I wish I had known how important LinkedIn is to an editing business.

I wish I had known it eight years ago, when I launched Fiedler Editorial LLC. Thank Heaven I found out soon enough, thanks to some of my fellow members of the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA).

LinkedIn is one way that potential clients learn about you and your editing services. You need to sell yourself on it. This does not mean exaggerating or inflating your accomplishments, but it does mean putting your best foot forward and showing people why they should hire you.

One way I was selling myself short on LinkedIn is that my “Experience” section read like a resume, with bullet points. This may be fine for certain kinds of careers, but for a freelance editor, it turns off potential clients. People will want to see how well you write and edit, so write in paragraph form. For example: “I edited scientific research manuscripts for clarity and correctness in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The resulting work flowed much more smoothly and was easier to understand. It was published in [name of peer-reviewed journal].” This is more descriptive than bullets.

Another LinkedIn mistake I made before I started my business (and this is worse) was not having a profile picture. Nobody wants to look at a profile with a blank space there, and you are practically guaranteeing that people will click away from your profile if there is no picture there. However (and I made this mistake in the beginning), don’t use a selfie from your phone or a Facebook picture as your LinkedIn profile picture. Instead, get a professional headshot done and use that. LinkedIn is for professionals, so you should look like one. Professional headshots can be a little pricey ($50 at one well-known studio), but they are worth it. I was lucky enough to have a free professional headshot taken during an EFA conference.

What LinkedIn mistakes have you seen, or do you admit to having made in the past?