Six Actions for

on LinkedIn

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Six Key Actions for Success on LinkedIn LinkedIn “expert” lists are a dime a dozen and many focus on what you are doing wrong rather than telling you how to succeed. These Six Key Actions recommended by LinkedIn and industry leaders will launch you into the top 10% of profiles on LinkedIn. From the hundreds of LinkedIn Profiles I’ve reviewed or analyzed, less than 10% are doing all six of these “must haves.” These profiles include six­figure executives, IT specialists, sales professionals and social media­raised millennials. PART 1 ­ FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1. Profile Picture ­ The Biggest Impact You Can Make To Your Profile If you could do one thing to make your LinkedIn profile 11x more likely to be viewed by potential employers, customers or sales leads, would you hesitate to do it?

A lot of people still do. According to LinkedIn Marketing all you need to do is add a profile picture and your profile is 11x more likely to be viewed.. There is no action you can take that will do more to increase your presence on LinkedIn.

What About My Privacy? If you are not willing to put your face next to your professional profile you likely

don’t need to be on LinkedIn This is not Facebook or a dating site. You will not be tagged, sold to or propositioned

for a date (if you are propositioned then I suggest you tone down your profile picture)

What is a professional picture?

A headshot is appropriate for LinkedIn. This is a photo from the shoulders up, professional dress, a solid background and a smile is always a good idea

I recommend my clients use a professional photographer for the best results If professional shots are not in the budget chances are you have a HD camera on

your phone LinkedIn provides the ability to crop your image once it is uploaded, meaning no

photo editing software is needed to go from your phone to your profile

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What is not a professional picture?

Caricatures or avatars Dogs, cats, babies, friends, celebrities or

significant others. Best left for Facebook rather than a professional profile

Selfies Drink in hand at the bar (unless you are a

bartender) A product or logo. Best used on your

company page and linked to your experience section Your online dating photo or anything too

provocative. 2. Headlines ­ You Only Get One Chance The Headline is the most wasted opportunity on LinkedIn. It is the only thing potential employers, clients or connections will see via LinkedIn suggestions or searches ­ your one opportunity to grab people’s attention.

The majority of people state their current title, confusing acronyms and the company. It’s what resumes and cover letters taught us to do but tells a viewer virtually nothing about you ­ especially if your title is industry specific. When Writing Headlines For Clients I Have Three Objectives: 1. Grab attention by describing what is unique about you in an engaging manner. 2. Describe what you can for them (client, employer or connection). 3. Insert keywords for searches. The headline is an effective area for LinkedIn’s search algorithm, however do not “stuff” your Headline with keywords as it will look like spam and be unreadable.

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PART TWO ­ HOW YOU SOLVE YOUR READER’S PROBLEMS 3. Summary ­ What Is In It For Me? If your Headline has successfully hooked that potential employer, client or sales lead, the Summary is the make or break area on whether they will keep reading.

1. Most people being their Summary describing their shining personality traits, skills and experience. Regardless of how wonderful you are, the fact remains that people don’t care about you. They have their own problems and needs, and your wonderfulness isn’t doing anything to improve their life. Do the opposite of what the crowd is doing and talk to your reader’s needs and problems and how you have solutions.

2. For a job seeker the next step is to explain where you currently are in your career and where you want to go. Many people try to make a profile or resume general enough to be everything to everyone and it results in them talking to no one. For a salesperson this is the opportunity to explain your vision for a relationship with a customer and the outcome. Talking about why you do what you do will build trust — an essential element for sales. 3. What makes YOU able to solve their problem? Now talk to your background and skill­set and how it applies to helping your reader. 4. Have a Call to Action. Tell the reader what to do next, whether that is to contact you directly or move to a Company Page or website. Having your contact details on your profile is not enough; people want to be told what to do and if they don’t know they may move on to the next person.

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4. Experience ­ Bring the Pain! Resumes are boring and restrictive. They lack personality and emotion. LinkedIn is an opportunity to get away from the laundry list of roles and responsibilities of a resume and impact you reader. The Experience section is an opportunity to speak to the impact you had in each role. Anyone hiring in your industry knows what the responsibilities were — what they want to know is how you have made a difference in that role so they have a sense you will do the same in a future position.

For a business owner or sales person the Experience section will tell potential clients how you have helped people like them in the past and build trust. Title: Company titles can be effective if they have existing social proof and will appear in keyword searches. Take the opportunity to go beyond the title and briefly explain what it is you do to add value in your role. Company: LinkedIn will automatically search for your company as you type it in. Linking to your company will make you more visible in searches and give a reader context about the company. If your company doesn’t appear just type it in. Description: Time to bring the pain! A brief sentence or two explaining the company’s mission and how you helped achieve it provides enough context to move on to a story that will stick in a reader’s mind. This where a Pain Story comes into play as you describe a problem (pain point) your company faced, the unique abilities you brought to bring to the situation, and the results. Stories stick, facts fade.

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PART THREE ­ EXPANDING YOUR REACH 5. Profile Completeness ­ Build Your LinkedIn Muscles When people search LinkedIn there are two key factors in the results; your level of connection (First, Second, Third) and your profile completeness.

This is a simple action to build you up to LinkedIn’s highest rating ­ All­Star. It will have a strong impact on your visibility for potential employers, clients and connections.

Completing your profile requires honest toil but it is not difficult to get the basics done.

If the task seems overwhelming, break it down

into small chunks, like completing a single section each time you sign into LinkedIn. To get started, click on Profile in the navigation bar and then Edit Profile as below. From here choose what section you want to edit.

Attention to detail is a desirable trait in most professional positions. A blank profile section could be the difference between moving past the human resource screen and interviewing for that dream job. Many people want to wait until they are actively looking for a new job before “doing” their profile. If a friend invited you to a business talk to meet and network with your industry’s biggest influencers, would you decline because you are not actively looking, or would you go make connections that could change your future?

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6. Connections ­ What Makes The LinkedIn World Go Around

Connections matter ­ offline and online. Period. LinkedIn didn’t invent networking and it hasn’t replaced face­to­face networking. What it has done is give us an extremely powerful tool to expand our reach.

50 connections: This is the baseline from which LinkedIn will recognize you as a serious profile. You will need at least 50 connections to begin appearing in searches and becoming a suggested connection from LinkedIn.

500 connections: This is the goal for any LinkedIn account. At this level your results are excellent for being found in searches, but there is another benefit... In the free version of LinkedIn your searches only display up to your third level connections. At 50 connections this is extremely limited, at 500 your second and third level connections are exponential.

Want to connect to Sir Richard Branson? You can send him one of your precious few free InMails and hope for the best.

Or you can leverage your connections.

I could teach you some organic (free) techniques to get in contact with Sir Richard but you would still be an outsider.

Just like in real life, would you rather approach Sir Richard like a nervous fan or have the social proof of walking up to him and being personally introduced? How to request a connection: I always viewed Facebook as the social media platform to connect with people I already knew. If I wasn’t friends with you already then why would I want you in my “social safety zone?” In my early days of LinkedIn I adopted the same attitude until it dawned on me that LinkedIn wasn’t just about who I know, but about who I need to know. I was still in the process of growing my career, so it only followed reason that I needed to grow my professional connections. With that and the magical number of 500 connections in mind we should all rush out and shotgun approach connection requests to every possible connection, right?

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Wrong!

I don’t know about you, but the person at a networking event who walks up, shoves his or her card in my hand and moves on to the next victim, gets their card thrown away. That is not relationship building in my book. It’s recommended you personalize the auto text provided in connection requests and explain how you know the person or why you would like to connect. I advise clients how to increase their chances of having requests accepted by offering value and establishing common ground, and it works. WHAT NEXT? The next question is why do you want people to find you? What do you want LinkedIn to help you accomplish? If you have answered these questions and would like to supercharge your career or business, contact me at dave@easiernetworks.com or on LinkedIn and let’s discuss how I can help.

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