With LinkedIn, having a well optimised profile can place you well ahead in the B2B lead gen race – and that’s before considering any other social strategy or lead gen campaign.
Here are 4 LinkedIn profile optimisation tips to generate more B2B leads.
How Will Optimising Bring Me Leads?
LinkedIn has strong search filter capabilities that other professionals will be using to do their own social prospecting and lead generation work. A complete profile increases the likelihood of appearing in relevant searches.
Your public Linkedin profile also shows up in search engines, so the more relevant information you can include (who you are, what you do and what your organisation does), the better your overall visibility, and the better the chances of relevant leads finding your profile.
Optimising Your Personal Profile
1. Update as much relevant information as you can
Start with the basics. Review each section of your profile and make sure it is as complete and current as possible. Review:
Your name. On your personal profile, make sure you give your professional name, not a nickname. You may also want to consider adding qualifications (PhD, BSc etc) if relevant.
Your professional headline. This is where you should add your job title. Make sure this is as specific as possible, and uses keywords representative of your expertise. This section will show alongside your name in LinkedIn comments, news feeds and on search so it’s important to keep it accurate.
Location. This section just requires a postal code, and allows you to pick your location. You can also select an industry to appear alongside.
Profile Picture. As LinkedIn is a professional site, a businesslike picture, good quality and ideally a headshot should be used. Remember, a profile with a photo is 11 times more likely to be viewed.
Experience. Add in your relevant experience, education and current role. You don’t have give too much detail, but acknowledging these can help.
Contact information. If a potential lead wants to get in touch, they’ll need as much information as you can give them! Complete as many contact fields (phone, social, contact email, site links) as possible. Make sure these details are professional – don’t hand out your personal number unless you really want to.
Public profile link. Your public profile link is customisable, can help you appear better in search and makes your profile easy to share and use. Edit it to create your own.
Premium users have added advantage as they can access a number of additional tools to optimise their profiles, such as editing badges and increasing profile accessibility. If you can, set your account to open to allow anyone to see your details and contact you easily.
For a company page, make sure all details are accurate, you have a strong company description (think about what’s on your site’s ‘about’ page), check contact and location information is relevant, add your specialities and featured groups and use good quality images.
2. Dig out the records, and add more in-depth info
Once you’ve completed the basics, take a look at some of the more in-depth sections of your profile and see how much you can enhance. LinkedIn has a wide range of sections you can include on your profile, from causes you support, to patents you hold, languages you speak and more. Reorder and add sections as appropriate for you.
Under your initial details, a typical section order for a personal profile might be, your summary, skills, experience, any projects you have joined, then your honours and awards, courses, any publications, and additional information.
With your additional info and summary sections, be sure to keep these sections brief as on a CV, but don’t be afraid to give insight into who you are. If you don’t have any skills or endorsements yet, try endorsing a few connections. You should get a few returns! The same goes for personal recommendations.
3. Consider SEO
Remember that your public profile is visible in search? You can give it a helping hand. First, go to your public profile settings, make sure that your public profile is visible to everyone, and check the boxes to say what is or isn’t shown.
Next consider optimising the text on your profile from your job title to your descriptions. With your job title for example, instead of putting ‘Digital Executive,’ you might put ‘Inbound Digital Marketing Executive’ or other keywords relevant to your business. Keep it truthful and relevant, but be wary of overdoing it; nobody likes an overcomplicated title that doesn’t mean anything!
Descriptions (on your job roles, summaries, etc) should also be optimised – but this can actually save you time! Instead of writing complete detailed paragraphs, write easily readable, concise lists which include your keywords. Again, don’t overdo it on the keywords, just write naturally. Not only will this help you in search, it will make your profile more readable!
4. Join relevant groups
Are you a member of any LinkedIn groups? If not, you should be.Actively promoting yourself, specifically by joining groups can help you boost your network and improve SEO, as your groups will give insight into you and your interests. If groups are localised to a specific area, that can also help geo-targeting; all before you even get involved in engagement and discussion.
You can join up to 50 groups. To check if a group is relevant to your goals or niche focus, review that group’s insights. If a group is full of other relevant professionals with the problems you can solve, participation is likely to find you a few possible leads!
Remember, profile optimisation is an ongoing thing. Regular reviews will leave you with many areas to add to, edit and improve upon, and will help you avoid mistakes– so keep checking back!
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