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Would you like to generate more business or interest in your brand from LinkedIn? Make sure you cross check your profile against these 10 steps to improve your LinkedIn marketing. LinkedIn has given you a lot of options (that many of us don’t know about) to customise your profile and write it in a way that will help showcase the benefits that you or your business can bring to someone who is in the market for what you offer. Make sure you aren’t missing out on some of these options and settings available to you right now.
Before we get started – make sure to come and hang out with us on LinkedIn…
Here’s Andrew’s profile.
Here’s Heather’s profile.
Here’s our Company page.
Having a LinkedIn marketing strategy is especially important to those of us who are in the B2B space. However there is a difference between having a great profile and then the followup necessary to bring those leads to your website and get them to take the next steps to become a potential client. You get access to our Social Media Marketing Followup Plan inside Digital Traffic Institute.
In this episode:
05:30 – Are you doing this social media “no-no”?
07:00 – Andrew’s prediction about 95% of businesses that will fail within the first 2 years
09:15 – What has changed about LinkedIn
11:20 – Remember to share your LinkedIn articles outside of LinkedIn
12:25 – What type of photo should you use in your profile?
14:00 – How to create a professional headline
17:15 – Why you should use keywords and “call to actions” to name your websites in your contact area
20:00 – What you should write in your summary (Hint: It’s not about you)
21:50 – Where to use keywords in your experience section
24:50 – What else you can add onto your profile to highlight your expertise
26:15 – Do endorsements and recommendations actually work?
28:50 – One tip to get more recommendations
29:40 – Where and why to add videos in your profile
32:00 – The different ways to add updates to your profile through blogging and status updates
34:45 – Is joining and participating in groups worth it?
37:55 – How your company page is different from your profile
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TRANSCRIPTION
Andrew: On today’s podcast we’re talking about the ten steps to improve your LinkedIn marketing. We’ve got some great points; we’ve got some new points and we’ve got some points that you don’t want to miss. Hey everybody, welcome to podcast #109. My name is Andrew McCauley and we are digging in to LinkedIn today. We love LinkedIn — or do we? Sometimes we have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn. We’re going to dig in and we’re going to reveal ten steps that you can use in today’s market to improve your LinkedIn marketing and if you’re not using LinkedIn maybe this episode will help you jump on board.
Of course, all the way from sunny Sydney town is Heather Porter. Hey, H.
Heather: Hello A. How’s it going?
Andrew: I am good. I’m looking forward to jumping to LinkedIn today. LinkedIn is one of those tools that I’ve been on for a long time. I’ve had a very good love affair with LinkedIn but lately it’s changed a little bit.
Heather: I’m looking forward to this chat because I have my profile — you know, when LinkedIn says you’re profile’s 99% filled out or whatever it gives you that little wheel on the side —
Andrew: Yes.
Heather: I’m like one of the all-stars and I have mine completely filled out to the max. However, I’ve really never used it other than setting it up and excepting invitations. I know you’ve used it way more than me, more strategically. So I’m going to ask you some questions around that as we go through this.
Andrew: I actually created a course on LinkedIn for another platform and I still make sales from it today even though the course is about three years old. I’ve got to update it, I’ve got to be honest, I got to update it. I don’t promote it any more but someone still does and they still send me a check every month.
But it has changed. It has changed, they’ve changed the way that they — LinkedIn being “they” — have changed the way they see things. Some people do not like the way LinkedIn has changed and other people think it’s still pretty good so we’ll discuss all that today and give you ten points if not more about what you can do with your LinkedIn profile. But in any case make sure you come and check us out — come and find our LinkedIn profile so you can join us and let us know how you found us. Don’t give us that generic “I want to connect with you on LinkedIn” stuff; we want to know who you are. How did you hear us tell us you heard us on the podcast and we’ll be happily adding you to our network.
Heather: Sounds good. Before we get started though, I have to know what you’ve been up to? Have you learned anything, come across anything really cool since we last spoke?
Andrew: You know, I have. I’ve been digging into Instagram a lot more. I know I said this recently too. I’ve been digging into Instagram a lot more and everywhere I go everyone’s claiming the wonders of Instagram. I think we’ll do a podcast on Instagram coming up pretty soon too. But I’ve been digging into the Instagram factory and it’s been pretty cool of what I’m seeing. I’m seeing some good responses and good traffic coming from Instagram. So I think I’m excited about Instagram now.
Heather: Yeah, it’s weird, there’s always these tipping points. There’s the early adopters which… I know you and I have been on Instagram for a while — How long have you been on it? A couple years, like myself?
Andrew: Five, four? Actually, how long has it been out for? Pretty much early, early in the —
Heather: 2012 it sort of got its traction and it’s when Facebook bought it. So about four years, probably, you and I’ve been on it.
Andrew: Easy. Definitely.
Heather: It’s weird because I kind of just randomly would put posts up, but recently it’s gotten to that point where not only marketers and savvy business owners are using it but it’s kind of… There’s like a buzz around it right now, isn’t there?
Andrew: Totally. I think the other things that’s changed for me, especially recently, is the fact that we’ve got our Autopilot Your Business account and we’ve got our own personal accounts. The fact that you can actually use Instagram on multiple accounts on the one device now is a godsend. But we’ll save all of that for our Instagram program. That’s what I learned. That’s what I’m excited about. But how about you? What have you been doing lately?
Heather: It’s more of a thought, a comment, some might say a rant. I have to share it because I think it’s so important where you’re using social media right now for your business.
Social media is such an incredibly powerful, important branding tool and it’s a way to have conversations with leads and clients and spread your brand. So when somebody that you’re connected with on social media comes to you without re-tweeting you, liking your posts, commenting, doing anything to build a relationship and then suddenly sends you a private message or posts on your time line.
I’ve gotten four people that have done this just in the last week in different ways when they come to you hand ask you do do something. Like, “I have this event coming up will you share it with your entire network?” And then they post it on your time line and you’re thinking — I actually don’t remember who you are because there’s no relationship there. Or I had somebody message me — he’s in multilevel marketing, which is cool — but I may have met him five years ago and the first conversation we’ve had in five years he says to me, “I have a really great opportunity for you; would you like to join me at my Juice Plus party?” Which, by the way Andrew, is not even in my city, which says clearly on my profile I’m in Sydney and it’s across Australia.
So my rant is this — it’s that people still don’t get how to use social media for their brand and their business and they’re abusing it in a way. I would say this, if you were to go to a networking event, what would you say there? Is it the same thing you would say in social? You know what I mean? It should be the same thing. I would never go to networking events, say, “Hey, nice to see you again, will you tell everybody that you know about my event right now?”
Andrew: I’m going to make a bold objection here.
Heather: Go.
Andrew: — that people that do that — people that go out and blanket-invite people without even knowing who they are — are in that 95% of businesses that fail in the first two years.
Heather: I think that’s smart.
Andrew: I would love to see a correlation or a study of why did your business fail? Did you go out and blanket-email blast everybody about your crap? If the answer is yes, that’s why your business failed.
Heather: Yes.
Andrew: Seems like you don’t know the basics of building a business, of building a relationship and you’re doing that, then you’re on the highway to death for your business that’s for sure.
Heather: It just reminds me of the fact that for whatever reason, when we as humans go into a learning state we can often times align ourselves with an expert and almost leave our common sense at the door. If we hear from somebody — Oh, yeah, yeah, take this template and do this — Suddenly it’s like, would you actually do that in real life with your family, friends and new people that you meet?
I think that’s all I wanted to add in. When you’re using social media, you have to use it like you’re talking to a real human being on the other side. You have to understand who they are and build that relationship with them first before you even ever ask them for something.
Andrew: I really would like to see a comedy video of someone crashing a random party and just throwing out business cards or, “Here’s my document,” or, “Buy this. Hey, are you ready to sign up now?” There’s got to be somewhere on YouTube that someone’s done a video like that. If not, I’m going to do one. I’m going to get it shared a million times.
Heather: That would be so fun. I’d love it.
Andrew: Anyway — so going back to spamming, I mean, LinkedIn…
Let’s discuss — We’ve got ten items that we’ve identified that can help people with their LinkedIn profile, building their marketing platform on LinkedIn. As I said at the top of the show, I’m was a very, very big fan of LinkedIn; I still love it. It’s hard to let go of a little baby that you’ve been involved with from the beginning. But LinkedIn have changed. They’ve changed a lot of their focus. They’ve made it more about a content platform — in my eyes and a lot of other people’s eyes — more about a content creation or content platform, rather than the platform that it was for building and networking, connecting with people.
Do you see that as an outsider not using LinkedIn so much?
Heather: Hmm. I’ve seen a few evolutions of it, using it myself where it’s definitely needed to set up your almost like a CV, where people will go to find out about you. I then for a while, would really be into the updates people were sending. Then suddenly… Yes, I think it ebbs and flows, I guess, would be my answer. Every year or so — kind of like, it’s used a lot, then it comes back in and there’s people complaining about it for certain things.
Andrew: Right. Having said that, I am about to get back into it pretty much, especially with our podcast stuff. So I’m going to start doing that a lot more and focusing on that a lot more as far as the content platform goes. We’ve had some great results with it as part of the content platform but that was way back at the beginning when it started changing over. Now there’s a lot of content. You go into your LinkedIn profile on any given day and the little flag at the top there will say notifications — number of people that have viewed your profile but then more importantly, this person published a post, this person published a post, this one published a post. And you go through these posts — I’m just clicking on one randomly right now and I’m looking at this person who has posted a post two days ago that’s had two views. Is it becoming a point where it’s just saturated? Or not? What’s the deal?
Heather: I’m glad you brought that up because that’s exactly why I’ve stopped using it to see updates from people in the last year. However with one exception. The people that I follow that actually use their LinkedIn articles — we’ll talk about this coming up soon — but you get the URL for each article that you post or each blog post you post in LinkedIn. The people that share those in their other social media accounts and have a little bit of a personal commentary around it, I’ll actually leave that social account whether it’s Facebook or Twitter and I’ll go read it in their LinkedIn. That’s how I’m finding my LinkedIn content.
Andrew: Good. Because I’m looking at these notifications and I’m looking at these titles. You know, titles are a big part of it — and we’ll probably talk about that later — but I’m just looking at these different ones and I’m thinking it’s all crickets. This person here, no views, nothing there. Wow. People are hopefully not spending a lot of time creating this content only for LinkedIn because they aren’t getting any traction from it.
But enough of that, that’s just my little thing around LinkedIn right now. But let’s dig into some of these tips because I might have a few more ideas around some of these things as well as we go.
Heather: Let’s start with number one which is pretty obvious. Right up at the top of your profile which is your photo. It is so important, you guys, to include a professional photo that is recognizable as you but also recognizable as your brand that you use in other social media accounts. It’s key.
You know what, Andrew, the other day I got asked by two people to connect with them and they didn’t even have a photo and I know these people and I know they have photos and they use them on social media and that they have a bit of a following in a business. I’m thinking, why didn’t you take that extra second to put a photo of yourself where I know you have a photo over on Facebook.
Andrew: I’m looking at this now, I’m looking at a bunch of people. There’s the ghost image everywhere on this list of people that want to connect with me. I’m like, really? I don’t know who you are; I’m not going to bother. So if you haven’t got a photo that’s clearly an indicator of who you are, then don’t do it. Don’t waste your time.
Heather: Absolutely. That goes for if you’re using LinkedIn even to find a job or to position yourself as an expert. It’s the number one thing we look at as human beings to have an initial rapport — that’s what I do at least — I look at the person; I think, do I know them; do I like the look and feel of them; have they taken a moment to be professional in their photo and then if yes, then I’ll move on to the rest.
Andrew: Yes. Definitely. So there you go. That’s it. that’s pretty much across the board for all of your social networks. Get a photo.
Heather: Yes. Get a good photo.
Andrew: Get a good photo.
Heather: That’s just the same across the board. So people get a rapport and get to know you from the look of your photo.
The next one — I really like this one; I think this is where a lot of people get it wrong — the professional headline. Use one.
Andrew: I had a look at yours to make sure that you were doing that and you have a good one. I like it.
Heather: It’s kind of short and it could be better. But, you know.
Andrew: But here’s the thing with this. So many people put this down as manager or CEO or owner of a business. The truth is if somebody’s looking for you or looking for your service or your product, nobody’s typing in “manager.” I’m looking for a manager. I’m looking for an owner, or a CEO or a CFO. No one gives a crap. They want to know certain — what we call “keywords” — words that describe your business.
I’m going to use yours as an example. Your headline says, “I help SME’s automate their marketing on line.” So it clearly tells people in that headline what you do. I’m on your profile so I can read a little bit more about it. But often, your name and your headline is the only thing that people see — and your photo. So these three key things, your name — obviously you can’t do much about that — but the professional headline and the professional photo are the key things that you want to be making sure people know exactly what you do.
You know, I’m looking at somebody here on the right hand side, got a photo I can hardly see and name with just one name and second last name is a letter and then it’s just sales manager. Boring. Like, I don’t care. Sales manager of what?
Heather: You know what? I know that when you’re doing a blog post in LinkedIn it shows. When it shows the author of the post, it actually shows your headline with your photo. Does it show the same as well in the news feed inside of LinkedIn for any status update? Is that the bit that LinkedIn shows?
Andrew: In a normal news feed, if someone’s got a news feed, it’ll be usually the name of the person up there. But if you hover over it, hover over their name or their photo, it pops up with their name, their photo and the actual headline title.
Heather: Exactly. That’s why it’s so important. Where is the headline title? It’s up near the photo where you’re actually editing that area.
Andrew: Right under your name.
Heather: Yes. Guys, it’s so important. What’s yours? Do you remember what yours is?
Andrew: Yes. Off the top of my head. I’ve got, “Online marketing, social media consultant. I make it easy for business owners to make money from their website 24/7.”
Heather: And that’s your headline.
Andrew: That’s my headline.
Heather: That’s cool.
Andrew: There’s a fair bit that you can fit in there. The reason I did that — I’ll give a breakdown. “Online marketing” and “social media consultant” — I wanted those key words. If somebody’s looking for on line marketing or social media consultant, my name will come up. But I also want people to see, “What do you do?” — I make it easy for business owners to make money from their website 24/7. — “Hey, you know what, I need to make money from my website. Great, I’m going to speak to this person here.” I’ve actually got a number of people connected me through that for that reason alone.
Heather: Brilliant. Alright. So that’s number two.
What’s coming up for number three is — This is a little known one that a lot of people don’t actually use. It’s underneath where you put your headline and your name and your photo; there’s a place where you could put your websites. There is an option in there like, when you go in and add a website it says something like, company website or personal website or blog; it’ll actually give you some choices. There’s another choice in there; I think it’s called “other” by memory. You can actually type in whatever you want to say. So like, “Get my free video training” and then you — instead of just company website — “Get my free 24/7 website money making video training” —
Andrew: Exactly, yes.
Heather: — and then you can put your landing page to your lead magnets into your funnel.
Andrew: You have three options. Three places for websites. So on mine, I put the name of Autopilot Your Business, which that one. I’ve also got the Social Media Bloke which is my own website and then I’ve got, “Get our podcasts” so anyone coming to our LinkedIn profile is going to get our podcast which you’re listening to right now. So if anybody’s ever got to our podcast from that link I’d love to know about it; that would be great. To change the name of all your websites you want to select the drop-down called “other” and then that way you can create your own name for it as well.
Heather: So, so cool. I use this all the time, Andrew, when I’m researching a new person that’s coming to my network. I love to look at people’s LinkedIn because I find it’s really easy snapshot of an evolution of their professional life, rather than an about page on a website’s cool as well, but I find that about page is written a little bit different; it’s more about the visitor. This is more about them; straight to the point. So I’ll go in there, straight into the contact area and then that’s where I go and decide which websites I want to look at and the ones that have the key words, like what you were saying, that I’m definitely more interested in clicking on.
Andrew: Definitely. Good.
Heather: What’s next? We have the otherwise known as the “vanity URL” or “pretty URL” or basically you are able to control your URL. You should, because what is “LinkedIn.com/number-number-cool-number-bla-bla-bla” rather than “/heatherporter” for example.
Andrew: Definitely. So you want to go and change that. Edit it. Put your own name there. Unfortunately, I don’t know why, but I missed out on my own name so I have to have the number 1 at the end of my own name. So I like to think number one is better than number nothing. So it’s number 1.
Heather: So that’s pretty easy and it takes a moment to do so. All this stuff by the way, if you guys can’t visualize or work out how to do it just Google it, or go in LinkedIn help and type in how to get vanity URL LinkedIn.
Andrew: Yes.
Heather: The next one is, and this is also really important is, fill in the summary area and tell your visitor how you can help them.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Heather: What do you think about that?
Andrew: Oh, I love this one because so many people inwardly focus on who they are. I do this, I do this, I’m great, I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- and every one who read it is bored. Bored. So although it’s a summary, it’s got to be about the person reading it. “This is what I do, I’m Heather Porter and here is how I can help you. If you’re a business that does this, this and this I can help you by doing this, this and this.”
So it’s like, what’s in it for them. Why would they want to connect with you? What’s in it for them? People don’t want to connect with people who think they’re awesome because people just don’t. Turn that summary around so it’s focusing on what you can do to help that person and their particular need.
Heather: Yes. Exactly. Because the rest of your profile will have your awards, your publications all that stuff. You don’t have to brag about that in the summary.
Andrew: No. That’s right. You had it exactly right. The summary is the summary for them and the rest of the profile is a summary about you.
Heather: Brilliantly said. So what’s the next one? Obviously moving down the summary we have all your past experience. Talk to me about your tips, Andrew, on filling this area out.
Andrew: OK. Past experience — The algorithm that’s used in search for LinkedIn has changed a little bit over the last couple years but it’s still important to list the skill sets that you have or that you still want to be known for in your past experience.
If you had another job and let’s say that your past job was a social media manager in that past job, list all of the aspects of that job that you were involved with because that still is part of the algorithm in the search bar. When people are searching for someone who is an expert as social media management and you’ve got those words in your past experience as well as your current experience and maybe in your title and maybe somewhere else as part of your profile, then its going to rank higher than it is for someone that doesn’t have that stuff.
Heather: For example, I’ll just go to one of my first jobs or roles that I had way back in the day when I was a fashion editor for a local magazine in San Diego. How might I, if my role was fashion editor, what would I… Is that what I call myself? Or is that… How would I kind of…
Andrew: Here’s the thing. It’s going to depend on whether you still want to be known for that. If somebody contacted you now and said, “Hey Heather, I’d really like to employ you as a fashion editor for my magazine,” you’d probably go, “What? I haven’t done that for fifteen years.” So it’s not that important to you. In this case, I would just put fashion editor, give you a few key tips of what you did to give them an overview, but you’re not looking for work in that field any more.
Heather: Would it be a good idea to change it to publisher and editor of a magazine? Because that’s still kind of what I do. Is I do content. Could you tweak your past to kind of fill in what you’re doing now? Is that a good idea?
Andrew: You can, as long as you are not being dishonest about it. If it’s still part of what you did and it’s part of your journey and evolution of where you are now and it’s relevant, then yes, by all means do that. But if it’s something like — my background is hospitality; I’ve got a lot of hospitality stuff on my LinkedIn profile but at the end of the day I’m not looking for a job back in hospitality. So —
Heather: Aw, come on. Really?
Andrew: Unless… everyone come over to my house for a party and I’ll be the host. But you know, I don’t have a lot of… As a pub manager I had a thousand jobs going on at once on any given day, but I don’t list any of that stuff because it’s not relevant to what I’m doing now.
Heather: So really, the tip would be focus on your most recent things that you’ve done professionally and make sure that those have the keywords, like you were saying with the job title, but also in the description. Don’t just list a list of descriptions from a job description you got from a job. You’d actually write a paragraph around what you did using keywords.
Andrew: Yes, use keywords that people are searching for. Don’t use buzz words. Unless there’s a specific industry buzz word that only people in the industry are going to know and that’s what you want to be found for then, yes. But if it’s generic, if you’re a service industry where you’re helping someone solve a problem, don’t use buzz words that the customer wouldn’t understand because you will never get found for that sort of stuff.
Heather: Cool. So it’s different than a CV or resume, really. You’re actually personalizing your message.
Andrew: Totally.
Heather: Next is the extras. So there’s whole are in LinkedIn where you can add on extras like awards and projects and charity and publications; there’s loads in there. What’s your take on that? Is it worth doing that?
Andrew: It is, it is. But don’t get hung up on making that the most important part. If you’ve got extras, if you’ve written a book or written some articles in a magazine, great; if you’ve got some publications or even radio shows, if you’ve been on a radio show or some webinars, especially if you’re starting out. If you haven’t got a lot of that and you want to be an expert, then that would be good to fit in there. But as you go and you start to speak more or become an expert and you’ve got other publications, you may want to drop some of those off. Because otherwise you have this massively long profile that people go — uh, scroll-scroll-scroll I’m not going to read it anyway. So definitely put it in there but put it as a needs basis; if you need to keep it there, keep it there. But if you think it’s irrelevant because, you know, I passed my level one certificate in public speaking in 1983, well that’s probably not relevant to today in 2016 so you probably don’t need to have that there.
Heather: I guess the way I look at it is what things in your life would make you credible to the people that would want to work with you and just cull it down a few of those.
Andrew: Yes, a few.
Heather: OK. Good one, I like that. Then moving on to the whole endorsements and testimonials sort of area, where people get to recommend you for certain things and all that.
Andrew: Yes. It sort of split. Initially they used to have endorsements where people would do a written endorsement for you almost like a testimonial from individual people and they call those recommendations. The cool thing about those was that they were legitimately pretty good because people would write them but the hard thing was to get somebody to write them in the first place. So then LinkedIn came along and said let’s create one-click endorsements, or skills if you like. Let’s chuck these down in front of people. So you’ll see “Does Heather have these skills?” and they’ll throw up a few skill sets and you either click yes or no or skip, sort of thing. That can build up your skill set pretty fast. Do people look at these? Yes and no. Here’s my take on it. It’s nice to have and reality is that there are people who you don’t even know who are clicking you and giving you endorsements for skills that don’t even know if you’ve got them or not.
Heather: Yeah.
Andrew: I had skill sets for wedding photography. I’m like, gimme a break I’ve never taken a photo at a wedding ever. But I had once — just once. But here’s the thing. People look at numbers and it’s credibility. Whether you like the way it’s done or not or whether you like the way it’s actually being worked out if you see somebody that says “I’m an expert in this particular field” and you go to these top skills and they have couple of threes, fours and ones, where meaning no one else is actually saying that yes they do have skills, then it’s almost like — oh, I don’t know if that is true or not. At the other end of the scale you see people with 99-pluses and you’d be like — wow, is that true or not? Did they try and milk the system or are they legitimately got a lot of connections? I’ve got a lot of connections and I’ve got 99-pluses on all my top skills. I’ve never asked anyone to do that; it’s just the way it’s happened. And mind you I’ve been on here for a long time and I do have a lot of connections so it’s a bit of a weigh-off. But people look at numbers.
Heather: I hear it’s probably more important to get the testimonial, the recommendation, the written one. Yes?
Andrew: Definitely, if you can get that. For sure, if you can get it.
Heather: A tip that I read about that and I even tried and it worked was to go to people that you’ve worked with, genuinely. Go into their profile, scroll down to their recommendations area and you’ll have an opportunity, if you’re connected with them to write one for them.
Andrew: Yes.
Heather: You’ll write there, and then they’ll want to return the favor.
Andrew: Hopefully.
Heather: — sometimes.
Andrew: The allure of reciprocity yes, you go and write some good ones. It doesn’t have to be long. It can be two or three sentences. Go out and write a bunch of them. Do three or four every week and if you get one of those back every week then all of a sudden you’ve got a good deal of them.
Heather: Do you know that plays with the algorithm at all, if you have more of those written recommendations?
Andrew: It used to be; but then again it’s changed and I really don’t know if it does any more.
Heather: Got it. Well, next up we have adding multimedia throughout your profile. Is it worth it?
Andrew: Definitely. LinkedIn has really gone leaps and bounds with this. It used to be just a bunch of text. But you can add videos. In my summary I’ve got testimonial videos from people that people can watch. Just pops up with a pop up and they can watch them then and there. I’ve got images and links to things. The images become click-able links. So people can see it. You can add all sorts of cool stuff and it just makes your it makes your profile stand out. I’m looking at my summary now. I’ve got slide shows from SlideShare which LinkedIn owns that are there; people can look at my SlideShare from inside my profile now. It makes your profile just a little bit more exciting than the other one that doesn’t have anything in it and whatever you can do to make it look more enticing then I would suggest you do it.
Heather: An easy way of doing that is just uploading a video into YouTube and then you can take the YouTube embed URL and stick that in LinkedIn.
Andrew: Correct. Yep.
Heather: Really easy. So stick a few videos in YouTube and SlideShare is inside of LinkedIn. Probably has a URL or a button straight inside that in your experience, right?
Andrew: Inside SlideShare it just says, “Do you want to add this to your LinkedIn profile?” You click yes and it’s added there, straight to it.
Heather: Cool. Easy. So those are two really cool things that you could do. Where would you put those? Those are in the summary and then in experience and projects —
Andrew: In the summary, yes. You know what you can do? You can add all of this multimedia all through everything. You can add it in your past jobs as well, if you’ve got past jobs, if you’ve got videos or photos. One of our past jobs and my past jobs is Internet marketing and social media podcasting. I talk about this as a specific role and inside there I talk about what we do on this podcast; I have a video there, a little home video and I have links with images back to our podcast page.
Heather: Very, very smart. Multimedia it is. Tick that box.
One of the last ones we want to talk about is — how do you use update? So there’s two types. There’s a status update and you could create a full blog post inside of LinkedIn. We were just having a great conversation around that so what are your thoughts on those two areas?
Andrew: LinkedIn as I said, is focusing more on this whole publishing platform now where you can really add a bunch of text, but you can also add images and multimedia to your posts as well. It’s a great platform. I would suggest that if you’re writing blog posts already, then you want to go and grab your blog post and you could — without saying it publicly, so, no one listen to me here — copy and paste that blog post and stick it on the LinkedIn publishing platform on Pulse and then put a link back to your website so people can go and read more, check out more.
But here’s the thing. We hear about duplicate content all the time but LinkedIn, being one of the top ten most visited websites in the world, will not get pinged by Google for duplicate content especially if you make sure if your post is up on your website first at least a couple of days, maybe a week beforehand so that Google can index it; they know where the content has come from and then you can post it onto the Pulse network on LinkedIn.
Heather: I’ve also seen people, when — they do this really well — where they have a ten-steps-to-do-this blog post; they’ll take one of them and pad that out and really make it a substantial piece that they put in LinkedIn. At the bottom of it they say “come back here to get the other nine steps” and link back to their blog.
Andrew: Yes, then take that a step further and as you suggested earlier, don’t rely on people in LinkedIn to go and see it. Go and add a link on Twitter or Facebook and say “check out this post” and drive them back to LinkedIn. Because you also get analytics for your posts as well. The more posts and views and stuff like that, the more views you get the more LinkedIn wants to be able to show that to other people as well.
Heather: You know what I do — and what we do — is use your website, your blog as the hub of your core piece of content and then tear off pieces to put everywhere — images and quote-images on some social pieces of content on LinkedIn. So you’re cross-pollinating and also you’re using other social media to cross-pollinate each other. So it becomes this huge web on one piece of content that you have on your blog post.
One last thing on that too. If you’re doing a post on LinkedIn, another thing you can offer, a bonus on that post a few times saying “come on over here to get a tutorial video where I walk you through how to do this” and then you can actually take them to a landing page and get them to opt in for that.
Andrew: Yes. Definitely. I know we’ve gone through nearly ten things and there’s one thing that —
Heather: We have.
Andrew: Before we do a break, I want to just say, groups have changed a lot. I’m a big fan — a non-fan any more of groups. LinkedIn have taken away a lot of the focus of groups and what you could do in groups. It’s becoming a little bit of a ghost town I’ve got to say and that’s just my opinion. But I’d love to hear other people’s comments on that. But groups, I’m still trying to love it. I’m trying to give it some love. There was a couple of private groups that I’m a member of now which are active but not as active as I thought they would be.
Heather: Before, and correct me if I’m wrong, but before, I remember you saying that if you’re active in a group, LinkedIn would reward you for being active by putting you as an active member, right?
Andrew: That was part of my strategy was I’d go and find a group of 50,000 people. I would make sure I was in there every day answering comments, answering questions, posting comments, adding valuable stuff to the group. Not spamming but just adding and answering people and liking their stuff and the more you actively were involved in it the LinkedIn algorithm would put you on the right hand side and say these are the top influencers in this group and when people see that, it’s almost like a stand out beacon to say — hey check out these people; they’re pretty knowledgeable about this topic. In front of a group of 50,000 people, you wouldn’t have all 50,000 people looking at it in any given day but you still get a number of people and my profile views were through the roof. Then they took away this option; it disappeared.
The other thing that’s really, really sucky about groups now is that you used to be able to connect with people in groups; you used to be able to say — How do you know this person? We’re in a group together. You didn’t need to have an email address for that person. It was great that you could connect to people in the groups like that. You can’t do that any more which sucks.
Heather: So, hearing what you’ve just said, I think I’ll stick with ramping up my publishing a little bit and then try and focus on that as one focus and perhaps groups when I know if they work or not and I bet a lot of us are in the same boat listening to this right now.
Andrew: There’s no reason why you still can’t jump into groups. If you’ve written a post and you put it on Pulse, jump in a group and just say, “Here’s my link to my Pulse article. Please check it out.” It take a couple extra seconds; really it’s not going to be that much more. If no one sees it, no one sees it but you’ll find that you’ll get a couple people who view it. It’s worth going back into groups — make sure they’re relevant groups that the article is relevant to — and you’ll get some good results from that.
Heather: Good one, and I know we’re going to come to a break but I just have one more quick, quick comment. Because some people are saying what about the business page? What about the business page? Profiles — how I see LinkedIn is profiles is where everything happens; that’s all the action. People do business with people; your company page is definitely more important if you’re a bigger, bigger brand because all your employees connect with that and you as the CEO with your profile can go in and you can share from your company page; you can share your article, for example. So you can’t do as much in the company page, but what do you think? Is it more beneficial for larger businesses or should every business have one?
Andrew: I think every business should have one. But it’s like anything; you’ve just got to have time to manage it and add stuff. We’re adding stuff to ours every day. Every day we’ve got a new post going up there, not necessarily our post but other stuff. So it’s definitely worth it. Check out Autopilot Your Business; come and become a follower of ours; we’d love some more followers. But it’s one of those things that we don’t spend a lot of time in because we just haven’t.
Heather: Nicely said, Andrew. Can’t do everything; we’re only human as well.
Andrew: That’s right.
Andrew: Alright, so wrapping up, let’s just quickly cover what we went over in today’s podcast. We went through ten steps for you guys to have a think about when you dig in creating your LinkedIn profile and making it work for you.
Number 1 — we had, include a professional photo. Number 2, Heather what was number 2?
Heather: Use a professional headline. You know, one that actually entices people to know more about you.
Andrew: Yes. Number 3 — use key words in your website URLs. Love that one.
Number 4 is — use a vanity URL. Make sure you got your own name at the end of LinkedIn.com/yourname.
Heather: Then number 5 is — make sure to make that summary all about your visitor and how you can help them.
Andrew: Yep. Make sure you fill in your past experience.
Number 7 was — add extras like projects and publications that are appropriate. Number 8…
Heather: Love it. Number 8 — get your endorsements up but also focus on your recommendations and you can do that by going to other pages or profiles and recommending them.
Andrew: Yes. Number 9 — add some multimedia. Make sure you got some videos and some cool funky things in there so people love your profile.
Heather: Number 10 — make sure you start to hang out in the publishing area of LinkedIn in the Pulse. That’s easy guys. At the top of your page you have create an update and you can either do quick status update or a full blog post and you should be trying both.
Andrew: My goal for our podcast one day is to get these podcasts under thirty minutes. Do you think we can do it? Not today.
Heather: We’re close. We’re getting there.
Andrew: We’re close. Hey that was good. I could talk about LinkedIn for a lot longer than this because there’s a few other cool things I’d love to be able to share with people. We might have to do another podcast — advanced one — coming up down the track.
Heather: Sounds like a plan. Thanks you guys, for tuning in. Thanks Mr. LinkedIn Master for sharing your wisdom.
Andrew: As I said, connect with us on LinkedIn. We’d love to know where you’ve come from and let us know that you found us through the podcast. We’d love to see you there. Alright, H. Have a good one, I’ll see you next time.
Heather: Bye everyone.