Connect – Leverage your LinkedIn Profile for business growth and lead generation

Kylie Chown and Jane Anderson are the authors of the book Connect – Leverage your LinkedIn Profile for business growth and lead generation in less than 7 minutes per day.

You may remember Kylie Chown from show 39. Kylie is a Certified Master Resume Writer (CMRW), LinkedIn profile writer, a Reach Certified Social Branding Analyst and now an author.

She works with executive job seekers, solopreners, professionals and thought leaders to ignite their career and elevate their online and offline presence.

Jane Anderson is a Keynote Speaker, a podcaster, as well as a LinkedIn Business to Business Marketing and Lead Generation expert.

Jane has helped over 12,000 people globally, have a greater IMPACT through their marketing and brand positioning, by helping them develop their Personal Brands, LinkedIn profiles, and even their Presentation & Interview Skills.

She is the host of the #1 ranked Podcast, “Jane Anderson – Brand You Show” and author of the book “IMPACT: How To Build Your Personal Brand for The Connection Economy”

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Connect – Leverage your LinkedIn Profile for business growth and lead generation in less than 7 minutes per day

The first thing I thought about when I picked up my copy of Connect was the quality of the book. It was clearly designed to be used as a desk reference for you to update your LinkedIn profile.

The second thing I noticed after opening the book was all of the step-by-step instructions and photographs.

Whether you are a seasoned LinkedIn pro or a complete beginner, there is something in this book that will help you elevate your LinkedIn profile.

This is the third book I have read on LinkedIn and I can say it is by far the best. If you’re looking for a book to help you understand LinkedIn and build your profile, Connect is the book for you.

WHY IS LINKEDIN SO IMPORTANT FOR YOU

Everybody knows they need to be on LinkedIn, the problem is LinkedIn is still confusing to most people. As a result, many folks treat LinkedIn like it's an online version of their resume.

This is the wrong way to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn serves a multitude of markets. It helps Job seekers get in front of the right people, whether that means recruiters or hiring managers.

If you are a solopreneur, you can use LinkedIn to set up your own business. LinkedIn is also a great way for people in the same industry to collaborate. In short, industry hangs out on LinkedIn which is why you need to be there.

The simple fact in today’s connected economy is if you want to meet other business professionals the single best place to do that is on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn helps you generate interest and engagement from others on the platform and allows you to be found by others inside and outside your industry.

Remember, LinkedIn is a networking tool. If you use it in this manner and you look at yourself as a business of one, LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool for you.

ASSESSING WHERE ARE YOU NOW ON LINKED

I’m guessing there are some of you reading this who are thinking, “I’m on LinkedIn already. Now, what?” This is a fair question so I asked Jane Anderson how do people know where they stand today.

Jane reminds us that LinkedIn allows us to be found in search results. If you don’t have a profile, whether you admit it or not, this says something about you.

By not managing your own perception, people will create their own perception of you. You need to be proactive and not reactive.

Jane tells us about the three levels of LinkedIn profiles.

No profile at all
Profiles that looks like an obituary
Profiles with positioning – You can capture someone’s attention in 4 seconds or less.

Kylie and Jane provide a self-assessment in the book to help you assess where you fall in these levels. How you appear on LinekdIn and how you use it all comes back to your purpose, your goals, and your strategy.

Your linkedIn profile should be future focused which means you need to develop and execute on your goals and strategy.

Since companies hire solutions to their problems, ideally your profile should highlight the types problems you solve and how you solve them.

LEVERAGING YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE

In the book, Jane and Kylie identify 4 types of LinkedIn users they call the persister, the attempter, the avoider, and the rock star. Before you can become any of these types of LinkedIn users, you first need to take control of your profile.

Kylie reminds us (again) everything with LinkedIn starts with your strategy and goals for the platform. Once you have them identified, you can then begin to build and execute a step-by-step plan to build your profile.

Since one of your goals with LinkedIn will be to be found, it’s important that you understand the importance of SEO, or search engine optimization.

WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR LINKED PROFILE

SEO is as important in your LinkedIn profile as it is for Google and other search engines. Remember, in addition to being a networking site, LinkedIn is also a search engine for over 400 million people.

SEO will help you get found over your competition. Kylie Chown and Jane Anderson identity five area of your LinkedIn profile in the book to help you with your SEO efforts.

Title (Headline) – Don’t use the default headline which is your current job description. Think of your title as a search result on Google. Your headline needs to convey enough information in it to make someone click on it once they’ve read it.
Summary – The summary section allows you to provide an overview of your offerings and in the book Connect – Leverage your LinkedIn Profile for business growth and lead generation in less than 7 minutes per day, Jane and Kylie break the summary section into four separate paragraphs with suggestions for each.
Employment history – This is the most misunderstood section of your profile. As I mentioned above most people want to copy and paste their resume here. Kylie, Jane, and Don Orlando all agree, doing this makes your profile look like an obituary. Your employment history needs to be future focused by leveraging your past into your goals or vision for the future.
Skills and endorsements – The biggest benefit to skills and endorsement is they are a part of the search engine algorithm which means they can help you be found.
Recommendations – Jane believes the recommendations are very important. They offer social proof of your skills and expertise in your area or niche. Unfortunately, you can’t move the recommendations section up on your profile so Jane suggests copying and pasting them directly into the summary section where they apply.

USING LINKEDIN TO BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

My preference is and always will be to build your brand using your own website for these REASONS. However, I believe LinkedIn plays a very significant role in helping you build your brand.

LinkedIn ranks very high in Google search results. For this reason only, you should be on LinkedIn. Remember, we live in a digital-first world, which means you are being evaluated online before anyone even looks at your resume or considers you for an interview.

One key aspect of building your brand online is to be congruent in all of your online activities. LinkedIn helps you send a very clear message about where you are and where you are looking to go.

Congruence within LinkedIn needs to run through all of the five sections of your profile. The wrong picture, for example, can stop people in their tracks.

Commenting and posting within LinkedIn are great ways build your brand and keep your profile congruent. Remember, LinkedIn is not Facebook. Keep it professional. If your personal life helps to amplify your professional one, then by all means share, post, and like away. If it doesn't, keep it on Facebook.

Jane Anderson estimates that 90% of the decisions made on whether or not to work with are made before they ever get in contact with you. Going off message or off brand can impact those decisions because doing so waters down your perception and message.

This means when someone reaches out to you, they are nearly certain you are the person they need. It takes a while to build up the trust required for someone to reach out. Jane estimates it takes around ten pieces of consumed content before people start to feel like they can trust you and decide they can work with you.

WHO SHOULD YOU CONNECT WITH ON LINKEDIN

Before we can answer this question, we have to look back at our goals and strategy. It does us no good to connect with people who cannot help us execute our strategy.

Bear in mind here I’m not telling you to only connect with people in your industry or in alignment with your strategy but instead to give some thought about who you connect with on Linkedin.

Job seekers for examples should look for recruiters and hiring managers as a part of their strategy but don’t click the Connect button to send a request. Always include a personalized message in your connection requests that includes a brief intro of you and why you want to connect.

Use the initial connection to start a dialog with them. This will kick starts a conversation which opens the door for further communication. Always respond to your connection requests you never know where it may lead you.

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP SECTION OF YOUR LINKED PROFILE?

Something I learned while reading Connect is that a Relationship tab “appears” after you have made a connection with someone. In order to see it, you need to be viewing their profile. This one section can be a very powerful tool which can allow you to develop a deeper connection with someone.

You can add notes, reminders, and tags to help remember how you met your connection. As an example, after you meet someone you can connect on LinkedIn, then add a note in the relationship tab to indicate how you met them, the name of their significant other, their children, whatever.

One powerful way to use this tab is to make use of the reminder function. This allows you to enter a reminder for yourself to reconnect with this person either by the week, month or the year.

It’s a great tool to use for follow up as well. Once you’ve entered something into the reminder function, LinkedIn will send you an email at the time you specify to remind you of the action you want to take.

Tagging is another powerful option you have within this section. Tagging allows you to classify your connections by title, locations, industry, etc.

For example, you can tag all of the hiring managers and recruiters in your connections then when the time comes and you want to reach out to them, you can sort your connections using the tag you create. This provides you a quick way to search through all of your connections.