I spent twenty years running computer operations for a major national retailer, and before that I was VP of consulting at a couple of IT firms. None of that makes anybody a LinkedIn expert.
What made me one is that when I left and needed to reinvent myself professionally, I couldn’t get hired. I’d the credentials and I’d the network. What I didn’t have was a LinkedIn profile, because I had been putting it off for months.
Six months of silence is a fairly direct lesson about what happens to a professional with no findable presence. Not rejections. Nothing coming back at all.
So I hired LinkedIn Makeover to fix it. Then I went to work there as a Senior LinkedIn Branding Expert for about two years, under Donna Serdula, who wrote LinkedIn for Dummies, optimizing 100+ profiles for C-level executives, ambassadors, and other high-profile professionals. Then I became a ghostwriter, and LinkedIn brought me clients. It still does.
What happened when Focus on LinkedIn first launched?
Fifteen thousand copies in three days, and number 43 in all of Kindle.
I’d no idea that was coming. For somebody who had spent the previous two decades managing computer operations, watching LinkedIn expertise land with professionals around the world was a strange thing to sit through.
The first edition was good and it was a beginning. This one goes considerably further.
The book on this: Focus on LinkedIn is a complete manual for the platform, from a profile that works through crisis management, scams, and recovering a restricted account.
What changed between the two editions of Focus on LinkedIn?
Everything and nothing.
Microsoft bought LinkedIn for 26.2 billion dollars and rebuilt its integration with enterprise systems while leaving the professional networking core intact. The features have moved constantly since, the algorithm has become considerably more selective, and the platform now carries more than a billion members.
What hasn’t changed is the underlying thing. Professional relationships still work the way professional relationships work, and most people still use a fraction of what the platform can do.
The revision adds whole territories the first edition didn’t have. Crisis management. Scam protection. What to do when your account is restricted and how to get it back, which most LinkedIn books won’t touch because it’s unglamorous and because the author hasn’t lived it.
Why is there a chapter on LinkedIn for neurodivergent professionals?
Because I’m one, and the standard advice is written for somebody else.
Most networking guidance assumes a person who enjoys open-ended social contact, improvises comfortably, and finds the ambiguity of a professional relationship energising instead of exhausting. That isn’t everybody, and the people it isn’t written for tend to conclude they’re bad at networking and not badly matched to the advice.
The platform is unusually good for this if you use it deliberately. Asynchronous, text-based, editable before sending, and searchable, which removes most of what makes live networking expensive for some people.
No other LinkedIn book I know of has that chapter. It’s in this one because I needed it.
What do LinkedIn guides usually fail to explain?
It explains why things work and what to do when they stop.
Most books in this category tell you what to do. Fewer explain the psychology underneath, the technical detail of how the platform operates, or how to adapt when something goes wrong. That’s where most readers need help.
The book runs in four parts, fundamentals, intermediate, advanced, and special cases, and it doesn’t need to be read in order. If your profile is solid, start at part two. If your account has been restricted, go straight to the crisis chapter.
I’m not promising the book will make anybody LinkedIn famous. Professional networking takes consistent effort and real relationship building over months and years, and any book claiming otherwise is selling something.
Why does LinkedIn reward some posts and bury others?
Because LinkedIn isn’t Facebook, TikTok or Twitter, and most people arrive treating it as though it were.
The first substantive chapter is about that difference, ahead of any profile advice, because the tactics only make sense once you understand what kind of room you’re standing in. Behavior that works on a social platform reads as noise on a professional one, and the reverse is equally true.
That’s also the reason so many capable professionals conclude that LinkedIn doesn’t work for them. They’re performing correctly for a different venue.
What does the LinkedIn algorithm weigh?
Not all of your profile equally, and knowing the order changes what you write.
Your headline carries the most weight, then your current job title, then your About section, then the experience descriptions. That hierarchy means the same sentence is worth a different amount depending on where you put it.
The headline is 220 characters. That sounds like a limitation and works as a discipline. It forces the kind of clarity most professionals never impose on their own description of themselves.
Keyword stuffing fails badly. The system detects obvious manipulation and penalises it, so the actual skill is natural language that carries search terms while still reading like a person wrote it for other people.
One thing almost nobody checks. If your profile is private or restricted it’s invisible to search engines entirely. That throws away a large source of inbound visibility for no benefit.
Why is there a chapter on scams and account restrictions?
Because those are the two situations where every other book abandons you.
Most LinkedIn guidance tells you what to do and stops. It doesn’t explain why any of it works, and it’s nothing at all to say when something breaks. The chapters on crisis management, platform account restriction, and the scams operating on the platform exist because those are the moments people search for help and find almost nothing useful.
Account restriction in particular. Somebody who has spent years building a professional presence loses access to it and discovers that the recovery process is undocumented and the advice online is guesswork.
That material is unglamorous. That’s exactly why it’s missing everywhere else.
What does an optimized LinkedIn profile produce?
Recognition that was already earned and hadn’t been visible.
I’ve watched clients turn a rebuilt presence into TEDx invitations and into industry standing they’d merited years earlier without anybody noticing. Overlooked managers becoming sought-after voices, not because the work changed but because it became findable and legible.
The book keeps its promises modest for the same reason. Professional networking success takes consistent effort, real relationship building, and systematic work over months and years. Nothing in these pages will make anybody LinkedIn famous overnight, and any book claiming otherwise is selling something.
Who is Focus on LinkedIn for?
Professionals who suspect they’re using a fraction of the platform, and people whose careers have stalled without an obvious reason.
I’ve watched clients turn an optimized presence into TEDx invitations and into recognition they’d earned years earlier without anybody noticing. Overlooked managers becoming sought-after voices in their field, on the strength of being findable and legible.
Your professional future depends on the relationships you build and the reputation you develop. LinkedIn is unreasonably good at both, and only if you know how it works.