Do you know why landing pages are such a crucial element to the success of an online business? A landing page, if crafted well, is a targeted message designed to educate a specific subset of your audience, and lead them further into your sales funnel.
You see, the best landing pages are completely in control of both the experience once you’re there, and how you got there to begin with. Whether through a targeted ad or selective keyword usage, the landing page author had you in mind when the page was written, making it an effective tool for communication and persuasion.
Your LinkedIn profile is just another landing page.
Over the past 90 days, my LinkedIn profile has been viewed over 700 times, which ranks me in the top 6% of my peers, and these views have led to many more connections and interest in my business and activities.
Optimizing my profile has partly led to getting more views from interested peers and prospects, but it also helps to make that profile more effective in delivering the kind of message I want those viewers to see.
You see, unlike a lot of people using LinkedIn, I’m not looking for a job. I already have a job. In fact, I have my own business, The Social Media Hat, and I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. What I’m using LinkedIn for is networking with peers and connecting with prospects, which means my LinkedIn profile needs to do a better job of talking to those people.
What do I mean by that?
Well, take your Experience section for example. this is the area within your LinkedIn profile where you talk about all your past jobs and positions. It’s great, and it’s interesting, and it’s likely totally irrelevant to someone who might be interested in contracting your services or buying one of your products. They don’t care who you were working for in 1995… they want to see that you have the skills and expertise to help them with their problems. Today.
Clearly, my past IT experience has little relevance to my current services.
So at a high level, that means we need to look at our profile as a prospect might, and make sure that we’re doing as good a job as possible in talking directly to them.
Like I said before, think of your LinkedIn profile as just another landing page within your overall Marketing strategy. With, of course, a few unique strengths and challenges.
On the plus side, a great LinkedIn profile will stand out and rank well within LinkedIn for those who may be searching within the platform for someone with your skill set. This goes back to what I mentioned before… if you want hundreds of people viewing your profile every month, for the kinds of services and topics you’re interested in, you’re going to have to talk about those things on your profile, just like you’d optimize your website for your targeted keyword phrases.
If someone’s looking within LinkedIn for a “Hootsuite Consultant” I want to make sure it’s my profile that comes up as near the top as possible (and it’s currently #1 for that phrase).
On the negative side, we’re clearly constrained within the limitations imposed by LinkedIn. You can’t put a call to action button in the sidebar, or change the color scheme to more closely match your branding. We have to work with what we’re given.
And that’s why I put together The Ultimate Guide to the Perfect LinkedIn Profile. If you haven’t read it and want the best possible LinkedIn profile possible, check it out. It walks you step-by-step how to optimize that profile, specifically for people who are looking to make sales, not get hired. And it gives you several different ways in which you can customize your profile so that it becomes a real asset to you and your business. There’s also a checklist for you so that you can more easily go through all of the LinkedIn Profile Optimization steps.
So head over to The Ultimate Guide to the Perfect LinkedIn Profile and bookmark it. Plan to spend a few hours initially getting your profile up to snuff, and then come back to the checklist once a month or so, just to get some reminders on how to keep your profile fresh. And plus, as LinkedIn changes or other techniques are discovered, the guide will be updated accordingly.
Originally published on LinkedIn.