Lead Wizard-LinkedIn Lead Generation!

When it comes to marketing on LinkedIn, the number one most important part of the process is getting your profile right. What I mean by that is the following.
1. You want your profile to be complete.
2. You especially want your profile to pre-sell you!
I see a lot of people’s profiles on LinkedIn that fail on one, or often both, of these points. In the rest of this article, I’d like to talk about the three most common problems I often see.
Problem #1: Poor Photo
LinkedIn is a business site! Unless you run a beach-side concession renting out umbrellas and sea kayaks, you don’t want your LinkedIn profile picture to be from your last vacation. You know the one I’m taking about, right? Yep—the one where you’re wearing your multi-colored swim suit, and you’re carrying around that boogie board you love so much.
Would you dress like that for a job interview? Gosh, I hope not!
Go dress up as you would for that job interview and get your significant other to take a well-lighted picture with your phone. Should do the job!

Problem #2: No Summary or Poor Summary
I see this all the time. People with otherwise great looking profiles, but their summary is either not there or it’s only one sentence long. That summary space has a 2,000-character limit. Use them all, or as close as you can!

Problem #3: No Recommendations
This one’s a little more problematic than the first two, because you actually have to get someone else to do the recommending. But, here’s the deal. People are actually scrolling down and looking for those recommendations! You don’t need many. Two or three will do nicely. So, do this, if you don’t already have some. Ethically get some of your closer business associates to fill out a LinkedIn recommendation for you. You can either write it for them, and they can copy and paste or they can do it all themselves!
The bottom line is this—you need a full and complete profile. LinkedIn even prompts you for this, so if you haven’t filled out everything, you should know better! Stop what you’re doing right now and get that LinkedIn profile in tip top shape. You’ll be glad you did!

A lot of LinkedIn users that I see online have great profiles, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions are often the following. They’re weak in endorsements, recommendations, and/or skills. Often all three. It’s like these three are the step children of the various fields that make up a complete LinkedIn profile. Here’s why you don’t want to ignore these all-important parts of your LinkedIn profile.
Look at it this way. When’s the last time you bought something that cost more than a few dollars (or pounds or yen, etc.)? Being an Internet savvy person, what did you do? If you’re like most folks, you Googled whatever it was and read about what other people thought, right? Well, people are doing essentially the same thing on LinkedIn. We call this social proof in the marketing business. People are highly influenced by what other people think. Being endorsed is one of the ways of providing this social proof to people who visit your profile on LinkedIn. Recommendations are another way of providing this proof.
Have you ever asked a colleague about the car they just bought, the new restaurant they tried, or their dentist or doctor? For important purchases, finding the right product or the right service provider is often done through recommendations. Recommendations carry a huge amount of influence, and you should be asking the people you’re connected with, at least the ones you know well, to recommend you.
Finally, listing your skills matters a lot! Seeing a large list of skills along with the number of people who’ve endorsed you for them is a great way to position yourself as a professional. Not only that, but the selection of skills helps viewers get to know you. Both recruiters and people who are potential clients are going to scan these skills to help them understand who you are and what you bring to the party!

Once you have your profile on LinkedIn all sorted out, you’ll want to use it to start getting business for yourself (or a job, if that’s what you want). There are several ways to do this, three of which I’m doing to talk about here. I’ll cover other methods in my other articles. So, check those out!
Tip #1: Understand Your Audience
Advertisers, copywriters, and salespeople of all types understand the necessity of really understanding who their target audience is. You need to too! You must understand what your target audience wants, why they’re there reading your profile, what their hot buttons are. Just like a professional sales letter writer, you need to get inside their proverbial heads and talk to them the way they’re already thinking. If you can do this, you’ll automatically mesh with your audience. They’ll not only like you, they’ll believe in you and frankly buy from you. If you alienate your audience, however, you might as well quit. This is that important!

Tip #2: Get Your Keywords Right
Keywords are the phrases that someone types into a search window in order to find web pages that match the keyword phrase. So, if you type in “restaurant Boise”, you should get a list of restaurants in Boise. Works the same way on LinkedIn. Someone might type in “accountant Dallas” in order to find accountants in Dallas, TX. I’m sure you can see how important having the right keywords in your profile are for people who want to do business on LinkedIn. So, couple of things. First off, you need to find what keywords people are using, or might use, to search for you on LinkedIn. You can ball park this by searching yourself and keeping track of what results you find. Second, you’ll need to use these keywords both in your headline and in your profile summary.

Tip #3: Make Use of LinkedIn’s Own Analytics
Although the amount of information you can get from LinkedIn varies according to whether you have a free or paid account, both types of accounts can glean a lot of useful information from your LinkedIn analytics page. You can see who’s searched for you. You can also get an albeit small list of keywords used. This isn’t a lot of information to go on, but it does help!