The Featured Section Appears Just Below Your Intro Card on Creator Mode Profiles
LinkedIn’s Featured Section occupies prime real estate on your profile—positioned directly below your headline and photo when you enable Creator Mode. This placement matters because 73% of profile visits last fewer than 30 seconds. Your featured content is often the only material visitors will see before deciding whether to connect, message, or scroll away.
The Featured Section is a customizable container where you pin posts, articles, external links, media files, and documents. Unlike the rest of your profile, which follows LinkedIn’s rigid formatting rules, this section gives you direct control over visual hierarchy and messaging. You decide what appears first, what gets prominence, and how it’s framed to visitors.
You Can Pin Five Content Types, Each Serving Different Conversion Goals
The Featured Section accepts five distinct content formats, and matching the right format to your goal matters more than volume.
- Posts: Any LinkedIn post you’ve published—text, image, video, or carousel. Best used for posts that generated 50+ comments or 200+ reactions, as social proof signals quality to new visitors.
- Articles: Long-form pieces published through LinkedIn’s native Article tool. Feature your 3,000+ word thought leadership pieces on topics your target audience searches for annually.
- External Links: URLs to your website, portfolio, case studies, or press coverage. You write a custom title and description, so LinkedIn doesn’t auto-populate generic metadata.
- Media Files: PDFs, presentations, or images uploaded directly to your profile. Visitors download these without leaving LinkedIn, reducing friction for lead magnets like checklists or templates.
- Documents: LinkedIn’s native document format, viewable and downloadable in-profile. Useful for one-page case studies or credential sheets that don’t require external hosting.
Recruiters spend 6 seconds scanning a profile. Sales prospects spend 12 seconds. This means your first featured item must communicate value instantly—no context-setting preamble.
Lead With Your Strongest Credential, Then Tier by Audience Type
Position your most impressive work first. If you’re a senior engineer, feature a project that generated measurable impact: “Led migration of legacy system to microservices, reducing API latency by 40%.” If you’re a recruiter, feature a client success story with hiring metrics: “Filled 12 enterprise sales roles, 85% placed, 95% retained after year one.”
Rotate your featured items based on the visitor. Sales professionals who attract different customer segments should create 3-5 featured items and manually reorder them when meeting with specific client types. A B2B SaaS founder might feature a product demo video for potential customers but swap in a funding announcement when preparing for investor calls.
Keep featured content current. LinkedIn’s algorithm flags profiles that haven’t been updated in 6 months, and outdated featured items reinforce this signal. Review your Featured Section quarterly. If your most recent featured item is from 2024, replace it immediately.
Write custom titles and descriptions for every link and media file. LinkedIn’s default title pull from page metadata is often vague (“About Us”) or keyword-stuffed. Instead, write benefit-forward descriptions: “3-Page Case Study: How InsureCorp Reduced Claims Processing Time by 5 Days” outperforms “Case Study PDF.”
The 3-5 Item Sweet Spot Maximizes Engagement Without Overwhelming Visitors
More than five featured items dilutes attention and makes your profile feel cluttered. Fewer than three misses the opportunity to show range. Research from LinkedIn’s own creator tips shows 3-5 items generates the highest interaction rates.
Your order should follow this logic: strongest proof of core value, then secondary credential, then lead magnet or CTA, then social proof (media mention or testimonial), then optional fifth item (secondary skill demonstration or award).
For example, a consultant’s Featured Section might be arranged as:
- Post: Your most-engaged thought leadership post on your core expertise (1,200 reactions, 150 comments)
- Link: Case study PDF showing client ROI from your most profitable engagement type
- Article: Your evergreen 4,000-word guide on a topic prospects search for monthly
- Link: Newsletter signup with the headline “Monthly insights on [your specialty]—600+ subscribers”
- Media: One-page credentials sheet or award certificate
This arrangement tells a visitor: “Here’s proof I’m credible (post), proof I deliver results (case study), proof I think deeply (article), proof others trust me (newsletter), and here’s my credibility compressed (credentials).”
Add and Reorder Featured Items in Four Steps
The process takes 90 seconds per item. Navigate to your profile, scroll to the Featured Section (or create it by clicking “Add profile section” and selecting “Featured” from the Recommended list). Click the + Add icon, then select your content type: post, article, link, or media. Follow LinkedIn’s prompts to add a custom title and description, then save.
To reorder items, click the pencil icon in the Featured Section header and drag items to your preferred sequence. Changes save automatically. Test different orders over two-week periods and track which arrangement generates more profile visits (visible in LinkedIn Analytics under “Profile views”).
If you write for LinkedIn Daily and have practical strategies for optimizing profile sections or creating conversion-focused LinkedIn content, consider submitting to our write-for-us page. We publish practitioner insights on LinkedIn strategy monthly.
Your next step: Open your profile now and audit your Featured Section. Ask yourself: Would a recruiter or prospect understand your value in 6 seconds? If the answer is no, replace the first item with your single strongest credential and retest after two weeks.
