Keep LinkedIn. It is the wrong shape for this.
A profile is one document, written for the most generous reader, that you push at everybody. This is one store of what you know that different people pull different answers out of.
- This does not replace LinkedIn and is not trying to. Keep the profile, keep the network, link the page from it.
- A profile answers who you are. It cannot answer how you would handle this, because that answer depends on who is asking.
- The difference in one word: push against pull.
What a page does that a profile cannot
- It answers the actual question
- Nobody's real question is what were your job titles. It is how do you handle a bad hire, would you take this contract, what do you think about the thing I am about to get wrong. A page answers those, from what you wrote, in your words.
- It says different things to different people
- One profile is read identically by a recruiter, a client and a stranger. A page gives each of them the level you chose for them, per topic, out of the same store of things you know.
- It works when you are not there
- A profile starts a conversation you then have to have. A page has it. At two in the morning, with somebody's assistant, in whatever language they asked in.
- It is read by the machines that now answer for you
- More and more people never reach your profile, because they asked an assistant about you instead. A page is built to be read by those: a plain-text version of everything it shows the public web, and a way for an assistant to ask it directly.
- It is not a performance
- There is no feed here, nothing to post, no reactions, no view count, and nobody is ranked. You write things down because they are true, not because it is Tuesday and you have not posted.
A profile
One document, written for the most generous reader, that everybody gets identically.
How do you handle a hire that is not working out? Head of Operations, 2021 to now. Previously Operations Manager. Skills: leadership, process improvement, stakeholder management. It cannot answer the question. It was not built to.
A page
One store of what you know, and a different answer for each kind of person who asks.
How do you handle a hire that is not working out? She gives it four weeks with something written down, and says she has never regretted ending it sooner. In her words, with the sentence it rests on, at the level she set for a stranger.
Use both, this way
Put your page's address in your LinkedIn profile, where the website field is. That is the whole integration, and it is the one that matters: the people already looking you up get somewhere to ask.
You can start your page from your LinkedIn export rather than from a blank screen. Download your data from LinkedIn, bring the file here, and your roles, your education and your projects come across as things your page knows. What a profile cannot give you is the part people actually want, what you think, and that part you write.
The questions people ask about this
Should I delete my LinkedIn?
No. It is where people find you. This is where they ask you. Link one to the other and stop rewriting your profile.
Does everything I write become public?
Only what you set to Anyone on the web. Everything else sits behind an audience: people signed in, or people you invited. Anything you have not set a level for is not released at all.
Is this another profile to keep up to date?
It is the opposite trade. You write a thing once, and it keeps answering. When you change your mind you write the new version, and the old one stays behind it with its date rather than being quietly erased.
Bring your export, or write three things. Both take about the same time.