LinkedIn can be a terrific marketing platform for businesses, especially those in the business-to-business (B2B) sector looking to expand their professional network, discover clients online and create an image your business.
First impressions are everything when it comes to relationships, so it makes sense to optimise your LinkedIn profile. Maintaining a strong profile will help control the way people perceive you and lead to the maximum amount of views and opportunities. If prospective clients don’t like your profile, it will make it difficult to convince them to do business with you.
DEFINE YOUR GOAL
What’s the purpose of you being on LinkedIn? Are you generating leads and sales through outbound marketing? Are you recruiting? Do you want to redirect LinkedIn traffic to a website or e-mail list to assist with other online marketing campaigns?
Define your goal in order to paint a clear picture of what should be included on your profile. Some people use LinkedIn as simply an online resume, but you want your profile to stand out from the others.
IMITATE
Once you familiarise yourself with the LinkedIn platform, you’ll begin to develop a sense of what makes a profile look appealing.
Search for the profiles of industry leaders in your profession and take note of what makes their profile stand out. Some examples in the online marketing and social media industry include names like Gary Vaynerchuk, Nicholas Kusmich and Russell Brunson.
Once you have taken note of what makes their profile great, start to implement those aspects into your own profile.
PROFILE PHOTO
This is arguably the most important thing not to get wrong. Remember what we said about first impressions?
Before people even click on your profile, the first thing they are going to see if your profile picture.Include a nice, clear head shot in front of a blank background, or if you’re camera shy, just use a high definition version of your company logo.
HEADLINE
This is the second thing people are likely to see when coming across your LinkedIn profile. For your headline, you can just put your job title e.g. Director of Jackson Clark Media.
That’s the standard way of doing it, however many people use the headline as an opportunity to show prospective clients how their product or service brings value to other people. Smart profiles today are starting to make the content less about themselves and more about how your business helps other people achieve their goals.
SUMMARY
A summary should be a brief description of who you are and what you offer. You can include information about your experience and leave a link to contact details. This is your time to write whatever it is you want to write about yourself. What is your mission? Mine is to help businesses of all sizes harness the power of social media.
You can use this section to tell the story about what is important to you. Where you have come from, what you have achieved and what makes you unique. You may wish to include a clear call-to-action. In my example, I’m clearly asking people to check out my website. If you have the Facebook pixel installed, it creates an opportunity for retargeting campaigns on Facebook, which can lead to many other marketing opportunities.
Following these LinkedIn profile optimisation tips should help you go along way and creating a strong a first impression in the minds of potential clients.
Remember to maintain a helpful tone of voice with your writing. You should limit talking about yourself and instead talk about how you, your product or service is helping others achieve what they want to achieve.