5 Tips to Improve Your First Impression on LinkedIn

Five Ways to Improve Your First Impression using LinkedIn

Welcome back. This episode is Five Ways to Improve Your First Impression using LinkedIn. So I hope you guys are on LinkedIn. It is a powerful network. I did some analysis and a company called Hootsuite. You can find, find it on hootsuite.com published some statistics about LinkedIn in 2023.

There are some 875 million members on it.

 half of those members use LinkedIn at least once per month.

And marketing teams say that when they reach out to people, their conversion rate is two times higher on LinkedIn and

 Four out of five people claim on LinkedIn to be driving business decisions.

 If you want to influence decision makers, if you want to grow your sales career, then LinkedIn is a very, very powerful medium. I was at a Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Charlotte last week, and after the meeting I got a bunch of business cards and I remember meeting quite a few people.

 What I did when I got home was I go onto LinkedIn  and look at those people and what their business is all about.  It helps me understand some of their challenges, some of their needs, where they sit.

so I use LinkedIn in two ways.

Number one, to convey a first impression for me, but also it's a very powerful research tool to go and look at people.

 You really, really do need in this day and age to be the master of your first impression. The first impression used to be when you would shake hands and have eye contact with people. But today people are searching you on LinkedIn. Every time I have a new meeting, the first thing I do is I go onto LinkedIn to try and find out about that person and what they're into.

 If you don't create the impression somebody else will. And your first impression, your title, everything is Google searched. When people Google your name, they'll see your LinkedIn profile  and some of the information on your site.

 I'm gonna give you five ways in which you can make your profile more powerful.

 One little exercise I'd like you to do is LinkedIn have something they call the social selling index.

If you go to search for LinkedIn Social Selling Index, it will give you your own personal score based on how your profile is filled out, how clear it is, how well connected you are, how you engage with your audience, and it'll give you a score out of a hundred.

Mine is somewhere in the 80 range and I rank in the top 1% for people in my profession. So I've worked a little bit with my social selling index.

What I want you to do before you do anything, get your score, and then I'm gonna give you these five tips. Make these five amendments to your LinkedIn profile and check

your score after and it will give us an acid test of whether these tips worked for you or not.

Alright,

let's get going. The first thing,  you must have a professional headshot. Not something you've cut out of, one of your Facebook posts with people you know around you patting you on the shoulder.

Nice professional headshot. Depending on your industry, you may want to have a polo shirt on.  my profile, I'll put a tie on because I want to engage with  business owners. be smiling. Everybody wants to feel the warmth of a smile. You want people to know that they can approach you and it will be warm.

 So get that professional headshot done.

 Within the headshot itself, there's a couple of things you can do to finesse that .

If you've got a hard to pronounce name, you can actually record your name, so you'll see in the editing portion of LinkedIn, there's a place to be able to record a little audio so people can click on the audio sign next to your name and you can either pronounce your name correctly use it as a short commercial. Hey. This is Mick Holly. This is what I do. If you want to connect with me, I'd be delighted to chat with you.

 The other thing that you can do is record a video, so you'll see on some people's profiles, it's got a halo around the image. And when you click on the image, it plays a video. So you can do a little video about who you are and what you serve to be able to really create an intimate first experience with people who are looking at your profile.

The second opportunity to really make an impact is behind your headshot. On your LinkedIn page is the backdrop. It's the background behind you and a lot of people just leave that blank.

But you can put images and words behind that that exemplify what you do and what you stand for. You could put success statements or positioning statements or images of you in action doing your job. You can easily do this.  I generally use an application called Canva, C A N V A, canva.com.

Choose LinkedIn template and you can edit your own template and paste that into the backdrop of your LinkedIn profile.

Once again, it pops out, it's distinctive and it makes a big, big difference.

The third is Underneath your name is the headline. Now, a lot of people will put their title on the headline, but what I want you to think about is this is your business card.

This is your calling card. You want to tell people how you can help them who, who your audience is and what you can do for them. So for example when I was targeting, um flooring companies and helping them improve their business, my, I used a title. I help flooring company owners increase sales, improve profits, and generate predictable cash flow.

 if you are looking at that and you are a flooring company owner, you're thinking, that's, , that's really impressive that, that those exactly are the kind of challenges that I'm dealing with.

When I'm dealing with large corporate companies, I drive large corporate change programs.

I say I help business  executives drive breakthrough improvements via widespread and profound behavior change.

I'm talking to executives, I'm talking to owners. I'm driving change, and I'm doing that through changing behaviors. Over time. So that message can be, very powerful in engaging with people.

That title does come up in your Google search. So think about who is it you want to serve and what you offering that audience. Make it like a little mini conversional, a one or two sentence statement of what you do. You've actually got 220 characters use them well to be able to do that.

The fourth thing that you can do is LinkedIn will tell people how many followers and connections that you have.  Obviously, the more connections they have, you feel they have greater level of influence, the more followers that they have, you think, ah, everybody else is interested in what this person's saying I should connect and listen to.

once you get to 500 connections, LinkedIn will tell you it's 500 plus.

Less than that., It'll give you the exact amount. So if you've got 23 connections on LinkedIn and I'm looking at that, I'm thinking , you're probably relatively new or you're not well connected, or you don't have a lot of influence.

I would encourage you to get your connections up. It's relatively easy to get up to 500 connections. And then you know your followers will come based upon how you engage with your audience and whether you are posting.

Tip number five, you have an about section, and here you can talk about what it is that you do in a little bit more details. You want it to be a little bit more intriguing.

Set out the three or four problems that you are very good at solving for your clients and customers. Typically, what I will do is I'll, I'll look at the headline, I'll look at the title, and then I'll look at the, the about section to see what they're saying. And it will give you an insight into their methodology, the kind of problems that they solve.

 If I've got a big challenge and I'm looking at your list of problems you solve, I've got that problem , I should talk to that person on LinkedIn.

So really five very simple things that you can do because your first impression is going to. Lots of people.

 In summary number one, professional headshot.

Number two, do a little bit of creative artwork on your backdrop.

Number three, make your headline, not your title, but who is your audience and how do you serve them?

Number four is get the number of connections up so your reach increases and your level of influence is seen to be higher.

And fifthly, write a few words about your story in your about section, how you can help your prospects improve.

 Go and do those things and I'll be interested in once you've done that, check out your social selling index again, cuz it will change. And I look forward to hearing about your success stories.

We'll see you next time him.

Great.