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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

What and What Not to Include in Your LinkedIn Profile

Every hear the phrase, “TMI” or “too much information”. Every now and then I’ll read someone’s profile where I feel like they’ve included too much. Now, frankly, it’s usually the reverse. Normally, if there’s a content problem with a profile, it’s that the user has not included enough information. Their profile summary isn’t long enough and complete enough. They haven’t included enough skills and endorsements. Or they don’t have enough recommendations. Or, given their age, their work history looks incomplete. But that’s what I usually see. Every now and then, however, I see the opposite.

When I see too much information on someone’s profile, it’s not the length that bothers me. After all a profile summary is limited to 2,000 characters including spaces. What I mean is what they’ve included shouldn’t be there. For instance, snide or defensive remarks about a former employer absolutely have no place on your LinkedIn profile! Okay, I get it. Your last boss or company you worked for were, how shall we say this, less than stellar. Call your sister, best friend or you mom up about it. Don’t spew that venom on social media. This is a sure way to never get hired for any but the lowest of the low jobs again.

Another “cardinal sin” I see vis-a-vis content in LinkedIn profiles has to do with changing careers. If you feel you were underutilized in your former career, you don’t need to say so. Just emphasize how your talents are being used in your new career and you should be fine!

The bottom line here is don’t be negative! It’s kind of like your grandmother might have said to you (I know mine did). If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it. Employers, and also potential clients, are allergic to negativity! It puts them on the defensive. Why spoil your chances at landing a new job or getting a new client just because you said a little too much on your LinkedIn profile?

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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

Is LinkedIn Facing Competition from Facebook?

On the surface, it seems that LinkedIn and Facebook are polar opposites. LinkedIn is a professional, work-based app that people use to network and find jobs. You don’t post your pictures from your latest vacation on LinkedIn, as you do on Facebook, and you don’t post information about job openings or even about information about your profession hoping to secure a job on Facebook. At least up until recently you didn’t.

Recently, Facebook has decided to encroach on LinkedIn’s territory by allowing businesses to post job openings and for job seekers to apply for jobs right from Facebook. At firsts, this capability was rolled out only in the US and Canada, but recently, Facebook opened this all up to over forty countries worldwide. Businesses and job seekers alike can use this part of Facebook in order to find applicants and jobs respectively that are local to the business.

It’s too early to tell if this new direction that Facebook is moving in will impact LinkedIn or not. But it is kind of like watching an old Japanese horror movie where two city sized monsters battle each other over Tokyo. LinkedIn has over half a billion users, while Facebook is four times that size. Either platform is used by a significant portion of the global population.

Having said that, there are some differences in how Facebook is rolling out their job capability and LinkedIn. One important difference is the following. The unity of currency on LinkedIn, if you will, is the individual. Although LinkedIn has business pages, the main interaction that’s occurring is between individual people. By contrast, Facebook’s focusing on the business itself. Another difference is that the businesses that Facebook seems to want to cater to are small businesses that will be hiring people who are already local to the business.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn are free, although there again we have a slight difference, because LinkedIn has several paid tiers, which Microsoft seems to be intent on pushing people into. Competition is never a bad thing, however, and it’s going to be interesting over the next few years to watch this all unfold.

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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

Three Ways To Boost Your Or Your Company’s LinkedIn Profile

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!

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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

My Secret Marketing Weapon—LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups used to be hot! Then they sort of fell by the wayside. I think what happened is everyone discovered the power of groups and jumped on the group bandwagon. Virtually overnight, every group I was in got hammered by people trying to hawk something in the group. Eventually the group died, was deleted, or just became a pitch fest. A lot of marketers, me included, quit using groups as one of the main engines of our marketing efforts. Well, I’ve got something important to say about LinkedIn groups.

It’s time to come back!

You can join up to 50 groups. Given that each group might have, oh let’s say, one thousand members, fifty groups puts you in front of fifty thousand people potentially! That’s a lot of potential clients, or look at it this way, that’s a lot of people with whom you might want to connect.

There’s a lot you can do with groups. I love content marketing on LinkedIn. One of the big things I do to get more people into my world and my client’s world’s is to create and publish quality content. I publish this on LinkedIn pulse. After my content is published, I’ll write a short blurb about it and get the link to the article and then go to relevant groups and post my blurb there. I can triple the number of people who look at an article of mine just by doing that.

Another thing about groups that I love is that they’re very specific. If I want to focus my energies on a specific sub-niche, let’s use public speakers as an example, I can search for relevant groups, ask to join them, then when I’m in and can start the process of reaching out to the members and asking them to accept my connect request. By doing this, I can build a following in a very narrowly defined niche! Not only that, but I’m setting myself up to market to that niche through the group itself!

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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

Four Ways to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Excellent!

Your LinkedIn profile is the central core of any LinkedIn marketing strategy. LinkedIn, after all, is really not much more than a massive Chamber of Commerce meeting online. And, you can look at your profile as a combination of your five-minute elevator speech and your business card all rolled into one. Get your profile right, and you’re in business. Get it wrong, and you might as well take your ball and go home. In this article, I’d like to talk about four things you can do to make sure you have an exciting and dynamic LinkedIn profile.
One: Get a professional head shot. No, you don’t need a glamour shot like an actor needs. But you do need a really nice, professional looking head shot. If you’re serious about marketing yourself, either for a job or for business, on LinkedIn, your profile picture is worth investing a little money in.
Two: Sub part recommendations are almost as bad as bad recommendations. You get to choose whether to have a recommendation included in your profile. What I often see, though, is people who accept low quality recommendations, probably thinking a ho hum recommendation is better than nothing at all. No, it’s not! Yes, you need recommendations, but you don’t need limp, dishwater recommendations. You want your recommendations to be specific and exciting. How to get those? Well, if you know the person who wrote your recommendation, just ask them if they’d consider punching it up some with more specificity.
Three: Writing your profile summary in third person. This screams “dull, dull, dull!” It’s just weird to read someone’s profile summary in third person. It’s as if someone else wrote it, but we all know that the profile summary is written by the person whose face is on the account! Also, remember this. LinkedIn is a networking platform. What would you think if you want to a BNI meeting and someone started telling you about themselves but was talking in third person. He did this. She did that. Etc. Weird!
Four: You should know better than to do the following, but just in case—don’t leak out proprietary information about your former company! Just don’t do it. If you want to make something public, an example of your work, a case study, etc., run that by your former employer and get their okay first. You’ll save yourself at least a nasty phone call or maybe even more grief!

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LinkedIn LinkedIn Marketing Social Media Marketing

Three Mistakes You’re Making With Your LinkedIn Profile

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!

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Covid 19 LinkedIn LinkedIn ideas for engaging with your ideal client LinkedIn lead generation

LinkedIn lead generation in a COVID-19 world.

(Updated Sept 20th 2020)

It’s no secret that we are facing unprecedented times. Both the world and economy are seeing one of the greatest challenges we have ever seen. 

When I first wrote this article back in late February early March, everybody was basically freaking out about their business. Since then let’s face it a lot has happened. Cerb helped many Canadians, and relief packages were rolled out in the USA also.

Now we are in September almost October, and the question is where do I go from here?
In my opinion it is pretty simple, Go and Create your business to be almost all online.

Only if you actually need to be there in person, let’s face it,  most businesses really don’t have to do everything in person,  only a few do. Even restaurants have put almost their whole business online,  with take out and pick up. Online shopping has skyrocketed for everybody in the world. So really ask yourself.  Do I have to be physically present for what I do with my clients or can I do a lot of it on Zoom and only a little bit in person?

And lastly, am I using all of the tools, (especially LinkedIn) if you are in the B2B space primarily, to the fullest advantage I can?

I’m getting a ton of questions from my clients and potential clients asking us about our services?

  • Is it inappropriate to run outreach right now?

  • Should I keep doing outreach?

  • Should I adjust my messaging or strategy?

With everything that’s happening right now it’s important to start thinking out of the box and being more strategic.

For our clients that do only in person services it’s time to temporarily put on the brakes and to stop all outreach.

For instance people in the catering or gym membership business, we’re putting a temporary stop and all campaigns.

We also have to look at areas that are most affected by COVID-19.

So here is our first decision framework for our clients:

If your product or service would encourage activities that are in conflict with government containment recommendations, stop outreach now.

This is the one place where there is an immediate red light.

Another example of this would be any outreach campaign that is inviting people to live events.

Yellow Light: When to pause outreach and adjust messaging

Industries heavily affected by COVID-19

What do you do about customers with businesses that (1) do not encourage human contact, but (2) will be largely impacted by COVID-19.

Examples of this could be companies who are selling into the event industry, healthcare industry, transportation industry, retail, etc. While COVID-19 will impact all industries, there are some it will affect more directly than most.

In these situations, it may be more powerful than ever to reach out as these companies are in dire need. But, your messaging and approach will need to be altered for the new climate. If you reach out in a “business as normal” manner to these industries, your message will probably fall on deaf ears.

So here is our second framework:

If the industry you are targeting will be directly impacted by COVID-19, then pause your campaign for 1-2 weeks while the situation develops, and strategize a new message and approach.

Consider this bucket a yellow light area. Slow down, regroup, but don’t stop. I think it’s a real mistake to totally stop marketing for your company. With the drastic measure of closing of schools, and certain businesses I’m hoping that by May 2020 the virus will kind of burn itself out, and things may start to return back to normal again.  So if you don’t do any marketing for almost 2 months, and then you resume your marketing, but not until May or June,your company is going to be in big trouble.

Green Light: When to continue outreach as is

Industries that will not be directly impacted

the last group are looking at is industries that are not directly impacted by COVID-19. While the entire economy will be impacted, many industries will not see direct effects. Examples of these industries are B2B tech, consulting, professional services, agencies, digital marketing, recruiting, etc.

While all businesses will feel the effects of COVID-19, the industries that are not directly impacted are much safer to continue outreach to.

We are adjusting the messaging to address the economic troubles, but aim to steer away from outreach about COVID-19 directly.

So our third framework:

If the industry you are targeting is not directly affected, then continue outreach as is or adjust messaging to address the disruption in the economy.

Why you shouldn’t stop prospecting to yellow light and green light industries

It’s tempting to cut sales and marketing budgets when times get tough. It creates an immediate savings of cash. Yet, the problem with sales and marketing is that you don’t see the impacts of your efforts for 90-180 days.

So, if you stop prospecting now, you will feel the impact of that on your business in 3-6 months from now. If you combine a lack of prospecting with a down economy, you are setting yourself up for an even larger potential disaster in your business.

Sales and leads are what drive companies and during these hard economic times, you need them now more than ever.

Remote prospecting channels like LinkedIn, email, and phone provide no risk to the spread of COVID-19 so these channels are more important than ever.

Times are tough… so continue your marketing and lead generation prospecting on LinkedIn, the smart companies that do will survive, the ones that are driven by fear and panic will not.

We would love to help you survive these tough economic times please reach out to us. 

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Calgary LinkedIn Workshop LinkedIn

Calgary LinkedIn Workshop-from Mystery to Mastery

LinkedIn from Mystery to Mastery

Early Bird Discount code – 25Off

Is LinkedIn Still a Mystery to You?

This workshop will take you from “Mystery” to “Mastery”!

The professional world has finally realized the importance of LinkedIn as a business platform that serves multiple objectives. Besides being a central hub for professional branding, networking and career management, LinkedIn
is now becoming a growing source of news, knowledge and opportunity for professionals worldwide. Businesses now call on employees to participate on LinkedIn, not only for social recruiting but also for social selling, social media marketing and employee advocacy.

However, most companies don’t understand how to leverage LinkedIn as a phenomenal source of marketing and lead generation.

Allan Fine and Richelle Wiseman, are experienced speakers and between them,  they  have  trained hundreds of companies on LinkedIn for business. Join them to spend a day to learn about this amazing B2B social media platform, where they will reveal amazing tips and tricks they have learned.

Our goal with this live workshop is to provide useful information that is just as relevant for employees getting trained on LinkedIn as it is for professionals, executives and business owners trying to derive more value from their LinkedIn profiles. We will give you a solid understanding of how to market your company effectively with your profile and how lead generation on LinkedIn works.

Coffee breaks and a Full Lunch are included!

Who is this workshop for?

* You’re on LinkedIn, but you don’t know how to use it properly.
* You’ve heard about lead generation and marketing on LinkedIn but you have no idea how that works.
* You know having an amazing profile on LinkedIn is very important, but you don’t know exactly what that means or how to create one.

* You are a professional who wants to use LinkedIn to expand your networks and maximize your connections to create lead generation opportunities.
* LinkedIn beginners and more experienced users will benefit from this training. LinkedIn has changed its features and we can provide you with what the updates mean for new opportunities on the platform.

What should I bring into the event?

We will provide a workshop workbook for the day. Please bring your laptop or tablet to the event as we will be working on your LinkedIn profile live.

Is it ok if the name on my ticket or registration doesn’t match the person who attends?

Yes as long as you inform us of this information beforehand, so we can match registration with the person who attends.

 Start 2020 with LinkedIn Mastery and Maximize LinkedIn for your business!

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LinkedIn LinkedIn ideas for engaging with your ideal client

Here is your LinkedIn Profile PDF (Updated for Covid 19)

Download your

LIL-LinkedIn-Profile-UPDATE-Revised for 2020 and Covid 19

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LinkedIn LinkedIn ideas for engaging with your ideal client LinkedIn lead generation LinkedIn Marketing

How to add captions to your LinkedIn videos.

Friday Fun Fact:

New Features to Get More From Posting: Video Captions, Share Articles Quotes, and See Translations Adding video captions to give your videos more context.

There are often times when your community members and first connections aren’t able to watch your video with the sound on. So for these moments, you now have the option to add closed captioning to your videos when posting from desktop.

Here is a tool I found to add captions to your videos, https://www.kapwing.com/
My recommendation is if you have a video that is over 500 MB, upload it to YouTube first, then download it again with YouTube downloader. YouTube compresses the video and keeps the quality pretty much the same.

You can now add closed captioning when sharing a video on LinkedIn from the desktop experience. You’ll need to have an associated SRT (SubRip Subtitle) file attached to the video before it can be posted.

Note: Closed captioning can be added to member and LinkedIn Page posts.

To add closed captions once you have created the SRT file.
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/93997?query=video%20captions  

 

Are you looking for some great LinkedIn training live?

We are putting on a workshop in Calgary Alberta Canada on January 31 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/events/linkedinmastery-lunchincluded
Hope to see you there!

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