Tuesday, July 26, 2016

How Your Linkedin Strategy Should Appear From Your Customer's Eyes

By Jeff McCombe


Having a strong LinkedIn strategy for generating leads and sales is essential for success as a sales executive. This begins with an exceptional profile, written from the perspective of delivering value.

No matter how successful you are at getting the right people's attention, they inevitably show up on your profile where they make a yes or no decision... is this person worth having in my network?

The following profile sections, if completed correctly will convert more of your profile visitors into discovery calls:

Background banner image: We live in a visual world so take advantage of it by putting up a high quality and unique banner image. It can look similar to your website branding, or represent some core concept of value you provide to your customers. Visual branding should be part of your LinkedIn strategy, and the banner is where you do it.

LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a visual social media arena. You can put a 1400 x 425 pixel image at the top as a banner to significantly spruce up your profile. This image should be as high quality as you can get. Do not use standard free LinkedIn stock images here, since this looks like you don't care. Personalize the image and get a high density one from an online stock photo service. Make sure the image reflects what you do or the results you provide. This helps brand you and makes you memorable.

Where do you tell the story that establishes a strong LinkedIn strategy? Your Summary section, of course! This is where you want to engage prospects deeply with your knowledge, uniqueness and how you can help them. Leave out your previous job history, professional qualifications, etc. -- all that is nonsense to buyers. They care about what is in it for them. In other words, what is your value proposition and why should they connect with you to help them in their business needs? Write your summary from that perspective and your LinkedIn strategy will be well on its way to success.

Publishing Posts is one of the most important things you can do. These are essentially blog posts on topics where you have expertise. Do you sell engineering services? Then an article on the top 10 questions to ask before settling on an engineering service is a high value Post. Comparisons, how to articles, case studies, personal stories about successes you've brought about. All of these are good Posts to publish. These help establish you as an industry authority and get you found in searches.

Projects are important. This is a place you can put case studies, successful projects, etc. This adds credibility to your pitch. It also gives sales prospects an idea of how you can help them with our solution.

Getting solid recommendations is an essential part of a strong LinkedIn strategy. Ideally these should be in the words of your clients. Three to five recommendations is a good range.

If you have published online or offline, the publications section is the place to list these. Publishing is important in many circles (law or science, for example), and it is good to list papers, articles, films, interviews and other content you've originated or co-authored.

Your LinkedIn profile, when written from the perspective of what your ideal target prospects are looking for, will work for you for years as a core part of your successful new LinkedIn strategy.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment