA to check your services page or book a discovery call and add it to the last bracket of the “Featured” section. Link it to the appropriate page.
6. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Include Your Publications
The “Publications” sections is similar to the “Featured” section, but made specifically to share blog posts, articles, white papers, eBooks, or other content you authored.
It’s one of the most underused elements on LinkedIn — you can use it as an opportunity to stand out from other writers.
7. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Turn on Creator Mode
Nine million LinkedIn users have the Creator Mode turned on.
The main advantage is that it allows users to showcase their content, instead of having a simple user profile.
This is ideal for those who want to build a following and establish themselves as an authority in their field.
It also increases your chances of appearing in searches and on people’s feeds — further helping you grow your network.
8. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Add the Services You Offer
Adding the services you offer to your LinkedIn profile will help you show in search results when people search for services.
It’s a relatively new feature on the platform but it can be super beneficial for freelancers.
To do that, open your profile and click “Open to” under your follower and connection counts.
Then, a box will open. You can add up to 10 services. However, you only get a 500-character section to describe all the services you provide.
You can choose your location, remote work, or both.
9. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Follow Relevant Influencers in Your Niche
Following niche influencers will add lots of interesting and relevant content to your feed. You can comment and share that content to boost your own reach and presence on LinkedIn.
When sharing other people’s content, consider adding a little bit of text. Share why you agree or disagree, for example.
This is a great way to show off your thought-leadership. Plus, people are more likely to engage with shared posts if you add a comment of your own.
10. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Grow Your Network
Now that you got all the basics done, it’s time to grow your network.
“Growing you network” doesn’t mean you should go around connecting to anyone you come across.
Try to be as strategic as possible.
Use filters to find professionals in your industry, in countries you want to work in, and who are in decision-making positions.
Connecting with other freelance writers can help you build a nice community. Who knows? They may send some referrals your way if they’re fully booked.
11. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Relationships > Connections
More important than LinkedIn connections are the genuine relationships you create with people.
“Work on developing deeper relationships with the people who are best suited to be desirable clients or best placed to be powerful referral partners. We have one thought leader client who has 150 connections, but every single one of those people has real influence. He is killing it.”
— Ellen Melko Moore, America’s top LinkedIn thought leader
When sending a connection request, always write a personalized message telling the person why you want to connect, how you found them, or complimenting something you like about them (professionally, of course).
Other ways to build and nurture relationships with your network include:
- Giving them recommendations
- Endorsing their skills
- Asking them for recommendations and endorsements — especially, if you worked with them before
- Commenting and liking their posts
- Congratulating them on their achievements
- Joining groups and being an active member
- Introducing people you know to each other
- Giving people “Kudus” — a little-known and underused feature on LinkedIn
To give “Kudus,” open the person’s profile, and click “More.”
Then, a box will open and you’ll see several “Kudus” options, such as “Thank You,” “Inspirational Leader,” “Making Work Fun,” and “Amazing Mentor.”
Cultivating relationships on LinkedIn is the key to sustainably build your freelance writing career.
“Opportunities have the power to multiply. One opportunity always leads to better ones, and it never ends.”
— Richard Clayton, Head of Content at Payoneer
12. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Post & Comment But Remember — Quality > Quantity
Businesses that post once a week on LinkedIn get twice as much engagement than those who post fewer times — but only 1% of users are active weekly.
This is great news!
You don’t need to rush to post daily or even multiple times a day, like with most other social media platforms.
Take time to produce high-quality content — quality over quantity, always — but even more so on LinkedIn.
The best time to post on LinkedIn is 9 am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
If you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, give long-form articles a shot. It’s a great way to develop your personal brand.
Around 45% of LinkedIn users who read articles there are in upper-level positions (e.g. managers, CEOs, etc.).
Also, long-form content gets the most views, likes, comments, and shares — aim for 1,900 to 2,100-word articles.
If this was enough to convince you to start posting long-form content on LinkedIn, here’s one final tip: how-to and listicle-type posts perform twice as well as question posts.
13. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Leverage Hashtags
Hashtags are an important part of LinkedIn.
You can use them on your content to increase its reach or search for hashtags related to your niche to find great content or even to find freelance writing jobs.
Here are some examples of hashtags you can search for to land gigs:
- #FreelanceContentWriter
- #FreelanceWriter
- #FreelanceBlogWriter
- #FreelanceWriting
- #FreelanceWritingJobs
14. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Use Visual Media
Another interesting metric is that content with images gets twice as much engagement as content without images.
Plus, large images increase the click-through-rate by 38% — 1200 x 627 pixels is the image size LinkedIn recommends. They also advise you to always include a CTA.
Other types of visual media you can add to your profile include YouTube videos, infographics, and your own videos.
If you think video is for you, I highly encourage you to give it a shot.
Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi, a LinkedIn influencer, said that “my video series, Solopreneur Sundays, got more engagement than my viral posts which had over half a million views.”
With her x3/week LinkedIn posting schedule and her video series, she got 17,000 followers in a month — she’s now sitting at 96,000 followers!
Of course, the point of this blog post is to teach you how to land high-paying clients with LinkedIn, not how to be an influencer. But these numbers show how impactful video content is on the platform.
Plus, video content is one of the most effective ways to build trust, boost engagement, and drive conversions for B2B brands.
15. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Leverage LinkedIn Learning Courses
To access LinkedIn Learning courses and get the certificate, you need to pay for a monthly LI Learning or LI Premium monthly subscription.
Here’s the breakdown of the subscription costs:
- LinkedIn Learning costs $29.99/month (billed monthly) or $19.99/month (billed annually)
- LinkedIn Premium Career (for jobseekers) costs $29.99/month
- LinkedIn Premium Business (for networking) costs $59.99/month
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator (to generate sales leads) costs $99.99/month
- LinkedIn Recruiter (to find job candidates) costs $180/month
What do I think about these plans and prices?
I think the four LinkedIn Premium options are unnecessary for freelancers.
When it comes to LinkedIn Learning, I think if you’re unsure between paying for a subscription/individual courses in platforms like Coursera, Udemy, or Skillshare and LinkedIn, I’d choose LI for the following reasons:
- LI is much more reputable than any of those platforms
- LI certificates will seamlessly integrate with your profile, while you may not get completion certificates from some of the other platforms
- You can still display your completed LI courses in your profile after you cancel the subscription
Another thing LinkedIn Learning has over other platforms is that you can find all course levels, from beginner to advanced, while on platforms like Udemy and Skillshare, the courses are quite basic.
16. LinkedIn Profile Tips: Keep Improving Your Profile
And, lastly: keep improving your profile.
Besides posting and engaging regularly, you should freshen up your info regularly.
Add new skills, experience, courses, and projects you completed recently — this will show clients you keep learning and evolving.
Key Takeaways — 16 LinkedIn Profile Tips to Attract High-Paying Clients (for Freelance Writers)
Getting out of your comfort zone is always hard but that’s where the magic happens.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself, be authentic, tell your story, and stand out.
Building your personal brand is so rewarding — both in personal and monetary terms.
⚠️ Having a strong online presence and an engaged network of industry professionals around you is the key to growing your freelance writing business.
Opportunities lead to more opportunities.
Before you know it, clients will be queuing up to work with you, instead of you having to constantly chase down new freelance gigs.
Now, get off your a$$ and go build your client-magnet LinkedIn profile.
If you need more help kick-starting your freelance writing career, download my FREE freelance writing course 👇
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