Online Business Networker LinkedIn Secrets Blog » Marketing

Read Your LinkedIn Profile Again

Flyn — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:14:44 +0000

But this time read it as if you were meeting this person for the first time. Assume you are interested in this area of expertise.

The other day, one of my connections sent me a note re the updating of his profile. I’d like to share with you my comments and some additional annotations as they are very relevant to most of the profiles on LinkedIn.

Your profile is a very nice and clean version of the typical business profile. My recommendation would be a different approach.

First: Re write your profile with the visitor in mind as opposed to writing it about yourself. Others are not interested in you UNTIL they see what value you can provide. Your profile discusses what you do and have done and doesn’t answer the reader’s question — “What’s in it for me?”

The majority of LinkedIn profiles are written about the writer, instead of what the writer can produce.

Second: Your profile doesn’t ask or even encourage the reader to engage you; it simply states facts about who you believe yourself to be. You don’t even ask the reader to connect up with you on LinkedIn.

Remember the old saying “You don’t get what you don’t ask for.” If you doubt this ask anyone who has spent some time selling for a living.

As an aside to this, you don’t offer the reader any value — you don’t improve his/her current condition by providing something that would be useful to them. This is obviously a way to engage those who read your profile as well.

Third: You have no offer or reason for the reader to visit your website other than what you say about yourself — which I may suggest is not taken very seriously by the reader UNTIL they see the value you’ll provide them

Your profile is an advertisement or marketing piece. Consider the following job of a headline as described by Eugene M. Schwartz in his remarkable book “Breakthrough Advertising:” I quote “Your headline has only one job–to stop your prospect and compel him to read the second sentence of your ad.”

Do you find the first sentences in your profile compelling?

From Flyn

I am running my very popular and loved free seminar: Power Networking Secrets for LinkedIn. Over 200 people have attended this class and they loved it. You’ll learn six key things that will help you succeed on LinkedIn. For information go to: Power Networking Secrets for LinkedIn

How to Create a Value Item for Your LinkedIn Connections

Flyn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:28:05 +0000

If you are going to be successful in developing valued relationships and driving people to your business via LinkedIn you really need to have a value item to give away.

Your value item can be a report, and article, or even a tool. On my sales site I have a variety of quizzes and tools visitors can use. These things make great enticements for getting people to the site and they provide value to others and help me build relationships.

You need to do the same thing.

The simplest value you can create is to tell people how to make the decision they would be making in engaging you. How do you pick the right person? How do you know what you should buy? How can you determine what to expect from your effort? These are all questions that concern the buyer of your goods or services and offering answers will be helpful to prospects.

An easy way to create a wanted and needed value item.

One way to do this is to avail yourself of the LinkedIn Question and Answer forum. If you go into the forum and post the following type of question you can probably learn a lot about what people would like.

Question

I need your help and advice on producing a free report that will have value?

Question Detail

IMPORTANT NOTE: I will not call or contact anyone that responds to this question, except to get you a copy of the completed report when it’s done. This question is not about finding prospects for my business. It’s about creating something of value I can pass on to others.

My Question

I’m a Financial Planner and I want to create a free report that would be valuable to the maximum number of people. My question to you is, what kind of information would be the most valuable? What would you like to know about your finances that would help you succeed in achieving your goals. [You could list a couple of subjects, like surviving tough times]

This is an example of how this might be done. You have to be very careful not to sound like you’re prospecting, because you’re not, or you won’t get any help. That is the reason for my first paragraph in the detail part of the question – I want to completely dispel any notion that I am going to use this to prospect people.

You may not get a lot of answers but you may get some great ideas as to what people would like. And when you deliver the report, who knows you might even get a client to boot.

An FYI from Flyn

I just finish running my first webinar 6 Things you need to know to succeed on LinkedIn and everyone loved it. A lot of people either missed part or all of the class and have asked me if they could get a copy. I am not going to release this to the public as a video yet, but I am running the class again next week. For info go to:

http://www.onlinebusinessnetworker.net/webinar/2/

A Marketing Formula for LinkedIn and Other Social Media

Flyn — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:31:26 +0000

An unusual post

This post is a bit unusual as it is the first post that on the surface may seem to not really be about LinkedIn. I would submit to you that in fact this has everything to do with LinkedIn and all of your marketing efforts via networking.

The skills of networking are intertwined with other skills such as communication, sales, negotiation, marketing, and many others. To be a real master of networking you must also study these other diciplines.

Background

In the post I’m going to share a marketing formula that is probably as old as marketing. The principles of this formula were derived early in the history of marketing. Much of the basis for this formula was probably given to us by one of the founders of modern marketing Claude C. Hopkins author of the wonderful book “My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising.”

I would also like to give credit for this material to another book called Monopolize Your Marketplace by Richard Harshaw. It is his reconstruction of these principles that originally brought this information to me. Both books are must reading for anyone in marketing and sales – and since networking is about selling in a refined way, I would say networkers should read them as well. Not to mention that most networkers are business people and this data is crucial to business success.

Marketing for Networking Success

So let’s get to it. Here in simple terms is the marketing formula.

Step One: Interrupt

In order to sell one’s product or service on first must be seen or observed. The first step in the formula is the step of getting attention. On LinkedIn and other social media resources this occurs when you demonstrate your expertise and potential as an invaluable resource.

In a normal ad you would try to use one of the following areas to get attention: something familiar, something unusual abnormal or strange, or something threatening.

By being invaluable and supplying people with great data on LinkedIn you start to make yourself “unusual.”

Step Two: Engage

In the engage step you tell people what you are going to tell or give them that will be helpful or useful in making the decision at hand. In other words you hook them on the fact you have the information they want.

Step Three: Educate

In step three you give them the information that you promised in the “Engagement” step. You give them the great information they were looking for.

Step Four: Offer

This is the one step almost everyone leaves out. Look at 100 small business web pages and you will be lucky to find anyone who takes this step.

In order to bring in a new prospect you must start by making an offer that will be valuable to the common person that would have interest in your product or service. That offer must be of great value and be of low risk. In other words, you want lots of value and very little risk on the part of the prospect so that he or she is willing to accept.

Offing someone a free consultation though valuable is much higher risk as the prospect has to make a commitment to meet with you and feels that creates an obligation. Offering a free report in exchange for and email address and a name is a much lower risk offer that gets the prospect engaged.

Summary

I have not gone into great detail as this subject deserves much more investigation and study than the space here will provide. I suggest that you read the above books and learn these principles.

Then use them in all of your communication on LinkedIn and in the materials that you are using to attract others to your product or service such as your profile, your resume, your website, and you company collateral.

This is a very powerful formula that works and it can be applied to networking with great success.