For a small B2B company, the founder’s LinkedIn profile is often the busiest sales page it has. Buyers look you up before they reply, take the call or sign. This founder LinkedIn profile checklist covers the five parts that do the selling: headline, About, Featured, current role and activity.
Why it is a sales page
Every post you write sends people to your profile. So does every introduction, every conference badge and every cold email you send. A buyer who lands there is deciding one thing: is this person worth thirty minutes?
Most founder profiles answer a different question: what is this person’s job title? That is a CV. A sales page says who you help, with what, why you are credible and what to do next. A strong post that sends people to a weak profile wastes the reach.
The same structure applies to the rest of the team, on a smaller scale. Sales staff and specialists get looked up too. Start with the founder, then give the team the same one-line company description.
Headline
The headline is the line under your name. LinkedIn shows it in search results, next to every comment and on every post, so it is the most-read sentence you own. It can differ from your job title, and it should.
- Weak: “Founder & CEO at Acme”.
- Better: “I help UK freight forwarders cut quoting time with software that prices a shipment in minutes · Founder, Acme”.
Check: does it name the customer and the outcome? Does the first part still make sense when the feed cuts it short? Remove words a buyer would not search for, such as “visionary” or “passionate”.
About
Only the opening lines show before “see more”, so they carry the section. Use a three-part structure:
- Open with the customer’s problem, in their words. Not your founding story.
- Give proof you can stand behind: what you built, who uses it, a result with a source. If you do not have a number you would defend on a call, leave it out.
- End with one next step: a booking link, an email address, or a page to read. One, not four.
Write it in the first person and keep it to a few short paragraphs. Read it aloud. If it sounds like a press release, start again.
Featured
The Featured section pins posts, articles, links or files near the top of your profile. Empty is the most common state, and the most expensive: the buyer who wants to know more has nowhere to go.
Pin two or three things that answer a buyer’s question: a guide to the problem you solve, a short write-up of how you work, and the booking page. Put the most useful first. Skip the award announcement and the podcast from three years ago.
Current role
The current position entry is where a buyer checks the company is real. Many founders leave the description blank or paste the investor pitch.
Write two or three plain sentences: what the company does, for whom, and where. Link the role to the company page, so the logo shows and the click goes somewhere. Use the same one-line description your website uses; consistency is how a buyer, and an AI tool reading the public page, knows they have the right company.
Activity
The activity section shows your recent posts and comments. A buyer reads it as evidence that you are active and that you think about their problem.
- Recency: a last post from 2024 reads as a dormant business.
- Match: do the last five posts relate to what you sell? Holiday photos and reshared news do not count against you, but they do not sell either.
- Comments: thoughtful comments on buyers’ posts show up here too, and they are often the cheapest reach you have.
A realistic rhythm for a founder is two or three posts a week, each one idea, written for the buyer. The pipeline side of that is in LinkedIn and social for B2B pipeline.
Run the check in twenty minutes
- Open your profile signed out, or in a private window, to see what a stranger sees. Check your public profile settings if sections are hidden.
- Save it as a PDF (on desktop: More, then Save to PDF). Read it as plain text. If the text alone does not say who you help, the design will not rescue it.
- Score each of the five parts: does it do its one job? Yes, partly or no. The free LinkedIn profile review reads the same PDF and puts the fixes in order.
- Fix the “no” items in order: headline first, then the opening of About, then Featured.
The honest limitation: a better profile converts the attention you already have. It does not create attention. If nobody is looking you up, the problem is upstream, in lead generation and positioning, and that is the system a fractional CMO is there to install.
Key takeaways
- Buyers read your profile before they reply. Treat it as a sales page, not a CV.
- Headline: the customer and the outcome, not only a job title.
- About: their problem, proof you would defend, one next step.
- Featured and current role: something useful to click, and the company in plain words.
- Next step: run the free LinkedIn profile review on the PDF you saved.
