Many people—myself included—create their LinkedIn profile with no clear idea of how they will use it to achieve their business’s goals. They might vaguely hope to “keep up with contacts,” but without a direct connection to a business outcome, this sort of goal isn’t going anywhere.
That’s a shame, because there’s so much opportunity here to improve your company’s marketing efforts, and especially your lead generation process. This post is my guide to all the ways I should have been using LinkedIn a year ago—it’s your chance to learn from my mistakes, and improve your business because of it.
Before we get started: Complete your LinkedIn profile
I’ve titled this the “advanced guide” to marketing yourself on LinkedIn. That means I’m going to assume you’ve already taken care of the basics—you’ve added your photo, email address, past jobs, education, etc. In short, your profile is 100% complete as far as LinkedIn is concerned.
Don’t be fooled, though—your profile is actually far from complete. The first thing we’re going to overhaul is your Summary, and we’re going to address an issue that nearly everyone runs into…
Don’t write for you—write for your reader
When it comes to writing about your services—whether on LinkedIn, your Web site, or anywhere else—the most important thing to remember is that you’re writing for your reader, not yourself.
A small percentage of the people viewing your profile may really be interested to know where you were born, your philosophy on business, and the certifications and skills you’ve acquired. That’s fine—it’s okay to have those in your profile. But they should not be a primary feature. The first paragraphs in each section (Summary, Projects, positions you’ve held in the Experience section, etc.) are the most likely to be read, so you need to make them count.
That means those first paragraphs need to really hit home with the people you want to do business with. Make it clear that you understand the challenges they face and that your business is capable of meeting those challenges. I’m as guilty of writing bad copy as anyone—I certainly don’t put hours of planning into everything I write on the Internet. So, I can give you a before-and-after look at how I overhauled my Summary page.
Before
Summary
I run a consultancy called Conversion Insights, which helps businesses improve their online revenue. I write the text and put together the images and video that help persuade visitors to buy from you rather than your competitors.
Bo-ring! Aside from the obvious length issues, this is way too me-focused.
After
Summary
If you’re like a lot of small business owners, you hired someone to design your Web site and haven’t really touched it since then. You probably wrote the text of the site yourself, and you almost certainly didn’t interview your customers to find out what messages resonate with them—and what messages move them to buy.
That’s a shame, because with the right messaging and a strategy for drawing in new customers in the long-term, you could probably be doing anywhere between 25% and 100% more business through your site.
That’s what I do. I help companies both attract new prospects to their site and persuade more of those visitors to become paying customers.
With this, I’m trying to get in my prospective client’s head. I know from past experience that the people who find my services most valuable have those characteristics—they’re small business owners who haven’t given their Web site the attention it deserves (even when their business depends on their online revenue!). So, my first few sentences are aimed at forging a connection with those people, to get them nodding their heads and thinking—maybe sheepishly—“Yeah, I did that.”
Having identified this issue with their marketing lets me really easily transition into offering a solution—let’s rework your messaging and put in place a long-term strategy for getting traffic.
There’s a worry that my clients often have: if you’re really specific about who you’re writing for (like I am above), won’t you alienate people who you don’t connect to? The answer, of course, is absolutely. But the alternative is to fail to connect to anyone. This is a Golden Rule of Copywriting:
Better to speak directly to 10% of your audience than to speak vaguely to 100%.
A note about packing keywords in your profile
A lot of search engine optimizers (the “experts,” with air-quotes) will suggest filling your profile, and especially your Summary section, with keywords relating to what you do.
To a very small extent, ensuring you have the most relevant keywords may improve the amount of traffic you get from people searching for your services, but above all else, you need to think about your reader.
Where it feels natural to use keywords to describe what you do, by all means, include them. At the end of the day, though, you don’t get jobs by having a keyword-packed profile—you get them through forging a connection with key buyers.
Many people don’t realize that LinkedIn now allows you to feature photos, videos, presentation, and documents in your profile—in the Summary, Experience, and Education sections. This is an easy way to stand out, since it gives you little box that can display whatever multimedia is important to you.
Video and presentations in your LinkedIn Profile
What should you include here?
- Videos of webinars, presentations, and your other professional appearances
- Presentation slides
- Videos about your company (interviews, company overviews, etc.)
- Press materials
- Tutorials (especially video!) educating people about what you do
- Links to your Web sites
Don’t be afraid to include a call to action in your media titles—for instance, title your article “Learn how you can dramatically reduce your HR costs” rather than “HR Savings Article.”
Make your profile scannable and visually interesting
If your profile is a wall of text, you need to help your readers out. The text you use should be easy to scan. By taking advantage of lists and headings, you can ensure that the content you worked so hard to write doesn’t get glossed over.
Special characters that are allowed include: ◊ ♦ ☆ ★ ► ◄ ↔ ♫ │ ▌
So, you can style your headings like this:
│▌ ABOUT ME ▌│
My name is John Doe, and I’m a business coach from Tulsa…
And you can create lists like this:
Services we offer:
♦ Accounting
♦ HR outsourcing
♦ IT consulting
And you can create call-outs for things that deserve extra attention, like this:
► Winner of the 2013 Top Consulting Professionals Award ◄
★★★★★ Service Award Winner
Using LinkedIn to generate leads
There are a handful of ways that you should be using LinkedIn on a regular basis to generate leads, especially if you’re in a services business.
Get in touch with the people who could benefit from your services
If you’re trying to get work with a particular firm, LinkedIn makes it easy to find connections there. Find the company page on LinkedIn and use the “How You’re Connected” box to find your 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-degree connections there. These are the people who can get you an introduction to the decision makers at the company, and you should absolutely ask them to do so.
In addition, you should regularly be browsing through the contact lists of the new people you connect to. If you find people you think you can provide value to, ask for an introduction!
You shouldn’t be afraid to ask for these introductions—your attitude should be that you have exceptional value to offer this person, and you would be remiss not to offer it. If you feel like a sleazy salesman when you ask for an introduction, you need to first convince yourself of the value you’re offering.
Finding connections for a professional services business using LinkedIn
Get hotter leads by regularly checking who’s viewed your profile
LinkedIn will let you know when someone has viewed your profile. You won’t always be able to see the person’s name, but when you do, don’t be afraid to reach out to that person. They probably looked at your profile for a reason, and you can’t go wrong by offering contact. This might feel a little creepy at first, but remember that everyone sees who viewed their profile—you aren’t doing yourself any good by pretending not to notice!
Here’s a template you might use to contact these people (either via LinkedIn or by email):
Hi Jane,
I noticed you viewed my profile a few days ago. I’m always looking for new connections in <their industry/location/company/etc.>. If I can help you out in any way, don’t hesitate to ask.
Sincerely,
John
Give and request recommendations
Endorsements by other people are one of the most powerful ways to show the world that you’re a serious, trustworthy professional. You should regularly be giving recommendations to people you’ve done business with (one or two paragraphs are sufficient), and you should ask them to do the same. You’ll be surprised at how willing people are to help you out.
Get your brand in front of your connections
At this point, most companies have trained themselves to tweet, post to Facebook, and send an email to their subscribers whenever they create new content. But precious few companies post their content to LinkedIn.
This means there’s a lot of opportunity for people who will share their content there—it’s quite easy to get your message high in your contacts’ home page feed, just due to a link you posted or an article you wrote.
So, the next time you write a blog post (and you are blogging as part of your content marketing strategy, right?), post the link to LinkedIn. This doesn’t take any extra time if you’re using a tool like Buffer or HootSuite (both of which are free for basic accounts). These tools allow you to post to many social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) at once, from one location.
Finding commonalities with prospective clients
Another opportunity to build rapport with your contacts is by sharing content specifically with them—send them a message with an article you read and a summary of what makes it interesting to them. It’s hard to do this will all your contacts (perhaps numbering in the thousands), so instead choose 10–15 relationships that you really want to mature.
Make a point of sending them something of value each month, whether it’s an article you found on the Web, an idea you had for their business, a book you read that could help them out, etc. Not sure what to send them? Check your common interests!
What works for you? Anything I missed?
LinkedIn can be a powerful marketing tool for your services business… if you know how to use it. Like any marketing channel, what you get out of it is largely a function of the effort you’ve put into it. If this guide has helped you get more from the service, shoot me an email at tyler@conversioninsights.net and let me know—I love hearing that I’ve been of service!
Did you find something I missed? Drop me a comment below and I’ll update the guide!
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