You’re finally using LinkedIn, and you know it could work wonders for your business. Now you need to know how to make the most out of LinkedIn by using proven and effective LinkedIn marketing strategies.
LinkedIn is a valuable tool for B2B marketers and business owners because it generates high quality leads made up of professionals and decision-makers. The key is in knowing how to optimize your profile so you could get the best results on LinkedIn.
Here, Kennected teaches you how to use the biggest professional social networking platform so you could increase your revenue, find more leads, and become an industry leader.
What You Need to Do to Get More Views on Your LinkedIn Profile
The main thing that you need to keep in mind when optimizing your profile is that your brand should always come first. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to promote your brand, so try to develop a strong and recognizable brand.
Your LinkedIn profile or page is more than just an online resume. It has so many features you can use to showcase your value and show people who you are. Always keep your LinkedIn profile updated. In fact, if you are interested in LinkedIn marketing, you should use this platform actively. Here are some of the ways you can maximize visibility of your LinkedIn profile.
Get a Custom-Designed Header Banner Created with Your Colors
Your LinkedIn banner photo or header is the first thing people see when they visit your profile. So if you don’t change the default LinkedIn banner image, you’re making a big mistake.
Profile visitors will think you haven’t inserted any effort into your profile, and they might even think you’re lazy. People won’t see you as an industry leader if they think you’re inefficient or uninteresting.
You can use this large space as a small billboard: so make sure you use it creatively. Invest in a custom header that shows off your brand, and be sure to use your brand colors. Create an eye-catching background photo that stands out and engages people’s attention.
Invest in Professional Photography for a Headshot
If for some reason, your LinkedIn profile does not have your face in it, you are potentially driving away a lot of business. It’s hard enough to build people’s trust online—it’s even harder when you don’t even have a profile picture. Visitors aren’t likely to do business with profiles that don’t have a picture.
While you’re at it, invest in a professional headshot. A few tips for choosing the right profile picture for LinkedIn: make sure you’re the only one in the shot and that your face is taking up at least 60 percent of the image.
A professional photographer can help in many different ways. They can set the proper lighting and remove distracting backgrounds.
Your LinkedIn profile photo should project the image you want to project, and this again ties with how you want to present your brand. You can be friendly, approachable, and professional—as long as it is consistent with your brand. And most importantly, your picture should always show what you currently look like. Always keep your profile picture updated.
Tell Your Story Using Your Headline and Summary
Your headline shouldn’t be just a job title: there’s no rule that says it has to be. Use this area to say something about your role and why you do what you do. You can make it a bit more eye-catching and descriptive.
You can then use your Summary field to flesh out all the details, tell your story, and really get your profile visitors hooked. It is important that people can relate to or at least understand your brand. Tell your story and don’t be afraid to describe exactly how you can help your clients.
This is your most personal piece of advertising, so don’t leave this space blank.
Put a Spotlight on Your Skills and Services
Describing your skills is one thing, but having them listed down is another. It’s a quick and easy way to describe your value and why people should work with you. Scroll through LinkedIn’s list of skills and choose the ones that are relevant to you. To make things more interesting, choose skills that make you unique from the competition.
Pick only a handful of skills so you don’t drown out the importance of each one. Go for the ones that are most relevant to what you do.
LinkedIn also has a Services feature that allows you to showcase your range of services. This could boost your visibility in search results, so don’t disregard it.
Create Content and Use it to Drive Engagement
Content marketing is the best way to establish thought leadership. You want people to see your value by giving them informative and helpful content. With well-written long form articles, you can show that you care about your community, and you can even give value to your target audience without selling to them. This boosts your credibility tremendously.
Experiment with different types of content: long form articles, short status updates, and even curated content. You can test different content and see which ones drive the most engagement. Always use relevant keywords so that your target audience can find your content in the sea of LinkedIn posts.
The main goal of content is not just to reach a wider audience, but also to engage with them. So when you post something on LinkedIn, try your best to start meaningful conversations with your commenters and readers. Post a question or start a healthy debate about an interesting topic.
Whether you’re posting an article, or an image, or a video, always make sure you are saying something interesting about topics that are relevant to your audience’s interest. Content can drive people to your profile, catch their interest, and make you an industry leader.
Increase the Amount of Inbound Links to Your Profile
If you develop more inbound links to your LinkedIn profile, Google will recognize it as a credible and popular profile, which will boost your visibility in the long run. This is because your LinkedIn profile will appear higher in search results, meaning more people will see it.
Instead of sharing your other social media posts to your LinkedIn profile, do it the other way around: link your other social media sites back to your LinkedIn profile. You don’t want profile visitors to click away from LinkedIn—you want to bring more people into your LinkedIn profile instead.
So make use of your different social networking profiles and endorse your LinkedIn profile.
Make the Most Out of Endorsements and Recommendations
Endorsements can further increase your credibility. If you want to get endorsed on LinkedIn, the easiest way is to give endorsements to other people in your network and politely ask for one back. It helps to go through your own LinkedIn network and find people who you think genuinely deserve an endorsement from you. That will often motivate them to return the favor. But if that doesn’t work, being straightforward with what you need always helps.
Remember that relevance matters: reach out to those whose endorsements you would really value.
Recommendations are even better than endorsements. While endorsements can give people a quick look of your value, recommendations take that a step further. These are personal testimonials written about you. Just like endorsements, you can get more recommendations by giving some yoursel.
Grow Your LinkedIn Network and Build Your Community
Finally, LinkedIn is a social networking site. Despite its professional focus, it is still a social media platform at its core. So in order to truly make the most out of it, you need to expand your LinkedIn network.
Synch your profile with your email address book—this allows LinkedIn to suggest people you could connect with. Invest in LinkedIn Premium to get access to InMail messages: direct messages that you can send to people who are not part of your network. These can be very useful for contacting leads and potential connections.
With your content, you should be able to slowly build your own community and establish your place as a thought leader. Join Groups that are related to your industry and start networking. Be an active presence in LinkedIn, and you can give your profile that proper visibility boost.
Book a demo with Kennected today to learn more about LinkedIn marketing strategies.
source https://kennected.org/optimize-linkedin-profile/
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