How to set up your LinkedIn profile so the right client recognises their problem, believes you can solve it and knows how to start. For consultants, freelancers and owners of service businesses. Check yours below, or see what the LinkedIn profile optimizer does.
Free first check · No card · No LinkedIn access required · Nothing posted or changed
What a client needs to know
A potential client reading your profile has a problem and a budget. Before a message makes sense to them, the profile has to answer these, in this order or any other.
In the client’s words, not your job title. “Our month-end close drags on for three weeks” is a problem; “finance transformation” is a category.
A sector, a size or a situation. Saying who you do not work with makes the clients you do work with more sure you mean them.
Specific results, from work they can recognise, each under the role or engagement where it happened.
A first call, a short review or a fixed-fee project. Name the first step, so getting in touch feels like a small decision.
Before anyone scrolls
The top card is what anyone sees without scrolling: banner and photo, name, headline, location and current role. For a consultant or a freelancer, that card should already say which problem you solve and for whom.
Your current role is part of it. If it reads “Founder, JM Consulting”, a stranger learns that you have a company, not what it does. Name the work in the role title or in the first line of its description.
The About and Featured sections sit just below. Together they are where a potential client decides whether to read on, so they carry the offer and the proof.
Fictional example: one top card, before and after
Fictional. Every After line rests on the freelance role’s description, which states the practices supported and the outage work, and on the case pinned in Featured. Nothing was added that the profile does not show.
Headline
Write the headline for a client, not for your next employer. Lead with what you solve and for whom, then add one proof point or a narrower segment if there is room.
Your title can stay, after the problem. “Consultant” or “Freelancer” on its own says how you work, not what you do.
If you run a small firm, the same rule holds: the problem your firm solves, then your part in it.
More headlines for freelancers, consultants and founders are in the headline examples guide.
Fictional examples
Freelance B2B Copywriter for cybersecurity companies | Product pages and case studies engineers sign off
Rests on: The freelance role’s description, which names the sector and both kinds of work, and the writing samples pinned in Featured.
Operations Consultant for family-owned manufacturers | Lead times, stock and the first ERP
Rests on: The consulting role’s description and two client engagements in Experience, each with its own outcome.
About
Use the About to say what a client gets. Open with their problem, say what changes when it is solved and how you work, give two results, then say how to start.
Invite only the work your profile shows you offer. If you list services on your profile, your About and your services should describe the same work in the same words.
More About structures, for each goal, are in the guide to writing your LinkedIn About.
Small charities hold more personal data than most businesses their size, and one complaint can take months to resolve. I help them get it right before that happens.
I review how a charity collects and stores personal data, fix the riskiest gaps first and train the staff who handle it. A typical review lasts three weeks.
Since going freelance I have worked with 25 charities. At a youth charity with 6,000 supporters on file, we cut the number of systems holding personal data from nine to three.
If you run a charity and are not sure where your data lives, message me and we can book a 30-minute call.
Rests on: The freelance role’s description, which states the reviews, the 25 charities, the youth charity engagement and both system counts. The services listed on the profile, which name the data review and the staff training.
Experience
Add your business as a role, with yourself as its founder, owner or principal, and set LinkedIn’s employment type to self-employed or freelance. Keep it current while you trade.
Then choose: describe the business in that one role, or add your larger engagements as entries of their own. One role keeps the page tidy; separate entries let each result sit with the work that produced it. Either way, never merge results from different clients into one claim.
Where a client is confidential, describe it instead of naming it. “A national housing association with 40,000 homes” tells a reader the size of the work without breaking a promise.
LinkedCheck’s completeness check looks for at least three roles described in 80 characters or more, and at least one figure among them.
Your employed roles still count. A result from before you went independent belongs under the job that earned it, and it is often your strongest proof.
The thresholds are LinkedCheck’s, not LinkedIn’s. See each completeness check, with how to pass it.
Proof
The next step
A client who is convinced still needs to know what to do next. Say it once, plainly, at the end of your About: what the first conversation is, how long it takes and how to ask for it.
Keep the step small. “Book a 20-minute call” or “Send me one month of figures” is easier to agree to than “Let us discuss a partnership”.
If you have a website or a booking page, add it where LinkedIn lets you show a link, and make sure it says the same thing as your profile.
If you post, write for the people you want to work with. A post aimed at other consultants tells a client little about what you would do for them.
Profile first, then outreach
Most advice on how to get clients on LinkedIn is about outreach: searching, messaging and following up. That is real work, and it is a separate job from this one.
What a profile does is make every message you send, and every referral someone makes for you, land on a page that already answers the four questions above. Without that, outreach asks a stranger to take you on trust.
So fix the profile first, then reach out. The order matters more than the volume.
Complete is not convincing
LinkedCheck scores a profile two ways. Completeness asks whether the parts are there, on 16 checks with fixed weights, so your goal does not change it.
Effectiveness asks whether the profile works for your goal, and it has its own checks. When you choose Winning clients, what matters is whether a potential client can see the problem you take on and the people you take it on for, whether your proof can be checked, and whether the way to begin is clear.
A profile can pass every completeness check and still read like a CV, which is why LinkedIn profile optimization for consultants that stops at filling in sections falls short. See how the LinkedIn profile score works.
Building a name in your field rather than a client list? The personal branding guide starts from your point of view.
Read this before you rely on any score, ours included.
Client-ready checklist
A short list for winning clients. It is not the full checklist LinkedCheck scores against; that one is linked below.
Before your title, your methods or your tools.
Marked current, self-employed or freelance, with what it does.
What it is, and how to ask for it.
Each under the role or engagement that produced it.
By size and sector, where you cannot name them.
The problem, what you did and what changed.
Each about one engagement and its outcome.
A site or booking page that says the same thing.
Every check LinkedCheck scores, with how to fix each one, is in the LinkedIn profile checklist.
Common mistakes
A CV written for a recruiter
“Results-driven professional with 15 years of experience”
A client is not hiring an employee. Open with their problem and what changes when it is solved.
Services with no client named
“Strategy | Marketing | Operations | Coaching”
It describes everyone and no one. Name who you work for, and the list starts to mean something.
Proof nobody can check
“Trusted by leading brands”
Name the work where you may, or describe it by size and sector. One specific case does more than a row of logos.
No way to start
An About that ends on your career story
A convinced reader still needs a next step. Say what the first conversation is and how to ask for it.
Your business left blank
“Independent Consultant · 2022 to Present”, with no description
The role that matters most to a client says the least. Describe the business and two engagements.
Posts written for other consultants
Frameworks and industry commentary, nothing about a client’s problem
Your peers may enjoy them; a potential client learns little. Write about the problems you are paid to solve.
Choose Winning clients as your goal. The Free LinkedIn Profile Audit shows both scores and what to change first. New wording for your headline and About is in Profile & Content Intelligence.
Free first check · No card · Nothing is posted or changed on your profile