LinkedIn is the social network that doesn’t get much love.
It’s professional and buttoned-up. It’s not as fun as Facebook, or as pithy as Twitter.
And – aside from your profile photo and any image that shows up as part of a link that you post on an update – there’s nothing visually interesting going on.
Until now.
If you have accumulated a visual, creative portfolio as part of your career, you can absolutely show it off – by using the add a link feature in the Summary or Experience areas of your profile. The Summary area allows you to show off all your projects in one spot; adding to the Experience area allows you to add work to specific positions.
STEP 1
To get started, make sure you’re in the edit mode of your profile.
STEP 2
Scroll down and find your Summary or Experience section. Click the add a link icon.
STEP 3
Enter the URL for your project – you have a wide range of sites to pull from because LinkedIn has partnerships with about 100 providers, including SlideShare, Prezi, Twitter, Pinterest, Issuu, YouTube, and Vimeo. Click Enter, and then LinkedIn will pull the title and description of your item. Edit the title and/or description, and click Save.
FINISHED!
Now you have a new multimedia project to showcase on your profile.
Although you can add specific projects to your positions, I like having them all in one spot in the Summary. I have webinar slide decks, a video, blog posts, and my Twitter stream. It’s a great way to display my skills in social media content creation, writing, editing, presentation design, and video editing.
Voila! Your LinkedIn profile just got a whole lot more interesting and interactive.
Have you tried adding your projects to LinkedIn? What do you think of these tools? Let me know in the comments.
Azure Collier 
Howdy, Azure! Some of your readers may be frustrated when trying to find the new icon (box with plus sign) you describe and illustrate. According to LinkedIn, this new portfolio feature is being introduced on a rollout basis. Some members received promotional emails inviting them to test-drive the new feature, but the rest of us will apparently have to wait–possibly a few weeks… 😦
Hi Aden,
Thanks for pointing this out. Hoping the new features will be rolled out soon!
Hi – I just added my first project to my LI profile, but I wish I could add an image, the logo for the project event I’m co-chairing. Am I missing something? Is there a way to do this? I don’t see any options for adding images to projects. Let me know if you can help…
Thanks!
James
Hi James,
Sorry for the late response. I’ve had some issues with WordPress this month! The only way you can add an image for your project is if that image is on the page that you’re linking to. I just added a new SlideShare deck to my profile today, and the image that showed up was the title slide for that deck.
Hope that helps!
-Azure
Hi, Azure! I’m a writer and have had creative fiction pieces published in various magazines and books. Could I add my publications to my projects on LinkedIn?
Hi Katie,
Sorry for the late response! Had some trouble with WordPress comments recently. I think you could absolutely add your publications to your LinkedIn projects as long as they are hosted on any of the 100 approved apps and providers that have a partnership with LinkedIn. Check out the list: http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34327
Good luck with your LinkedIn updates!
-Azure
Hi Azure, thanks for great info here. I can see the icon in many areas, but I can’t find that little square icon on Projects. I can see you have written that you can add an image to projects as well? Am I missing something? Grateful for any advice. Thank you
Hi Jaroslava,
I’m not referring to the Projects area of LinkedIn in this post. The instructions are for adding your projects/visual work from your portfolio by using the tools to add a link. Does that make sense? Let me know if you need more help.
Thanks!
-Azure
Hi Azure,
Nice indeed…Unfortunately Linkedin is getting annoyed when people starts leaving their platform to visit our [Projects URL’s]…Therefore they’re just adding some trailing symbols at the end of the URL’s in order to make it unusable without edition. Pitty. If you got a medecine, please let us know 😉
Thanks
Hi Vincent,
I took a look at your projects. The link for the Select HR and PM Web projects, worked just fine, but the rest did not. I would double-check the URLs you used when you entered the project information. If they’re missing some letters or numbers or written incorrectly, the link will not work.
Let me know if that helps!
-Azure