Episode 4: LinkedIn Profile Tips for Sales

Bill McCormick 0:34
Hey everyone, Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! Today we get to talk about a Value-Centric profile, the profile, the foundation of everything that you do on LinkedIn right? and just kick us off, we’re going to talk about what we call the top of the fold, and we’re gonna throw it down to our CEO Brynne Tillman.

Brynne Tillman 1:01
Hey, so I am really excited to talk a little bit about the top of the fold. But before I do, let’s talk about the overarching value-centric profile. A profile is absolutely, as Bill said, foundational, because everything we do connection requests – lead to people looking at our profile, sharing content – leads to people looking at our profile, when they Google us, it leads to people looking at our profile. And so our profile has a job, and that job is to get your buyers, your customers, your prospects excited to have a conversation with you. And if the profile is a resume, who cares, right? Except for recruiters, but if we’re using this as a business development tool for sales, we need to really convert our profile from a resume to a resource, because that’s what our buyers care about, they want us to be a resource, to bring value, to share insights that will have an impact on their business. So, that’s the job of our profile, when they show up we resonate with them, they go, Oh! interesting. We create curiosity, and they lean in and say who I really am, you know, we’d like to learn more, and then we teach it to them and write them something new. Once we’ve taught them something new, it will get them to think differently. Or if it does get them to think differently about their current situation, it will get hands-raised and create compelling moments. So before I get into the above the fold or top of the fold, do you guys want to add to that?

Bill McCormick 2:53
Well first I’ll say hi to Lori, Jennifer, and the folks that are watching live, great to see you all here! But yeah, you know, I think of it as call to read, you know that that’s really what we have here is especially the top of the fold, but the whole idea of from top to bottom with your profile is to get people to want to read more, to want to keep looking and going further.

Brynne Tillman 3:18
Yeah, awesome! So top of the fold, let’s talk about that for a second. The top of the fold is what we get here. This is what people see when they land on your profile, there is a banner, a headshot, a headline, these are really important. Just like the top of the fold of a newspaper, it’s really important that the newspaper’s job is to get you to want to read it. You want to read this, right? So, you want to make sure that the top of the fold draws you in. I mean, we can talk obviously, the banner or the background. It’s like a billboard, make it stand out. Your headshot should be a professional headshot, smiling and making eye contact. Bill talk about that headline.

Bill McCormick 4:04
Yeah, so the headline is what people are going to read first, and this follows you everywhere. It’s not just at your profile, but also as people are looking in the “My Network” section, when you’re suggested as a connection. Your headline shows up there, if somebody hovers over your picture or your name and comments, your headline shows up there. So what’s the typical headline is, job title at company, bla, does that resonate? It doesn’t resonate with anyone. People probably know where you work and what your job position is. And if they don’t, they probably really don’t care. Instead, what we want to do is answer some questions with your headline, we want to make it more descriptive. Remember, it’s a call to read, who do you help? How do you help them, the results that you bring and what you do. Again, as Brynne said, one of the jobs of our profile is to resonate with our ideal clients. So, when they read your headline, we want it to resonate with them to say, Wow! Yes, this person can help me.

Brynne Tillman 5:09
Love that! The next thing, you know, we talked about the headshot, which is professional but that headshot has a secret little feature right now called “Cover Story,” Bob, share a little bit about that.

Bob Woods 5:21
Yes! So, cover story is brand new. So don’t worry if you haven’t heard about it yet, because a lot of people still have and not everyone even has it yet. So, this may be breaking news for some of you out there. But essentially, it’s a way for you to communicate what you do, and how you help people, and the results that you bring to them with a 30-second video that you can do whatever you want to do with. It’s really amazing some of the cover stories that we’ve been seeing out there. Sometimes it’s just a talking head like this, sometimes other people have animation, sometimes people have slideshows. I’ve seen the whiteboard thing, there’s just so much you can do with it. So what it involves is a 30-second video that you put together and that you upload, now you have to use your mobile to do it. But it’s really easy, the way you know you have it is if you go into the mobile app, and if you see, and when you click on your face, when you’re on your profile, there’s a message that pops up that says, I forget what it says. But it says upload of a 30-second cover story, that’s the gist of it. So, I know that brands played around with it, I’m planning on having so much fun. Yeah, it is, it can be fun. And that’s the other thing too, I mean, you can, if you want to do more personality based one, you could really go to town with it. And you know, obviously still keep it professional and everything. But yeah, it’s just it’s a really creative way to go beyond what has been in the profile in the past, and really show who you are and what you do. And like I said, it’s video so you can there’s, there’s so much potential for

Brynne Tillman 7:23
It’s a great way to connect with your audience, right? Like, I think that’s awesome! Couple things, remember, we may not remember, but so will tell you for when, you record, it’s in vertical mode, right? like a story So there are a few things like when you’re recording on your camera, or your video, make sure it’s vertical not horizontal. Otherwise, it doesn’t show up nearly as nicely when they click through and watch it. And we found yesterday, in even the free canva.com c a n v a .com, you can actually create mini videos, time it for under 30 seconds, download it on your phone and upload it to story. So I love that! So the next one is the “About section,” the about section most people mess up, most people make it about them, their mission, their passion, the years in business, we believe all of that belongs in the experience, make the about section about them. This is the opportunity to show up as a resource. Start with the challenge your buyers are facing and then take a look at, you know, the kind of insights that you can share that will create these aha! moments that get them thinking differently about their current situation. Not pitch, not about how you help them, actually content that helps them and you know, then a line or two about what you do and a call to action. Right? And that “about section” is now working for you. The next one is the featured section, share a little bit about that, Bill.

Bill McCormick 9:01
I love the featured section, we call this the scroll stopper. So it used to be in the about section you could put some media as a part of that what LinkedIn did about 18 months ago was they separated this out into its own section. So it shows up, bigger, I say large and in charge. I said that during training, So, I’m like, I can’t believe I said that large and in charge but it is because it stops people. So what can you put here? you can put posts that you’ve had on LinkedIn that have done really well really that are again, sharing your insights, not pitching but sharing value. You can put articles if you write articles on LinkedIn, but you can also put external links and other media such as pictures or documents. I love the external links because as Brynne was talking about the “about” section, you can’t put external links there. There are no clickable links, I’ve asked LinkedIn Santa Claus for that for Christmas this year. We’ll see if he gives it to me but in the “feature” section, you can add external links. So if you have an external video channel, a YouTube channel, or a Vimeo channel, where you’re really teaching about the value, you bring your clients and you’re providing value, you can put links to videos there, you can put pictures if you do work, that actually has product that you provide, you can take pictures of that, you can put documents. So if you can do a SlideShare like a PowerPoint, the five top things that CEOs need to know about XYZ, whatever it is, you’re providing and you can put that in as a document and put that in your featured section. And what’s so great about it is as people are scrolling, they’ll see it, they’ll stop it, they’ll consume it. And we want to make sure it resonates, we want to make sure that we’re teaching them something new, that these, items that we put in our featured section, aren’t pitching, aren’t selling, but are teaching, and are providing value. Right? The whole goal with our profile, one of the many goals, is that if they never contact you, they learn something, and you start to develop credibility with that. Yeah. Oh, my God, I love that go ahead. Bob.

Bob Woods 11:11
The biggest thing that you should always remember about your “featured” section, in my opinion, is when you look at it like, can other people learn from what I’m putting in here? That’s always the biggest thing, and, you know, sometimes, there might be a problem with bringing something in where you might not have a graphic or anything like that. And that’s not your fault, so always recognize that. But you know, because there’s a visual element there and it’s built like that, if you can really provide some good quality material that people will want to stop and read, especially because a lot of it is just, you know, you got a lot of text and you scroll, and I’m scrolling right now. And it’s like, Yeah, Wow! That’s great. And then because you put so many in there, it’s just limitless in terms of how much, well, not limitless, I think it’s what like 50 pieces. I think that’s enough. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 12:21
There are a few things around this, right? So, everything that you link is live. So, if a page uploads, if it’s someone, let’s say you put it out to a link to a website, and that website changes, when people link through, they’ll see the update. So, the link is live, anything you upload is static. So if you upload a PDF, or PowerPoint, or an image that is static and You link it to a post, right? Everything, it’ll link to the live post, whatever date it’s been published, and all of the comments will be live. So if you post it in there, five comments and two more people comment. It’ll show seven comments, so it’s dynamic.

Bill McCormick 13:14
Yeah. And so it shows as a carousel. So, the first two whole pieces of content show and then about a third of the next one. And what’s great is that you can go in and you can reorder how they show. So for example, if you know you have an old post, that’s first, when you put a new post in or a new piece of content that’s going to show next, but let’s say you decide you want something from two months ago, you can go in and reorder that and drag that right up to the top, you just have to go into the Edit row to do that.

Brynne Tillman 13:45
The last thing we’re going to talk about today is the “experience” section, which I started talking about moving your stuff, and about you into the experience. But what are some other ways we can use the experience section, Bob?

Bob Woods 13:57
Yes, so, you know, it’s just like Brynne said, the about section in the value-centric profile becomes about them. Experience is about you. So this is where you can really highlight what you think and what it is you do. So we do things a little differently, imagine that. But it’s really effective in how we do it. So, the very first one where you have your experience there, that’s a great opportunity to tell your story. Why you do what you do, why you had passion about it, how you found yourself in that position, that type of thing. It’s what we call your big “Why?” It’s what we call your big why essentially so, you know, we all have Simon Sinek talks about. Yeah, exactly! So a little credit for that. Yeah. So um, so that’s what that section is about. And then we take advantage of a feature that LinkedIn brought out, I think a couple of years ago now to where, where you can charge your journey through an individual company. And we kind of hack that. And it’s not a hack, we just call it like that, because it’s cute. But, um, but that’s where you can highlight the products or services that you provide. But you can do it in almost like a bullet point fashion, essentially, that’s what it kind of ends up looking like as bullet points underneath it. So you know, if you’re an IT guy, and you offer security and you offer on-site, you know, on-site support, remote support, and that type of thing, you can list those individually underneath those. So that helps you not only in telling what you do, it also helps from an SEO perspective, because there are additional keywords that LinkedIn’s own search function as well as Google can actually kind of grab on to and then produce those results when someone is searching for them.

Brynne Tillman 16:08
You can add content. If you’re like, boy, I’m really dying to share my ebook or my white paper or my One pager about my stuff. This is a good place to do it. So for actually, to Bob’s point, if you’re talking about, you know, you’re talking about your cloud solution, and you have really good collateral around cloud solutions. Add it to that actual position in your company.

Bob Woods 16:39
Yeah, that’s great! Jennifer actually has a question. Can you backdate items in the feature section? you can put stuff in as all as you want to, dates actually don’t show up in the featured area. And you have because you can grab onto the content and move it around, you can put, I don’t know if I put something 10 years old in there. But you could conceivably put something 10-year-old in there, if it’s really strong educational content, go for it.

Bill McCormick 17:11
And just back to the experience, especially the hack that we love to talk about. What I love about it is that when people get down that far in your profile, they’re really checking you out, they’re really looking at you. And if you have just “LinkedIn trainer,” and that’s all you have, that doesn’t really tell them the width and the breath of everything that we do. And so that’s what I love about it is it gives them a better snapshot of everything you do. So a lot of times I work with people in the promotional products business, and they might put “Account Executive” or “Promotional Brand Specialist” But they also do apparel, and they also do corporate gifting, and they also do employee engagement programs, and safety programs. And by listing all of those things out, when someone is interested in their services comes along and looks at, they see, Wow! they do everything that I need. So it really gives people a wider width and breadth of what it is that you do. And as we say the deliverables that you’re able to provide for them.

Brynne Tillman 18:14
Love it, well, I think it’s time for us to do a little wrap up on this, we’re going to be providing on a weekly basis more tips like this. So tune in, We’re excited to have you here. Take some time, look at your profile, really break it down, and see is this profile a resume or resource? Thanks so much for joining us on Making Sales Social Live! Bye, everyone!

Bill McCormick 18:47
Have a great day everyone. Bye