how to get the most out of linkedin: tips to support your personal brand and market your business

How to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn Tips to Market Your Personal Brand and Your Business

©2015 BrandExtract, LLC

Agenda

• Why LinkedIn?

• LinkedIn Etiquette

• Elements of a Strong Profile

• Beyond Your Profile • What Else Can You Do on LinkedIn?

• Action Items

• Further Reading

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Why LinkedIn?


Why LinkedIn? - Reach New Leads

• Reach • It’s the world’s largest professional network - over 350+ million members

• LinkedIn reaches 37% of the total U.S. digital population

• Lead Generation • 80% of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn

• 50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from a company they engage with on LinkedIn

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Source: The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn - LinkedIn

https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/g/en-us/pdf/lms/linkedin-sophisticated-marketers-guide-en-us.pdf


Why LinkedIn? - Build Your Brand

• LinkedIn profiles represent your company brand as well as your personal brand

• Strong employee profiles are a competitive advantage

• For professional services companies, profiles are the “product pages” for your service offerings - clients are buying your talent

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Source: “Why Every Employee At Your Company Should Use LinkedIn” - Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2014/01/07/why-every-employee-at-your-company-should-use-linkedin/


Why LinkedIn? - Visibility

• Increased visibility is a two-way street • When you list your company as a current employer, you automatically

appear on its company page and a link to the page will be on your profile

• As an employee, you will also automatically follow the company page

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Why LinkedIn? - Visibility

• Each time you engage with your company’s posts (articles, case studies, news releases), it becomes visible to other connections and expands your company’s reach

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Why LinkedIn? - Connect

• Connect with potential clients and business partners • A strong profile makes a positive first impression

• Get introduced to a 2nd or 3rd degree connection

• Reach out to your connections for help with research or solving a challenge

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Why LinkedIn? - Resources

• Find helpful links and resources • The LinkedIn “Pulse” feature curates the most popular articles of the day so

it’s easy to keep up with emerging news and trends

• Content is tailored to your interests based on your LinkedIn profile

• Stay current on relevant company, influencer and connection updates

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LinkedIn Etiquette


LinkedIn Etiquette - Profile Views

• LinkedIn alerts users when someone has viewed their profile

• Go to Profile > Who’s Viewed Your Profile to get analytics

• See what actions you took on the days you got more views

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LinkedIn Etiquette - Profile Views

• In most cases, it’s okay if your contact knows that you’ve viewed their profile

• A view can even serve as a touch point or reminder

• If you want to view a profile anonymously: • Log out of LinkedIn and search through Google

• Open an “Incognito” window in Chrome

• In some cases, you will only be able to see a basic profile if you are not logged in

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LinkedIn Etiquette - Privacy

• LinkedIn allows you to select which information is available to the public through search

• Consider leaving enough boxes checked that prospective clients can get a sense for your skills and experience

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Elements of a Strong Profile



• At the very least, your profile should be complete: • 11x more likely to get profile views if you include a photo

• 13x more profile views if you list skills on your profile

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Source: By the Numbers: 125+ Amazing LinkedIn Statistics

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few-important-linkedin-stats



• Photo - Use a high-quality headshot. Make eye contact and smile

• Background - LinkedIn allows you to upload a “cover photo” if you wish (lots of websites provide free images)

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Elements of Strong Profile

• Summary - highlight your key skills and include keywords for search discovery

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• Experience - add work experience and job descriptions • Add sections to call out languages, certifications, publications, volunteering

experience and more

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• Skills and Endorsements • When you add skills to your profile,

your connections can endorse you

• Endorsements help build credibility in your areas of expertise

• Skills will automatically be sorted by most endorsed, but you can also drag and drop to arrange them

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• Recommendations • Clients can leave testimonials that

speak to the quality of your work

• Colleagues and supervisors can speak to your working style and strengths

• One of the best ways to get recommendations is to leave them for others

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Elements of a Strong Profile - Media

• Media • Add media to provide depth and context

around your experience or summary

• You can upload documents, photos, links, videos and presentations to any section of your profile

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Elements of Strong Profile - Media

• How to add new media

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• Link to your company somewhere on your profile page

• It adds context to your work and helps increase inbound traffic to your company’s site

• If you don’t have a personal website, you can use your company bio page as a website under contact info

• Add company media to your work experience

• Ex. your bio page, case studies about your clients, blog articles you contributed to, etc.

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Beyond Your Profile


Beyond Your Profile - CRM

• Use LinkedIn’s CRM functions to manage professional relationships

• Use the “Relationship” tab to create notes, reminders, tag profiles or record how you met your connections

• This information will only be visible to you

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Beyond Your Profile - CRM

• Keep track of contact information • Edit your connections’ contact info to make it most relevant to you

• This will be private and won’t affect their profile

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Beyond Your Profile - Groups

• Join Groups • Stay up-to-date on industry trends, build your network, connect with

influencers and discuss hot topics

• Search by keyword to find groups that match your interests

• Group participation allows you to “soft pitch” your skills and expertise

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Beyond Your Profile - Groups

• Consider joining groups that your clients or prospects participate in

• You can view their visible groups on their profiles

• Reminder: LinkedIn will notify them that you have viewed their profiles

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Beyond Your Profile - Messages

• Send InMail • Reach out with a “delivery

guaranteed” private message

• Requires purchasing InMail credits or a Premium account subscription

• Credits expire after 90 days if you don’t use them

• Your credits will be refunded if the recipient replies in 90 days

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Beyond Your Profile - Updates

• Share an update • Choose to share your update publicly or just with connections

• Examples: exciting company news, recently launched work, interesting articles, etc.

• You can tag connections or companies with “@“ followed by their name

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Beyond Your Profile - Publishing

• Publish a post • When you publish a post, it

appears in your connections’ feeds

• The best posts are picked up by LinkedIn’s digital magazine, Pulse

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Beyond Your Profile - Pulse

• LinkedIn Pulse • “World’s first personalized business news

digest” • Great way to foster ongoing learning and

professional development • View on LinkedIn (Interests > Pulse) or

download the Pulse app

• Companies and Influencers • Follow clients, competitors or industry

leaders to see their latest updates32


Beyond Your Profile - SlideShare

• SlideShare Integration • SlideShare is a leading social media website for sharing presentations and

professional content

• You can add SlideShare presentations directly to your LinkedIn profile or share them easily in an update

• Provides engaging content to your audience

• Allows people to find you more easily for topics, increases search visibility

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Beyond Your Profile

Your LinkedIn View At A Glance

• It’s relatively quick and easy to monitor your LinkedIn.

• From the Home screen you can: • Share/publish content

• Endorse, congratulate and like status updates

• Monitor profile visits

• Connect with new users

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Beyond Your Profile

• If you only have 10 minutes a week to keep up with LinkedIn: • LinkedIn suggests interactions in the “Ways to Keep in Touch” panel on your

homepage

• Gives you quick updates from your connections

• You can comment or like posts directly from this panel

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Conclusion & Action Items


Conclusion

• Using LinkedIn is an easy way to help improve your company’s visibility

• LinkedIn is a multi-purpose platform; use it to inform, connect, publish, and more

Action Items:

• Complete or update your profile • Make sure your profile is linked to your company

• Check in for 10 minutes a week • Browse “Ways to Keep in Touch” for quick interaction suggestions

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©2015 BrandExtract, LLC 38

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Further Reading

• The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn by Jason Miller - LinkedIn

• 8 ways to better market yourself on LinkedIn by Brian Honigman - Entrepreneur

• 10 Ways for Small Business to Use LinkedIn by Guy Kawasaki - American Express OPEN Forum

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https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/marketing-solutions/global/en_US/campaigns/pdfs/Linkedin_SophGuide_011614.pdf

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242007

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/ten-ways-for-small-businesses-to-use-linkedin-1/

how to get the most out of linkedin: tips to support your personal brand and market your business

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