Episode 85: Quickfire: 10 (!) LinkedIn Profile Tips

Bob Woods  00:00

Ca-cha! Hey, everybody, welcome to Making Sales Social Live! I’m Bob Woods. I’m here with Brynne Tillman and we are doing something a little different today. We’re going to be talking about the LinkedIn profile. We’re going to be giving you lots of tips and we’re going to be doing a quickfire style. 

Intro:

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! As we share LinkedIn and social selling training strategies, and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, every week. Making Sales Social Live! 

Boob Woods 37:00

So what we’re going to do is, is we’re going to start with one and then Brynne is going to give you a tip, I’m gonna give you a tip, and we’re gonna go back and forth like that, you’re gonna get a lot of value, a lot of tips, and we don’t have a lot of time. So let’s go ahead and get started right now. Brynne, let’s start with the thing, the very first thing that appears and everyone sees at the very top of a LinkedIn profile, the banner.

Brynne Tillman  01:03

So your LinkedIn banner, this is great real estate. This is the opportunity to get your message across both when people get to your profile, or even if they’re looking at content that you shared, your banner is going to show up. 

Now it does not have to be static, you can use this to talk about events that are coming up. New product launches, if you’re going to be going to a trade show and you want people to know. This banner you can use over and over and over again in lots of different ways. Quick tip, go to Canva.com and lookup LinkedIn Banner, it will give you the template and you can play around with that banner and use it in many different ways. Okay, Bob, banner, go!

Bob Woods  01:52

So one thing that I’ve been saying in terms of the style of banners has been more minimal, nowadays. Once upon a time, people tried to cram everything in everything they could into the banner because the headlines are now 220 characters and spaces instead of 110, you could talk more about how you help people in the headline than you do in the banner. So banners I’ve been seeing lately have been much more minimal, fewer graphics, fewer words, definitely put your logo in there and things like that but you can have a lot more fun with the actual design of it. Canva does have some really great simple banners in there as well that you can draw inspiration from. Go there, make the banner, put it up and like Brynne said, it’s dynamic.

So the next section we’re going to do is the cover story or profile video, whatever you have  — LinkedIn is playing word games again, with this stuff. So, cover story and profile video, those are both the videos that you have when you click on your face up there, up top, Brynne, go with your tip.

Brynne Tillman  03:00

LinkedIn cover story or profile video, same thing, different words. It is the video that lives behind your headshot. If you go to someone’s profile, you may see three seconds of a video. If you click on that you get to watch up to 30 seconds of a video that they’ve created. How do you use this? This is a wonderful way to welcome people to your profile. It’s a great way for them to get to know you, connect with you, to resonate. 

Make sure you’ve got some kind of call to action. It could be anything from “Check my featured section for content,” or “Here’s a link to schedule a call with me” or “Here’s a link to download a report.” No matter how you use this, this is prime real estate and an amazing opportunity for people to resonate, connect with you, and start to build that rapport. Okay, Bob, cover story, go!

Bob Woods  03:56

Cover story, profile video, whatever, thank you, LinkedIn. And speaking of thank you, LinkedIn, this one is much more mechanical but it’s gonna save you a lot of heartache. A couple of cover stories that I had a few times ago, it came in perfectly at 30 seconds. Everything that I wanted to say, it wouldn’t let me upload it because it was like 30 seconds and 15 frames or something like that. I mean something really stupid basically. 

So everybody says 30 seconds, come in at 29 seconds. It’s only a one-second difference but it will upload if you come in at 29 because if you do the 30 and it’s perfect and it won’t let you upload you’ll want to do what I wanted to do which is throw my computer and my phone against the wall. Don’t do that. Plan for 29 seconds, not 30 seconds. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache. 

The next section we’re going to talk about is the Featured section. Came about a couple of years ago, it’s fantastic in many different ways and Brynne’s going to tell you about one of them, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  04:58

I absolutely love their Featured section. This is the scroll stopper. The visual on your profile. If you’re in Creator Mode, it’s coming up really high in the scroll. If you’re in a traditional LinkedIn mode, it might be falling underneath your About section but either way, it will catch people’s attention.

You can connect your posts, upload ebooks, add video here. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase a few of your content pieces that can help people really see you as a resource. This is an opportunity to bring in great value in this Featured section. One warning, do not pitch here. That’s not what this is for. This is really for earning the right for them to want to talk to you and the way we do that is by making sure that everything we share is of value. Okay, Bob, featured section go!

Bob Woods  05:51

I’m gonna expand on that a little bit. So, Featured section, any content that you put in there, obviously, as everything Brynne said, should be educational and of value. Make sure that it leads to your solution and not with your solution. If it’s with your solution, it’s going to look like a sales piece. If it looks like a sales piece, guess what, they’re gone, bye-bye. 

Make sure that it leads to your solution that the content is value-agnostic but at the same time, when they’re done reading it, they’ll go “Hmm, this sounds pretty good. I learned something and they do have a solution here that might be able to help me out. Why don’t I reach out to them and find out and reach out to this person and find out more,” which leads perfectly into the About section because we view the about section a little bit differently than a lot of other people do but it can help you in your sales. Brynne go!

Brynne Tillman  06:41

About Section on LinkedIn, most people have, “my mission, my passion, my years in business,” but you have not earned the right for anyone to care about that yet. So what do we do with the About section? Very fast formula — talk about the challenge your buyer is facing. When you do that, they resonate, they lean in and say “Oh my god, he gets me, she gets me.” Challenge first. 

Next thing, vendor-agnostic insights. That means insights not about how we can help you but insights that are actually helping them even if they never talk to you. 

Number three, let them know now you’ve earned the right you’ve provided great value, how you might be able to work with them. 

Number four, a call to action. “If you have faced any of these challenges, or if this is resonating with you, let’s jump on a call. Even if we never work together. I’m sure I could bring some insights and actionable things that you can do to help solve X.”

Number five, email, phone number and if you have a calendar link, make sure it’s there. Bob, About Section go!

Bob Woods  07:41

So that’s everything about the About section but the thing is, I want to talk about that specific Contact Info section because it is huge, especially if they’re not a first-degree connection when they come to you. When they click on your contact info link, if they even know that the contact info link is there, you’d be shocked at how many people don’t even know what’s there. They will not be able to reach out to you directly. That is bad. 

That is why we want to have the contact info in there so that anyone coming to your profile, no matter what if they’re connected to you, or if it’s their first freaking time on LinkedIn, you want them to be able to reach out to you based on the strength of your profile and with all these tips, trust me, you are going to have people wanting to reach out to you. By having that information in your about section, you’re taking away a significant barrier for them to get in contact with you.

Brynne Tillman  08:41

I love that and just clarify. There is a Contact Information section that we’re going to talk about (Bob: There is.) in a minute but I think to Bob’s point, if you are not a first-degree connection, you can’t see a lot of that information. So by adding that to the bottom of your About section, you’re making it easy for anyone who visits your profile to reach out and contact you. So is that our next one?

Bob Woods  09:03

No, our next one — you know something, let’s switch up the order. This is so quickfire, we’re going to switch up the order here. Let’s go to contact info next, Brynne!

Brynne Tillman  09:14

Contact information is absolutely critical. A couple of things. Make sure you have your professional email there. Not your [email protected]. This is the opportunity where people will reach out to you directly. You don’t want your first professional engagement to be on your personal email. Plus, often we miss our personal emails. Make sure that that contact information, your primary email is your professional email.

Number two, make sure there is a phone number where they can contact you. On the mobile, it’s a click to dial, get it in there. They can easily connect with you. There are also websites that you can link to. Your birth date there which used to be more valuable than it might be today but (Bob: As we recently discovered, yeah.) The notification piece on birthdays is dying out a little bit but you can add your Twitter here. This contact information is absolutely vital because we want to make it easy for our connections to contact us. Bob, contact information, go!

Bob Woods  10:17

So again, I’m gonna get a little specific here because Brynne gave great highlights about everything — when it comes to the URLs that you provide, so in other words, the websites that you want people to click on to find out more about you when they click in the Contact Us section. 

So you can provide up to three websites that go outside of LinkedIn that will inform them more about you and whatever else you want to put in there. So generally, they have pre-, they being LinkedIn, has pre-formatted fields in there, so like, personal company and that type of thing. If you choose “Other,” there’s a textbox that comes up. You can customize whatever text that you want to have in there. So like in mind, for example, I could have just put a company website for the socialsaleslink.com website. What I did was I got rid of that I put down, I think, it’s Social Sales Like website, it just looks more professional, it also lets people know exactly what they’re going to be taken to, so you can really customize that and as long as it’s under what, like 30 characters, I think or something like that. So it has to be short but when you put that in, they’ll know that when they go to the link that you specify that that’s what they’re going to get, they’re not going to go to some spam link or something like that, essentially. 

So use “Choose Other” and then when that box comes in, use that box wisely. And speaking of customize things when it comes to URL, oh, no, actually, let’s go back. Next is, no, let’s go with custom URL next. Custom URL so, because we’re kind of jumping around everywhere, but that’s okay, this will all come out in the wash, custom URL, Brynne, go!

Brynne Tillman  11:55

We all have a custom URL, we all have a URL. If you click on your profile, and you look at the top, it’ll say linkedin.com/in/some version of your name and symbols if you have not customized this. You can customize this when you are on your LinkedIn profile. This is an absolutely great opportunity to go in and customize this URL. 

If you click on there’s a couple of places to do this but if you click on contact information, and then your pencil, and then you go to that profile URL, it’s a hyperlink, it’s going to take you to your public profile settings. There’s also a link on your profile with public settings that you could click in directly. When you look down on the right-hand side, you’re going to see a little pencil next to that URL. And if your name-, just retype your name, if your name is available, you can save it and now mine is linkedin.com/in/brynnetillman, it will help in search engine optimization and other things. 

If you have a common name, you can add a dash in it or potentially add a number at the end, whatever that is, but try to grab your name. Bob, custom URL, go!

Bob Woods  13:10

Yeah, so two things, number one that currently appears at the end of your URL  If you haven’t customized it yet. We lovingly call it the LinkedIn prison number, just so that you know, second I did want to expand just a little bit on the actual name that you select because it’s just like a social network where if you go in and you just want to use your name, if someone else has it, then you can’t have it. 

A couple of possible combinations you can try are your first initial and your last name, your first initial, middle initial and last name, first name, last name, and just as Brynne said, like a significant two-digit number to use. So like when you graduated from high school, or when you graduated from college or something like that.

Sometimes, especially if you have a common name like mine, Bob Woods, although I was lucky enough, I actually have Bob woods for mine, you may need to get a little creative there but just kind of think of it like that you’re registering your name for a social network, except that this is professional so you don’t want to go with, Brynne brought up an email earlier about [email protected]. You don’t want to go with Fatboy21. But make sure that it’s a part of your name and that you know, it looks good, it looks professional. And once you register, it’s yours forever, just like a social network.

So the next thing we’re going to talk about is experience. The Experience section. We have a lot of experience with the Experience section. So Brynne, go ahead.

Brynne Tillman  14:30

A couple of quick things with the experience section where most people think of the experience section as a kind of like my resume. If you are in a business development role, think of this more about your story and how you help people connect as human beings. They don’t care if you hit President’s Club three years in a row. If you’re 150% of goal if you’re in sales, right? What do they care about? They care about you as a person because this is who they’re getting to know and they care about how you can help them.

Quick tip, the title is search engine optimized, your title will help you come up in the search. There are lots of ways to leverage this. You don’t necessarily just want CEO, president, owner, sales rep in that title. You want some keywords in that title.

And the last thing, you can actually take advantage of LinkedIn’s threaded together Experience sections where normally would say, you know, you were a teller and then a branch manager, and then a commercial lender. If you were a banker, and it threads together. 

You can take advantage of that real estate, and either highlight instead of the jobs you had, the people you serve, or the deliverables or the solutions that you offer, and that gives you more search engine credibility. So you would have the solution instead of a title and you can thread together all of your deliverables and it will really help not only in people understanding how you help them what you do but help in that search engine optimization. Bob, experience, go.

Bob Woods  16:07

So you’re all this stuff about your current experience and you’re like, “Yeah, that sounds good but I’ve got like five other jobs that I’ve had before,” some of which may not make sense when it comes to your current job. Well, it may or may not, it depends on your situation. In the description, for those, try to think of ways of what I call spinning up what you did before, and how it helps you help customers and prospects and things like that today. So that could work in a lot of different ways.

If you’re in sales now, but you worked as a host at a restaurant, something like that, back in the day, some of those skills that you learned back then are helping you now. Like me, for example, I was in journalism once upon a time, how the heck does that have to do with sales and marketing and training and everything like that? It’s actually a lot and I’ve spun all that up in my profile to how it helps people today. 

So it’s not necessarily you worrying about “Oh my god, this looks weird.” If you spin it up to show how it works, how that’s helping you today, that’s a perfect way to make everything kind of spin up to the person that you are today. And your previous experience obviously makes up who you are today, when it comes to you know, your personal life and your professional life as well. If you use that wisely, you can really make that shine for you.

Brynne Tillman 17:22

Nice! 

Bob Woods  17:24

So next section, oh my God, I’ve lost my spot. Oh, here it is, skills. The Skills Section within the profile. And we have all kinds of skills here. So go ahead, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  17:34

A couple of things. A lot of people are like, “What’s the point of skills?” First of all, it’s very search-optimized. Number two, every once in a while, as LinkedIn goes through its moods, you may get to somebody’s profile, and will say, “Is Bob Woods good at marketing?” Right? And those questions are pulled from your skills. They’ve used it in many different ways. It’s also if people scroll down and they see you’ve got lots of endorsements on the skill, even though they might be random endorsements, it’s still a pretty good look. So think about all the keywords that you would want to be found for based on your abilities, your offers, all that stuff, and max out your 50 skills. Bob, skills, go.

Bob Woods  18:16

So to expand on Brynne’s point a little bit there. When you enter in your skills, LinkedIn is going to make suggestions based on what’s in its database. Guess what, you don’t have to use those. So there are a lot of other areas in LinkedIn where you have to choose what they provide you. This is one of the areas where you can type in whatever it is you want in there, essentially. So with that, if you have, like a lot of experience in a particular area of sales, you can put that in, this is especially important when it comes to the types of things and types of products that you have that may not necessarily be in that section. 

So one of our current clients and I forget what this stands for, but they do a lot with ITAD. It has to do with internet security and telecommunications and things like that. Yes but that ain’t in there. But you could put that in there, and because that’s actually searchable as well, it comes up in search engine results, you have a better chance for those kinds of esoteric things to come up even though it’s not in LinkedIn’s database. So don’t be afraid to put in your own words in there rather than depend on just what’s in LinkedIn in terms of that drop down there.

Brynne Tillman  19:25

Love that. I absolutely love that. And I think it’s IT asset disposition.

Bob Woods  19:33

But it’s important. It’s usually important. (Brynne: For them, that’s what they do.) Yeah, it’s very important for companies that need that. Next, certifications. That’s a section that not a lot of people use much less know about. Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  19:47

Yeah. So this is a great opportunity to share with your network all the things that you’re working on. And when people see that you’re consistently getting certified in things, whether it’s through LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning. Our clients, when they get certified, they can add us to their certifications. If you go out and get a certification and you know, let’s say you’re a health care provider, and you get your certification on defibrillators, add it. Right? It gives you credibility. You worked for it, add it to your profile.

Bob Woods  20:20

So it’s essentially social proof of your experience and skills because a lot of times you can link depending on whether the provider of the certification gives you a link to something that proves who you are. If they do, definitely put that in there so that they can hit that link, and then they could see that you actually earn that. So it’s social proof that you have the experience, that you have the skills that this certification brought to you. And we’re going to end up with something that’s actually very important. A lot of people don’t think it’s important, but it is very important. Recommendations. Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  20:54

I absolutely love recommendations on LinkedIn. Lots of reasons, quickfire. Number one, it shows credibility, right? This is proof that your clients see value in you. And for us, this has reduced our sales cycle. Our clients, our prospects will say, “This sounds great, we can’t wait to work with you, I’d love to talk with a couple of other sales leadership teams that have succeeded so before we invest in you, we know that you’re good.” And I’ll say, “Hey, go look at my recommendations. If there’s anyone in there you want to have a conversation with, let me know, and I’ll set it up.” And they see a hundred of them, then they read through them, and they can click through to the people and they go, “Wow, she can help this many people and this is what they’re saying, I don’t need to talk to them. This is great.” 

Bonus, recommendations. If you recommend your client, I’m gonna say this again, if you recommend your client on LinkedIn, so, I reach out and I go, “Steve Farber, I am thrilled that we were able to help you grow your business, connect with more human resource people, that through our LinkedIn training and coaching, you were able to get into great companies to help them build their culture.” Right? I send that out. Steve says, “Oh, wow, she thinks I’m awesome.” Remember, he’s my client, he’s paying me, I post that out there, I am now on his profile, saying how much I love working with him and in a sense how much I’m grateful that we were able to help him grow his business. I am now able to advertise that on his profile. So it makes him feel good. And when someone looks at his recommendations, I’m getting sort of that shout-out about how we worked with him. Bob, recommendations. Go.

Bob Woods  22:41

So I’m gonna build on that a little bit because that was going to be my… but that’s okay because I do have another one too. So relating to that, though, and this is where things get a little softer but it’s still very important in that, you know, when you’re doing that for Steven, you’re actually strengthening your relationship with him further as well. So one of the things that we talked about during our normal training is, you know, nurturing connections and nurturing and probably isn’t the best description to do here, but just continue to build on that relationship. 

When you provide that to him, he’s going to think even more highly about you at that point. And, you know, so for any future conversations that come down the pike if there’s like a new product that we would come out with or if we’re just looking through their profile, for example, and we see a couple of people who we may think may be good for us and would like to ask Steven to permission to name-drop or to provide an introduction or something like that, because we continue to build that relationship and because we provided them a recommendation, it strengthens that even more because you were willing to go out there and actually kind of put your neck on the line a little bit for him and even though there’s all the positive stuff that Brynne just mentioned, at the same time, you know, we’re like the mafia or whatever you want to say basically, you know, I vouch for him. You’re vouching for this person and you know you should if you feel like that, don’t vouch for people who you don’t want (Brynne: No, authentic.) to vouch for, you know, get, yeah, be authentic and great way to build relationships as well.

Brynne Tillman  24:15

Wow, this was fun. Long! Longer than I thought but rapid fire, it’s our longest live!

Bob Woods  24:21

I feel like that I’ve run many, many 400-yard sprints, but it’s all been good. 

Brynne Tillman  24:27

And I love your mafia… I’m gonna use that. I love that.

Bob Woods  24:31

We’re gonna close this out. Thanks, everyone for joining us. We appreciate it. We do these every week. The Making Sales Social Live. We also have Making Sales Social, our interview series where we interview people from all walks of life in terms of sales and marketing and all that other fun types of stuff, all with the goal of helping you build your business. 

If you’re interested in finding out more go to socialsalelink.com/podcast. We’re also on all of the major podcast platforms if you’re not a subscriber already, smash that button as the kids say, and feel free to leave us a review as well. So for Brynne, I’m Bob Woods and when you’re out and about, make sure that you’re making your sales… (Brynne: Social!) Excellent. Bye-bye everybody. Have a great day. 

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Resources Mentioned:

• Canva