We covered the basics of getting your LinkedIn profile right in Part One.  In Personal Branding for Sales Part Two, we take it a step further to convert people that visit your profile.  We describe this as Profile Based Marketing.

3 Steps to Profile Based Marketing

  1. Profile Check
  2. Company Page
  3. Group

1) PERSONAL BRANDING: PROFILE CHECK

We already covered off in Part One, be sure to show how you help your target audience.

Now check your conversions.

What do you want your target audience to do once they have visited your profile? Are you encouraging them to direct message you, email? Visit your website? Make sure that your calls to action are clear.

Consider;

Are you sending direct connection requests to grow your network?

Yes? Be careful to not come across as overtly ‘salesy’ – Your targets will be expecting the ‘Thanks for connecting, here’s your sales pitch’ message.

And this is NOT what you are about!

You are simply growing your network and the number of people that are aware of you, and your company… right?

Make your personal story strong to show them how you are uniquely positioned to help them, your company products/services are there but secondary to your personal journey.

Are you doing a lot of marketing, getting profile views and you want to convert them better?

Yes? Then go for it! All your articles, posts and summary can be an explicit sales pitch, still, talk about how you can help your target audience, but go ahead and add your branding and contact info on your background photo. Talk about your company’s services as much as your personal story.

For many of us, it is a balance between the two, and remember to change your profile according to the activity you are doing at any given time.

Tip – There is a setting where your network is automatically notified when you make a change, if you are going to be actively swapping this up regularly, you will want to change this setting.

2) PERSONAL BRANDING: COMPANY PAGE

LinkedIn is putting more emphasis on Company Pages. Think of your Company Page as your LinkedIn ‘website’.

First, be sure that people can click from your experience section on your personal profile onto the company page.

Remarkable how many people have not linked to the company page. This is a huge opportunity for finding more about how your company can help them.

Make sure all staff members have done the same.

Second, review the content on your company page. The About section and the Updates are the most important and under your control. Regular updates are vital, they keep your company brand front of mind and your target audience up to speed on your developments.

When people connect with you, they are prompted to follow your company page. Get ahead on this now and make your page appealing to maximise the number of people following your page.

Third, keyword research for the hashtags on your company page.

Why? – We will use this to find conversations that are going viral to join in and increase your brand awareness and company page view. We will cover this in Part Three, if you can’t wait, email Fergus.

Make yourself the administrator of your company page, so you’ll be notified of those conversations that include your hashtags, and you can comment as your company brand.

3) PERSONAL BRANDING: GROUPS

Running a group shows your interest and expertise in a specific topic and positions you as someone who will help a community by sharing content, networking, introducing and giving back. It takes time, dedication and persistence to set up a group and keep it maintained.

Tip – Message each new member individually about how they could contribute to the group and eventually your community will become active.

Utilise 3 rd party content so this isn’t selling your company, instead of showing your personal opinion on the wider topic.

REFLECT

If someone connects with you, follows your company page, and then you ask them to join your group, they will get 3 different kinds of updates connected to you which gives them wider understanding of who you are, who you help, and what you know.

1) Profile – What does your day-to-day look like, what excites you, what do you like, how do you work with colleagues and clients?
2) Company page – What does your company do, and do they have the experience to help me?
3) Group – What is your opinion on this specialist topic? Can this person solve my problems, or give me information beyond a sales pitch?

We call this your ‘sales back-drop’

This means you don’t have to blast out direct messages with sales pitches that disappoint the recipient, and makes you look,… well, like you are only out for yourself.

Save those messages to be specific about your connection, offer to share really valuable content or
help them out if you can.

Just like normal networking!

LinkedInOffer3

Next in the series – Part Three, Personal Branding for Sales – How to get more profile views, through Profile Based Marketing.