What is a personalised URL?
You almost certainly have your ideal Twitter handle, and you’ll have no doubt been prompted to choose your Facebook username, both for your personal profile and business page, yes? But what about LinkedIn?
Your choice of Twitter name is what gives you your unique Twitter profile – for example, on Twitter we’re HypeStarUK, so you’ll find us at twitter.com/HypeStarUK. Similarly, on Facebook, we’re HypeStarUK, so heading to facebook.com/HypeStarUK will get your face full of HypeStar awesomeness of the Facebook variety. For those of you seeing a pattern will probably be able to figure out what to stick at the end of instagram.com (spoiler alert, it’s instagram.com/HypeStarUK).
When I first created our Facebook Page, it was given the Page ID 1044705412213394 which meant, to tell someone how to get to us directly on Facebook required saying https://www.facebook.com/hypestar-1044705412213394.
Suffice it to say, we changed it to https://www.facebook.com/HypeStarUK as soon as we could.
What if I don’t change my LinkedIn URL?
It’s another roadblock in the way of your potential connection, finding you. We certainly know that putting any kind of obstacles in the way of our prospective followers means that they’re considerably less likely to follow through and follow/connect.
Just today I received a LinkedIn connection request from what I have changed to Jane Doe (I have changed all the details to anonymise her). The profile was complete (I changed the image), looked good – but there was that URL.
If you ever need to send someone directly to your profile, the idea of saying linkedin.com forward slash in, forward slash Jane, hyphen Doe, hyphen one two three four five six seven eight seems arduous at best – I immediately feel like I have to write it down, or I’ll forget it (alarm bells!). And left to just searching for you, will they definitely find the right profile? Why take the risk?
Also of course, if you’re serious about using LinkedIn for networking and driving your would-be connections there, you may well have a driver on your business cards – having something snappy and easy to remember or type is paramount to getting that person to click that all-important button!
I don’t use LinkedIn that much
You’re probably missing a huge advantage if you’re not, but ok – I get it. Here’s the thing though, as with all URLs, this URL must be unique; so if you share a name with someone else, you may lose the chance to get it by not claiming it now.
So even if you don’t feel like it’s important right now, grab it anyway – it doesn’t hurt.
How do I change my LinkedIn URL?
The process is really simple – here are couple of ways you end up in the right place of your LinkedIn settings –
- Jump straight to your public profile settings
- Under the “Your public profile URL” section, click the pen ?
- Choose your desired ending and click “Save” (if you’re not able to get your name – consider adding additional information to it to make it unique)
Or
- Click here to edit your LinkedIn profile
- Hover over your current URL (under your profile picture) and select the gear option ⚙
- Under the “Your public profile URL” section, click the pen ?
- Choose your desired ending and click “Save”
So that’s it; simple right?
Give it a go and do let me know if you get stuck at all.
