Let's face facts: It can be hard to effectively market your company on LinkedIn.
The cost-per-click is often 2-10x higher than you get on other social media platforms and the click-through-rate is lower. This can make it very hard to do effective paid advertising on LinkedIn.
As a result, LinkedIn is often relegated to "online resume" status. Most companies have a profile and even share content from time to time, but LinkedIn isn't a key element of their online marketing strategy.
However, despite its limitations, LinkedIn is still a high-potential marketing channel. You simply have to approach it the right way.
Your LinkedIn landing page (er, profile)
LinkedIn has over 450 million users, 106 million of whom log in at least once a month on average. In the first quarter of 2016 alone, LinkedIn member pages received 45 billion views - an average of 15 billion profile views per month.
Although LinkedIn is used extensively for networking and hiring, a huge percentage of those profile views come from people who want to know more about you and your company before they buy. That means your LinkedIn profile (and those of everyone else who works at your company) will serve as a mini landing page for you and your company.
Set it up right and those profile views will convert into sales. Set it up wrong and you could end up losing sales.
How to approach your LinkedIn profile
Like any well-designed landing page, if you want your LinkedIn profile to be effective, you need to understand your audience and your value proposition.
Most of the time, your audience is fairly straightforward. Your audience consists of people who want to hire your company (or you). If you know who your company is marketing to, you can design your profile to appeal to them.
Your value proposition, however, is sometimes less obvious.
On a normal marketing landing page, you are trying to sell a specific product or service. On your LinkedIn profile, you are trying to sell yourself.
The trick here is to get people to think, "This person is a winner. If I work with them, I'll be a winner, too"
If the viewer is already familiar with your company, this will hopefully get them to reach out or finally ink a deal. If your profile is their first experience with your company, you're aiming to encourage them to learn more about your company and convert.
Selling yourself
If you want people to believe you're awesome and reach out, then you need to flaunt what you've got.
For some people, this is easy. They've got a got a laundry list of accomplishments a mile long and their only issue is presenting their awesomeness in a believable way.
Most of us, though, aren't household names in our industry, so we need to figure out how to present our skills and accomplishments in the best light possible.
For example, if you're a little shy on experience but have had a couple of big wins, your story might be, "Hey, I may be new at this, but I'm a rising star"
On the other hand, if you're loaded with experience but don't have many wins to share (NDAs, job constraints, laziness), your profile should focus on the depth and breadth of your experience.
All that being said, it's important not to come off as vain or obsessed with your accomplishments. Instead, your achievements should seem like a natural part of who you are - worth noting, but mere glimpses into the awesomeness that is you.
Convince people of your awesomeness and they'll assume that your company must be awesome, too.
After all, an awesome guy or gal like yourself wouldn't work for a lame company, right?
To help you sell yourself and your company on LinkedIn, let's take a look at how you should approach each section of your profile and a few templates you can use to make your LinkedIn profile more effective.
Title
Most people don't take full advantage of their title. They simply put their current title in and call it good.
The problem is, your title is what people see when you show up in a LinkedIn search. Essentially, it's like LinkedIn's version of a Google search result.
As you can see below, most people's titles don't say a whole lot about what their company does:
It's cool that Jacob Dittmer is a Senior Research Analyst, but that doesn't really tell us much about what that actually entails or what his business sells.
On the other hand, it's obvious what Jacob Baadsgaard's company does: they are "AdWords & Conversion Experts".
As an added benefit, spelling out what you do also makes you easier to find when someone searches for what you have to offer. Just like Google AdWords, LinkedIn bolds keywords in your profile that match a search.
Here's what you'll see if you search for "adwords and conversion":
Obviously, Jacob Baadsgaard must be a good match for "adwords and conversion" because the search terms are bolded right in his title.
Although this can be a great way to improve your LinkedIn click-through rate, it's important to remember that this is LinkedIn and not Google AdWords. Your title should focus on what you do - not on what you're trying to sell.
But, if the two happen to go hand-in-hand, more power to you.
Photo
The do's and don'ts of LinkedIn photos have been covered at length before, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this part of your LinkedIn profile.
However, it is important to have a high quality photo that someone could use to readily identify you. People instinctively distrust things that are hard to see, so a clear photo not only makes you easy to find, it also makes you look more trustworthy.
Finally, your LinkedIn profile is a lot like a mini job interview or business meeting - dress accordingly. Remember, you want people to think you're awesome, so look awesome in your photo.
Summary
Your summary is your professional "why" - why you do what you do and why people should pay you to do it.
Of all the sections in your profile, this one should be the easiest to read. Your whole profile should be brief and to the point, but it's called a "Summary" for a reason - people should be able to get a feel for who you are in 5-10 seconds.
The Summary section is limited to 2,000 characters, but your Summary should be nowhere near that long. Remember, it's a summary, not an autobiography.
To get your Summary on the right track, start with the following template:
I love [helping businesses grow, exceeding expectations, creating inventive solutions for complex problems, etc].
During my career, I've [generated millions in additional profit for my clients, led numerous sales teams to unprecedented success, produced 10% increases in revenue by streamlining on-the-floor management processes, etc]. I get a thrill every time I [see a client succeed, help my company realize its potential, convert inefficiency into income, etc].
[I love to meet like-minded professionals, so let's connect], [If you'd like to find out more about how I approach business, shoot me an InMail], [I'm a regular member on several forums, let's chat on {insert link(s)}].
Once you've got the template filled out, you'll probably have something that looks like this:
Play around with it until it feels like a good description of your why.
As a quick side note, when you type your Summary in on the "Edit Profile" page, LinkedIn will shorten it to leave room for the "Add Media" tabs, but don't worry, your complete Summary will show up for everyone else.
Experience
Let's be honest. Most people won't do much more than glance through your Experience section. However, if they are reading your Experience, they are probably very interested in you and your company.
Before we dive into writing out your work experience, let's first talk about one of the biggest misconceptions about your LinkedIn profile.
Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is not an online resume.
LinkedIn is a place to connect with and market yourself to other business professionals. As with all marketing, you need to tell a consistent story that supports the idea that you are awesome at your current job.
If you can't show how your old job experience helps you succeed at your current job, it probably shouldn't be in your profile (unless this is one of your first jobs and you have no other experience).
Often, an old job may have prepared you for your new job in some way (even if you've recently changed careers). So, if there are aspects of your previous job that contribute to your new job, feel free to include that job in your profile - just make sure you focus on the parts of that job that prepared you for your current job.
Remember, your Experience section is telling the story of how you got to where you are today. It's what proves that your Summary section is an accurate representation of who you really are.
Here's a good way to describe your job experience:
[Title]
[Company]
[Date Range]
[Developed, Designed and executed, Crafted, etc] highly effective [marketing strategy that doubled revenue, online advertising approach for over 15 clients, etc].
Key [wins, successes, etc]:
- [Increased client profitability by over 30%]
- [Co-created new product line that drove more than $250,000 in sales]
- [Managed strategic partnerships, leading to 50+ sales]
- [Doubled website traffic in 6 months]
- [etc]
The final result might look something like this:
And that's it. Imagine how a profile like this looks to a potential client - they're probably thinking, "Gee, I'd love to work with that guy. I wonder what he could do for my company?"
Compare that entry with this job synopsis (pulled from the Experience section of an actual client account manager from a different company):
This job description creates more questions than answers. It's hard to tell what this person did at this job or if they were even successful, let alone how this job prepared them to manage client accounts.
Regardless of whether or not you choose to follow the template outlined in this article, remember, you're telling a story about how awesome you are at what you do.
Everything in your "Experience" include should support that story. If it doesn't, it should either be rewritten or eliminated.
Skills & endorsements
Remember how your LinkedIn profile is your own personal landing page? Well, your Skills & Endorsements are the "social proof" that you are awesome at your job.
At this point, it shouldn't be a surprise that the skills in your "Top Skills" should be related to your current position. Hopefully, your "Top Skills" have the most endorsements, but it's better to have relevant skills here than irrelevant skills with lots of endorsements.
For example, if you earned the nickname of "Lord of the Chicken Strips" while working at Chick-Fil-A back in the day, you may have a lot of endorsements for "Fast Food."
However, if you're currently working for a digital marketing agency, "Fast Food" endorsements won't make you seem like a credible marketing expert - in fact, they could make you less credible.
The problem is, putting the wrong skills in your "Skills & Endorsements" section creates cognitive dissonance.
That cognitive dissonance leads to questions - the kind of questions you may not want people to ask.
For example, with all those "Fast Food" endorsements on your profile, people might start to ask, "Why is 'Fast Food' one of your Top Skills? Are you really just a burger flipper in disguise? If I hire this company, will I get a wannabe burger flipper helping me?"
If you have years and years of experience in your current profession, that may not have a huge effect on how you are perceived.
However, if you are new to your profession, those "Fast Food" endorsements will only highlight your inexperience.
The solution?
Make sure your "Top Skills" reflect the nature of your current job.
At a minimum, this shows that you believe you have a relevant skill set. And, as you start to get endorsements for those skills, you'll end up with the social proof you need to backup your claims.
Other Sections
The rest of your LinkedIn profile should be fairly simple to complete. If you can fill out a section in a way that is relevant to your current job, include it - if not, don't.
As always, proof and specifics are your best friend, so include links to podcasts, webinar recordings, articles or other publications that showcase your skills wherever possible.
Conclusion
An effectively written LinkedIn profile can contribute to your marketing strategy at every stage in your funnel.
Many potential clients will have their first exposure to your company via LinkedIn. Some will check out your profile before they reach out and some will use LinkedIn to do their final gut check.
Regardless of when your potential clients check out your profile, setting it up to tell the right story will help nudge them along the path towards conversion.