How Does Poking Around On LinkedIn Benefit You?

Richard: When you got on LinkedIn, did you have a plan for how you were going to market yourself? Did you just poke around and figure it out?

Lynda: I did not have a plan in the beginning. I figured out a plan for myself that works, based on reading articles and books. I did not make it all up myself. You do need to do a little poking around to feel comfortable with it. Let’s go over some of the benefits; the bigger benefits of what you can get from LinkedIn.

Lynda: The first benefit, I think, is to increase your visibility to the world, to the business world and to your possible target customers. With so many more people on LinkedIn, you have to be there. You are nobody if you are not on LinkedIn in the business world. It increases your chances to find and meet your target customers.

It can make you a thought leader if you are publishing interesting articles, blogs posts, newsletters or whatever. I am going to tell you how you can publish things on there. It makes you the thought leader when you have some new information that other people are interested in.

You reach people you could never reach. I have to say I now have clients in Australia, in Chile and in Brunei. I would never have met those people. They would never have found me, except for LinkedIn. They are good clients now.

Richard: How do you start building your relationships with people without selling, pitching or spamming them?

Lynda: We are going to get to that in a minute. I am going to give you my little system, which is not the only system. Anybody can make their own system. I will tell you my system for what I do. I just want to finish with one or two other small benefits.

One of them is industry events. I got invited to speak at a very high profile industry event, and I got paid for it. I would have never known they were looking for speakers, except I saw a call for speakers on LinkedIn. They never knew I existed. If I hadn’t seen that, I would never have gotten to speak at that conference which put me in front of my target audience.

Just poking around in target groups can do that for you. Another fun thing is that if you are either speaking at a conference or attending a conference, often there are LinkedIn groups especially for that conference. You can build relationships with people before you get to the conference.

So when you get there, you are a warm contact. You go up and say, “We’re LinkedIn buddies.” Then, shake hands. You would never meet them otherwise. That is another fun thing you can do with the groups.

The first thing you need to do on LinkedIn is optimize your profile. You cannot do anything on LinkedIn without an optimized profile. What you need is a headline and keywords. Keywords are the whole thing with LinkedIn; with anything because people search keywords.

They might be searching for “DUI lawyer” or “copywriter.” I have my keywords. People find me that way. You have to know your keywords really well; what you want to be found for. Put them in your headline next to your picture.

What’s the Key to Having a 100% Complete LinkedIn Profile?

Richard: LinkedIn gives you a percentage score for how complete your profile is. Is it absolutely critical to get 100%?

Lynda: It is important. When your profile is complete, LinkedIn seems to give you more prominence. They show you more often. It is an interesting thing with LinkedIn. The more you do, the more they show up. You get higher in the search rank if somebody puts in your keywords, and there are maybe a few people with the same keywords. Yes, it is beneficial to complete your profile.

Richard: We need the keywords we want to show up in the headline, and we need a complete profile, right?

Lynda: Yes.

Richard: What other elements of the profile are important to make yourself stand out and become searchable?

Lynda: I’m going to my profile. I suggest anyone reading or listening go to their profile and look at this. You have, under your name, two lines. I am not sure how many characters. However, on those two lines do not just put your job; although you could.

Put a benefit as well, such as what you do to help people. I have “free fresh customer’s report;” and my website. My main goal here is to get people to my website to sign up for my free report.

You can decide how to use this best. You might want to play around. The thing you want to do is have your keywords and a benefit in there if possible. Have something that will make people want to contact you; not just a job title.

Then, you have to select your area. They ask you your area of business, such as marketing or law. They used to have contact information very prominent. Now they changed it. Now you have to click on a little box.

Here is something very interesting. When it says “website” and you want to edit it, by default it will just say “website.” If you go to “other,” you have another choice.