BONUS: Maximizing Your LinkedIn Profile for Sales Success and Becoming a Top Voice in Your Niche

Unlock the full potential of your LinkedIn profile with our step-by-step guide to transforming it into a sales magnet. Discover how to craft a cover image and headline that not only catch the eye but also convey your unique value proposition, drawing in potential clients like bees to honey. We walk you through the importance of a strategic featured section, the clever incorporation of profile links for visibility, and the use of storytelling within your 'About' section to captivate and connect with your audience. Not to be overlooked, we also illuminate the often-missed opportunities within the services section and explain how to employ keywords for maximum searchability. In short, we're handing you a master class on making every part of your LinkedIn speak directly to your ideal customer's needs.

But it's not all about profile polish; becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice in your niche requires insider strategies and genuine engagement. We share these coveted secrets, including leveraging LinkedIn collections and collaborative articles to skyrocket your visibility. Get the lowdown on creating posts that resonate deeply with your audience, utilizing techniques from storytelling to compelling questions that encourage interactions. Furthermore, we delve into the art of building relationships on LinkedIn—because when it comes to business development, it's about wooing, not pursuing. Join us to learn how to establish and nurture connections that can evolve into long-term partnerships and seal more deals with authenticity and finesse.

P.S. If you want me to give you a personal profile LinkedIn makeover, email me at hello@sarahnoelblock.com. I'm only opening ten makeovers at $995, so if you're interested, grab it now!

Website: https://www.sarahnoelblock.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnoelblock/
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Take care of LinkedIn, so I think that's worth the effect. You're all hanging out in the same place and you just make conversation with people and if it leads to a sale, woohoo. If it doesn't, at least you're a medical person. Hey friends, did that sound weird Because I accidentally had my mic pushed away, but when I started talking I have not pre-planned any of this episode, but I keep getting questions about how to leverage LinkedIn to grow your sales. So I'm going to dig into it. I'm going to go into how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, how to get a top voice, what features you should be trying and how to do biz dev on LinkedIn without being a little creepster. All right, I'm going to walk you through my profile and how you should really structure your LinkedIn profile. So it starts with the cover image. You might not have known that, but it's true. Start with your cover image and you need a great strap line on there. So right now, mine says biz dev meets content marketing. Did we just become best friends Because my content led marketing strategies into great business development, into the process? Now for you, you'll want to include either. You have two choices you have your value proposition or whatever your lead magnet is in that moment. So I change mine all the time. Mine is either a value proposition that I have, and when I'm creating a marketing or I'm sorry, when I'm creating a messaging strategy, I write down tons of these different little sound by value propositions that you can use. You can use on as your strap line or as your LinkedIn headline. But yeah, so you could do that. Or you could do your lead magnet. If I'm hosting an event, if I'm facilitating a workshop, I'm hosting a webinar, if I have a quiz going out, I'll have that as my strap line, promoting that, because I want people to join my email list.

Speaker 1: 2:13

All right, next up is your headline. So your headline should have a few different elements in it. You want to include what you do. You want to include who you serve, how you serve them and the problem that you solve. So mine is currently turn internal experts into content creators. Prospects go from ice cold to fire. With content led marketing, I have a little rocket emoji visibility and authority, strategy systems and execution serving B2Bs with tiny teams, and then top 10% pod tiny marketing. That's this one. What are you listening to right now? So basically, I am going through and explaining who I work with, how I work with them. I am creating content led marketing strategies, and I'm using your internal stakeholders, the experts within your company, to do the content creation. And this really does skyrocket your visibility and authority, because it's now no longer a company saying these things about them, it's a whole team of people that are marketing for you All right.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Next up, you want to go into your featured section. So when you have a featured section, you want to pick things that you want them to go to. So when featured just became a thing, I would pin my most popular posts. Don't do that. Use this for your calls to action. So I have my quiz, so you can do a quiz to find your hidden marketing potential. I have a book of fit calls so people will get on there. And then I have my free community. Those are my three first ones, and people only see the first three, so those are the ones that matter.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Let's actually hop forward a little bit, because I want to go back to the link that you get on your profile, and this is a little thing that not a lot of people know. So you have the option to do a custom link or you could do one of the standard ones, and people always think I should do custom for sure, because then I can use whatever words I want. But if you choose the button instead of the custom link, then it'll show up. Your link will show up on every single post that you have. So if you have it the other way, switch it to the button now, all right.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Scrolling down to about About is not about you, it's about your customer. So in about sections, I like to write stories, stories about transformations I've created for my customers. So starting with a story, and then dig into how you made that story happen, how you made that transformation happen, and then give a call to action. So for me it's either send a DM or email me, and I have my email in there. Make sure to include your top skills too, so it's easy to find you. These are all keywords. I think all social media platforms are basically like Google, their search engines, so you want to make sure all of the right keywords are in there. Next up in your profile is the services section. So I didn't always know this, but you will. Now you can turn services on or off, and by default it's turned off. So make sure that if you are a service provider, that you have it turned on so people can see what services you sell. And next up is experience. In the experience section you want to continue the story from about. So, in your little area where it says your job title and your company, continue the story.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Talk about how you ended up opening that business or how you ended up doing the thing that you do, but tell it in a story like mine starts. I remember sitting in my cubicle feeling overwhelmed. I had seven company presidents coming to me with their individual goals, which was great, except I was the marketing department Me alone. So it takes people on a journey and they can understand. I understand their perspective and how hard it can be to be a one person marketing department. Oftentimes I'm working with companies with a zero person marketing department. It's hard. So I want people to understand that and to go through the journey with me of how I created the framework that I get people, that I walk companies through now to help them Build the best marketing that they can in the most streamlined possible way. Ok, so that is that for your profile, the most important pieces of it. There's recommendations, of course, ask for recommendations and their skills, which isn't as important as it used to be. Those are the big things, the important things.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Now we're going to talk about how you get that top voice badge on your profile. I have gotten so many messages asking how I got that top voice. So I'm a top content strategy voice and I can actually tell you because LinkedIn tells me but I'm a top 2% content strategy voice. So how do you get that? So what you want to do is choose one category that you want to get that top voice in and follow them on the on their LinkedIn page. So it would be like brand messaging category or, sorry, brand messaging collection, content strategy collection, podcast collection it's called a collection on LinkedIn, but you need to go to that and then go to the article section and add your perspective into the collaborative articles. The more you do you need to do at least five the more likely you are to get a top voice, and the most engaged posts are the people who get the top voice. So the reason I know I have the top 2% is because in the content strategy category my perspectives that I add to the collaborative articles are liked in the majority of the articles and then LinkedIn is like okay, you're at top 2% in digital marketing, you're top 18%. You need to get to the top 5% to get a top voice. So, again, how you do that is you go to the collections under the category that you want your top voice in and add your perspective to the collaborative articles and hope, pray or beg for engagement on your perspectives and that will get you the badge.

Speaker 1: 9:36

And the next up is the content that you create. So your LinkedIn posts. There is 100% a framework that works on LinkedIn. We like stories, we like a lot of white space. Make sure you're not doing big, chunky paragraphs and ask questions in there, because oftentimes people go to those posts, scan for a question they can respond to and comment. So you're going to get more engagement when you have a clear question or ask on the post. So my general perspective on LinkedIn content is I post once a day, five times a week, and I always have a lot of space. So it's one sentence space, one sentence space. This does better on LinkedIn and make sure that you're telling a story. So start off with something that is engaging, going to hook people in at the very beginning, teach them the thing and then at the end, ask a question so people know how to engage with your post.

Speaker 1: 10:50

If you are going to do those carousel posts, make sure that you download your carousel as a PDF. I see this mistake over and over. People are downloading their carousels as PNGs and then it shows up on LinkedIn in these janky little squares. But what you want to do is download them as a PDF and add them as a document and then they'll show up as the carousels that you see everybody else have. So that mistake that you're making it is solved now.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Now you don't have to post as much as me, but I would recommend posting at least once a week. That is a good cadence and make sure that you're engaging more than you're posting. So I set aside at least 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon to engage with people. I have my favorites, like people who are always posting on mine. I post on theirs, so I'm engaging with them. People who just create amazing content that I'm interested in and I'll engage there. But if you're going to go really strategic with it, find people who are connected to the companies that you want to work with and engage with them so that you're showing up in the feeds of the people who can hire you. So an easy way to do this is to create a list of your dream clients, dream companies you want to work with, and then look them up on LinkedIn, start following them. Ring the bell of anybody that you think that might be important to connect with because you'll want to comment on their stuff. But also look and see who you know that's already connected to those people and ring their bell too. And if you don't know what I mean by ring their bell, at the top of LinkedIn profiles there's a little bell and you can get notifications when people post. So ring the bell of those people so you can comment on their posts to make sure that the people in your dream client list are seeing your posts.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Okay, the last thing I'm going to talk about today about LinkedIn is how to do business development on LinkedIn without being a little creeper. Picture LinkedIn like a networking event. You're all hanging out in the same place and you just make conversation with people, and if it leads to a sale, woohoo. If it doesn't, at least you're a medical person. That's how I think of LinkedIn. I'm hanging out at my favorite not working group, so what I do is anytime I attend a virtual event, I head straight to that chat and I start encouraging people to put in their LinkedIn profiles. I'm like, hey, everybody, let's follow each other on LinkedIn and keep this party going. Drop your link right here and I'll follow everyone. And then I'll message them once we've connected and see if they wanna hop on a connection call, see how we can help each other out. The real point is that you're not trying to sell to anybody, you're just trying to build relationships. That's what business development is all about. So that is one way that I do BizDev. I attend virtual events and then I bring that conversation to LinkedIn where I take it to the next step and ask for connection calls.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Next up is looking at your recently viewed the profile. Well, I said that so awkwardly here. What I actually mean is your profile views, the people who have viewed your profile. I look there and I scan through to see if there's anybody who makes sense to connect with. Maybe they work with the same sort of customer as me. We have mirror customers. Maybe they'd be really cool to have on my podcast. Or maybe I know somebody who'd be amazing to introduce them to because they'd work really well together. So I'll scan through my profile views and look for those interesting ones that I think that I can add value to them, and I'll connect with them and see if they wanna hop on a connection call.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Last, the last thing that I do is I'll scroll through the job listings and anything that has something that's like a robust job offer that could be broken up into littler pieces I'll go through and anything that has content, marketing, content strategy I'll connect with those companies because I know they need that. They've raised their hand. That is a buying trigger thing. What's a better way to say that that is an intent, a buyer's intent? That's a better way. If I've ever seen one. They're literally posting that they need it. So that is a great place to start, too for a biz dev. Look at those companies that need the thing that you do and start connecting with them and seeing if you can build a relationship with them, because, while they might think a marketing manager can do all of the things, when they actually get hired and onboarded, realistically they're gonna need some support. So that's the last thing. There's so many more things to do.

Speaker 1: 16:31

I could probably talk for hours and hours about LinkedIn. I love it, but those are my top tips right off the bat. I've been getting this question a ton and I thought I might as well create a bonus episode about it so I can help all the peoples. So if that intrigued you, I just put up an offer just for the coaching group. On part of it was like a special deal, but I'm gonna say it here too. So if you are interested in getting a LinkedIn profile makeover where I rewrite your entire LinkedIn profile, do your strap line for your cover image and give you content prompts so you know exactly what to write about, then shoot me an email, email me at hello at sarahnowallblockcom, or DM me on LinkedIn and we can get started.

Speaker 1: 17:31

I'm gonna offer that for a very short time. So as soon as you listen to this, you should probably do that, because maybe I won't be doing it next week, but I really. I have that often as a bonus offer when people purchase bigger packages and I love it. It's one of my favorite things to do is to give LinkedIn makeovers, so I thought, why not? I wanna have a little fun and do some LinkedIn and makeovers this week. All right, I hope you enjoyed this. If you did hit like subscribe, rate, review. Hit that share button. Share with a friend and let them know that tiny marketing exists. And if you are a B2B service business with a tiny team, this is the place you gotta be. You gotta show up here. All right, I will see you next time. Enjoy this bonus episode.