LinkedIn is a goldmine of business opportunities, but you can miss it if your profile isn’t optimized!
In this article, we’ll help you optimize your LinkedIn profile so that potential clients or customers see your profile, trust you, and want to work with you.
The Facts
Before we dive in, let’s look at the facts: According to LinkedIn, 80% of its users “drive business decisions”.
What does that mean? 80% of people you contact can either buy from you or introduce you to someone that can There are over 722 million members & Over 55 million companies.
Anyone you would seriously consider working with is on LinkedIn If you aren’t on LinkedIn, you’re downright bleeding cash.
If you aren’t using LinkedIn properly, you’re still leaving a lot of money on the table & Over 55 million companies.
No matter the industry/vertical/niche the business decision makers are going to be on LinkedIn for one reason or another.
Why?
- Job hunting (yes even CEOs job hop).
- They use LinkedIn to sell
- They use LinkedIn to hire
- Some even use LinkedIn to flex their skills
No matter what the case is, the exact people you need to sell to are going to be on this platform.
So if you could:
- Get their attention
- Gain their trust
- Solve their problem
You are guaranteed a sale.
Here’s how we are going to do that:
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Today is the death of your current LinkedIn profile & the birth of a your new persona.
Your new profile will show everyone you are a trustworthy EXPERT on the niche/industry you sell to.
You need to do the following:
- Present an image of success in your field
- Prove you are knowledgeable & top 1%
- Provide free value frequently
- Establish credibility & trust
Profile Pic
For your profile pic, have someone take pics of you dressed business casual. This doesn’t have to be too complicated as long as it looks good.
Use a Fiverr freelancer or open photoshop to add a professional touch.
Banner Image
You want a banner for your company or you in your natural zone, if you are personal brand focused.
You can hire a Fiverr designer to place you in front of a crowd at a conference – or whatever impressive thing you might want for your situation.
Either way, outsource this to a pro (if you’re not a designer) and make sure it makes an impact.
About Section
This is where 99% of people are doing LinkedIn WRONG.
Your About Me should function as a sales funnel.
Like all sales funnels, the key is to get their attention, buy a few more seconds of their attention, & repeat that process until they get to a call to action that converts.
The formula for a good about section is:
- Big brag – Why you are awesome
- Social proof – Verification that you are indeed awesome at what you do
- Story – How you got here & what you do now
- Call to action – When and how they can reach you
Here is an example of a PERFECT About section:
- Establishes this person’s status as an expert in the niche industry of cyber security SaaS.
- Contains social proof {companies worked with+ award won}.
- Story of their business
- Call To Action
What to do if you don’t have any social proof?
You’re going to create it. Whatever we need to be in the top 1%, we will acquire it.
You will get there if you follow these steps…
Social Proof
No matter what your niche is, there are a bunch of blogs and info websites on it.
This ranges from Forbes to micro blogs.
And yes, 99% of entrepreneurs and startups you see with the “Forbes Featured” tagline paid a PR firm or journalist for an article. The starting price for that is currently ~$8k.
All you need is a couple mentions or awards. These are incredibly easy to attain.
If you have $8-10k to blow you can go the Forbes route, but its overkill if you ask me. There’s a much cheaper & even free alternative.
The fact is, journalists need content to post! Reach out with something relevant, odds are they’ll post it.
Write out your story. Then, cold email & LinkedIn message journalists who write for the websites in your niche tell them you have a good story for them and would like to get on a brief call to discuss it.
Digital Real Estate Method
If you want to get things done exactly your way & have a piece of digital real estate that you can monetize – you can have a website for your niche created.
Let’s say your niche is “SEO for Accountants”
- Namelix
We’ll let AI do the hard work in creating our brand by simply entering “Accountant” & “marketing - Domain
Use Namecheap or Google Domains. Use the name from step 1 to generate, in this case it’s Credial, to find a .com. - Content
Have someone on Fiverr or use WPMaker to make a quick WordPress installation and use WP RSS Aggregator. This will scrape authority content from your niche and post articles to the blog. This is short term, in the long term you want to create original authority content and have this site filled with good content. See this as a long-term investment.
Why do this?
Because you can give yourself any awards or shoutouts that you want. You are now an authority in the eyes of your prospects.
No matter how you get your mentions, it’s important that you get them.
You also want tangible results for real companies. If you haven’t obtained those through a career or clients, simply work for free or a discounted rate until you get some.
Featured Section
Easy: throw up a portfolio website or YouTube video that showcases your work.
PR articles, guest posts, or your own digital real estate can go here as well.
Engagement
Spend a few minutes each day scrolling through the timeline.
When you find an opportunity to add a valuable comment to a post, go for it.
If you come across a post from a prospect, give them a genuine compliment or drop some valuable knowledge.
You won’t always come across posts that are good to engage with, so it’s important that you do when you spot them on the timeline.
Connections
You want to hit that “500+” range so you look credible.
But you also want to have a larger pool of 1st level connections to send messages to.
Use the search bar to filter by role, company, and industry & add as many people in your niche as possible.
Company Page
Your company page is another easy growth hack that 99.9% of small biz and agency owners manage to screw up.
As always, we’re going to appear larger than we are without actually lying.
Here’s the flow of optimizing your company page:
- Make sure your company logo & banner are professional & aesthetic
(Fiverr is your friend) - Fill out the descriptions for your company using the following formula:
– Who you help
– What results you produce
– How you do it
Ex. “{Company} helps Software Development Firms grow revenue through client acquisition powered by hyper-qualified digital ad traffic.” - Buy around 500 followers
This is the one time buying social media followers will actually help you - Fill with content:
-Google “Niche” + “RSS Feed” and repost relevant articles from your niche regularly
– At least once a week, post original content and have all of your friends engage with the posts - Add employees
If you’ve got employees, great! If not, there’s some ways around this… Use something like thispersondoesnotexist and create fake profiles that can act as your bot employees. You can use Fiverr to find someone to use a VPN and create these fake profiles for you.
A properly built page will increase conversions around 10x!
Why?
When you send a message to a prospect, they will skim over your profile & your company page before deciding if they want to reply to you.
If you can engineer a surface level perception of success for your profile & company page, you will buy yourself enough of their attention to get a reply to your initial message.
This ability to buy their attention with an optimized profile & company page will give you an advantage over 99% of users. This unfair advantage will tip the scales in your favor to sell your product/service.
Pro tip: Use LinkedRich to automate your lead generation after you’ve got your profile optimized.
Bottom Line
If you want your LinkedIn lead generation to drive results, you need to create a solid sales funnel.
In this case, your sales funnel is your LinkedIn profile.
I hope these tips gave you some ideas and stressed the fact that you need to optimize your LinkedIn profile immediately.
Looking for tools to help with your LinkedIn? Check out our We-Connect review here.
