Aug 23, 2017
“Do a call to action. Something powerful that would make them see more so that you now have the remaining 2,000 characters to expand upon who you are, what you do, and most importantly, how you can help people. You really want to focus on what’s in it for them.”
For the final installment of the Get Known series, we have Viveka von Rosen. Viveka is co-founder and CVO (Chief Visibility Officer) of Vengreso. Known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert”, she is author of the best-selling “LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day” and “LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand!”
As a contributing “expert” to LinkedIn’s official Sales and Marketing blogs and their “Sophisticated Marketer’s” Guides, she is often called on to contribute to publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Money, Entrepreneur, The Social Media Examiner, etc. Viveka takes the LinkedIn experience she has perfected over the past 10+ years and transforms it into engaging and informational training (having provided over 100K+ people) with the tools and strategies they need to succeed on LinkedIn.
There’s no doubt that you’ll be in for a treat when you hit the play button below.
It would be similar, but I’d start with a personal profile. The company page could come later, it’s not such a big deal. You have to understand, with a big company nurturing, maintaining the company page is relatively easy. You put your social media marketing person on it or your community manager on it.
When you’re solo, you’re having to do everything – sales, marketing, service offers, product offers, all of your social media. Again, why I went with Vengreso. The plate is so heavy, so with my solopreneurs, I would start them off on their personal profile. We talk about a company page if they actually need one, but we start with a personal profile, and what’s similar for both sides, of course, you can create a template. I always do with my clients because they might hire someone later on.
But what we want to cover specifically is that background image which yours is so great. It’s got the building, your book on it. LinkedIn keeps changing – drives me insane – LinkedIn keeps changing the background image template. So it’s an ongoing process, but that background image which really helps with branding for my solopreneurs and entrepreneur.
I recommend putting an email address or phone number on there so they’re more easily contactable. Some people don’t want to be that contactable, but for them, it’s important. And that way, people can reach out to them even if they’re not connected yet, and it usually shows up in the mobile app too, so that’s the key.
And I tell them to, if they can, create unique contact information – a Google Voice number, or linkedin@yourcompany.com. That way you can actually track where your leads are coming from, because LinkedIn doesn’t really have any metrics or analytics left worth mentioning in their free account.
The next feature would be that professional headline. So many people title it Company or if they’re self-employed, they’re self-employed and that’s just – you know, you have such an opportunity to do a super mini elevator speech, but 120 and – I’ll show you a ninja trick in just a second if you need more characters.
But 120 characters that describes who you are, what you doing, who you serve. So again, going back to what we talked about is knowing who your ideal buyer is, of your product or service. If you don’t and you try to be everything to everyone, it loses efficacy. The more niche you can be, the more converting your LinkedIn profile will be, period.
Now, if you can’t fit who you are, what you’re doing, who you serve in 120 characters or less, and I learned this one from Brynne by the way, if you do it in mobile, you have up to 200 characters.
What’s next is the summary section. A lot of people skip this or they just pull in their about me from their company. Again, huge waste of opportunity.
Now with the new user interface, only the first two lines show. People have to click on “See More”, so you have to do something in that first two lines that makes them want to “Read More” and click on “See More”. What do you do? It is not formatted and it is ugly and you can’t add special characters and emojis, but just know that it’s going to be one bunched up mess.
Nonetheless, in that one bunched up mess of about 200 characters, do a call to action. Something powerful that would make them see more, so that you now have the remaining 2,000 characters to expand upon who you are, what you do, and most importantly, how you can help people. You really want to focus on what’s in it for them.
You can put your list of features underneath in your experience section. If you want to let people know all the things that you offer and all that kind of stuff, you can put that in your experience section, but that summary is really to hit home. What are the benefits? Hit home – what are your ideal clients’ point of pain and how do you solve that? You can put in a tiny two or three sentence testimonial from a client that people might recognize where you have solved their issues. Again, just keep your audience in mind.
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