LinkedIn looks simple.
A profile. A feed. A fill-in-the-blank template. A place to post your resume and occasionally congratulate someone on a work anniversary.
How hard could it be?
Turns out: very.
Most people figure it out in an afternoon and move on.
Most people are also invisible on LinkedIn.
Why is LinkedIn so hard when it looks so simple?
When I finally decided to figure it out properly, I did everything you’re supposed to do.
I read the e-books. Took the LinkedIn events. Followed the experts. Tried to hire a couple, too. Watched the YouTube videos. Even participated in a few challenges from Facebook-based coaches.
Finally, I reviewed profile after profile after profile until my eyes were crossed.
All looking for the secret sauce.
And here’s what I found.
Most LinkedIn advice doesn’t actually work
Bro lead generation techniques dressed up as LinkedIn strategy. Tropes that don’t work. Crucial information nobody was covering. Key sections of the platform the “experts” weren’t even mentioning.
I’m not surprised the average LinkedIn user hasn’t figured this out. They’re busy. The platform looks obvious. And the people who are supposed to have the answers mostly don’t.
Not even LinkedIn has them. (Or if they do, they aren’t sharing.)
Nobody had actually solved it. So I did.
What surprised me most was that nobody had actually solved it.
So I did.
Same way I’ve solved every broken system I’ve walked into for 30-plus years, across franchising, nonprofits, startups, and consulting.
Figure out what’s wrong. Ignore the noise. Build something that makes sense and works.
Turns out LinkedIn isn’t simple at all. It just looks that way.
What it actually takes to make LinkedIn work
The strategy behind a strong profile is the opposite of obvious.
- The sections most people ignore are often the most important.
- The advice most people follow actively undermines their visibility.
- The platform rewards specificity, consistency, and completeness in ways nobody explains anywhere you’d think to look.
That last one is especially true since LinkedIn updated its searches and algorithm to AI-based ones. “Relevancy over recent” is a real thing on LinkedIn now.
Knowing that — and what to do about it — is exactly what I built Optimize for. ($397, self-paced, every section.)