Social selling has evolved over the past few years from a theoretical conception to a crucial component of the sales process. So, having a properly organized LinkedIn profile is one of the most important steps in attracting ideal customers.
For example, put yourself in your prospects’ shoes. What do you do to find a relevant connection? You are scanning their profile to determine whether you want to do business with them or not, right? A social selling-optimized LinkedIn profile goes beyond a summary of your skillsets, professional experience, and sales accomplishments. Ensure your profile talks about your business, your role, and the value you can offer both present and future customers.
Keep reading to learn how you can improve the essential parts of your profile to drive a successful LinkedIn social selling strategy.
1. Upload a High-Quality Professional Profile Photo
Using a high-quality LinkedIn profile photo is one of the best ways to build a powerful first impression. A lot of LinkedIn users may believe it to be as straightforward as selecting a profile photo on other social media platforms. Nevertheless, LinkedIn profile photos must be treated in a more professional way for a successful social selling strategy.
If your LinkedIn profile photo is not a professional headshot or a stock photo, it may indicate that you aren’t very professional or that your profile is spammy. This won’t bode well for potential customers who want to find out more about you and your business.
Here are reasons why you need a high-quality LinkedIn profile photo for your Social Selling strategy:
1. Your photo must exhibit the same level of professionalism that you do in your business.
2. A skilled photographer will know how to select the best background colour/pattern, lighting, and angle to highlight your personality in the photo.
3. A poor-quality, grainy or gloomy image sticks out in a negative way, which always gives the wrong impression about you to the profile’s visitors.
Your LinkedIn profile can say a lot about you. Make sure it’s saying the right things through the profile photo.
2. For LinkedIn Social Selling Background Banner is Not Less Important Than the Profile Photo
The banner at the top of the page is one of the first things visitors see stumbling on your profile.
You won’t make an eye-catching first impression if you don’t have a banner. It’s wise to devote just as much time and consideration to selecting your banner as you do to making your LinkedIn main profile picture. In order to leave a lasting impression, it is important that the colours, font, and images featured in the banner reflect your entire business identity.
3. Make Your LinkedIn Profile Headline More Than Just a Job Title
There are no restrictions saying that the job title should be the only statement in the headline of your profile. Use it to share a better understanding of your position with the visitors. Showcase the motivations behind your actions. Let them know what your “fuel” is. Catch the attention of your target audience!
4. Write a LinkedIn Summary That Helps You Stand Out
A compelling LinkedIn summary has to catch visitors’ attention and pique their interest in getting to know you, learning from, or collaborating with you. To learn more about how you can use the summary/about section to share your story check out our LinkedIn Social Selling Guide.
5. Use a Range of Content Formats to Enhance Your Profile for Social Selling
It’s far better to play an active part in your network by contributing to the value of your connections’ LinkedIn feeds. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to share pertinent content with your network. Share behind-the-scenes videos, product or service demonstration videos, presentations, LinkedIn articles, client testimonials, etc. Content ought to be interesting, relevant, and simple to understand.
6. For Social Selling LinkedIn Recommendations are More Than a Thumbs-up
On LinkedIn, recommendations are crucial. They include a component of social proof.
Your personality may be inferred just by looking at the recommendations on your profile. You must be proactive and purposeful in order to receive recommendations. It demonstrates that you made an effort to find people who could confirm your experience or that you exceeded their expectations so that they were willing to endorse you.
Ensure that every recommendation aligns with your qualifications and experience. The recommendation should only complement and add value to your profile, not contradict it.
7. Make Sure to Have a Public Account with a Personalized URL
What if you are the only one who can view your perfectly optimized website? It’s incomprehensible, isn’t it? Keep your LinkedIn profile publicly accessible, and don’t forget to customize the URL—it should be memorable and tied to you.
8. Don’t be Shy to Shout Out About Your Expertise and Accomplishments
As long as you offer it in a way that is intriguing and alluring to your prospects, showing the profile visitors what you have accomplished thus far and what you are working on now is a wonderful notion. Demonstrate your achievements, honours, projects, and volunteer work. All this information will give the potential customers a more thorough idea of how you can benefit them.
9. Expand Your LinkedIn Network
Connecting your LinkedIn profile to your email address list is one of the fastest and most relevant strategies to expand your network on the platform. Moreover, this makes it possible for LinkedIn to recommend connections for you.
In order to keep your network active and up to date, make it a habit to send LinkedIn connection requests following meetings or professional events.
The Takeaway
Even though new social networks are always developing, LinkedIn remains the greatest option for social sales. Just keep in mind that in order to be successful on the platform, you must invest time in improving your profile.
P.S. Don’t forget that to identify if your social selling strategy is bringing in results, you’ll need to measure your social selling performance with SSI (Social Selling Index). You can read more about Social Selling Index here.
Tali is a results-driven digital marketer with a track record of growing her clients’ businesses and driving revenue.
As the business owner at WSI Digital Path, Vaughan, she takes great pride in delivering powerful but cost-effective solutions for her clients.
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