Dominating LinkedIn – How To Turn Your LinkedIn Profile Into A Lead Generation Machine

As of last month, LinkedIn reached the 259 million mark as far as users on the site. Primarily a business networking and social media site, LinkedIn has started to dominate the social media space, especially for business owners, salespeople, and job seekers. With 40% of the users checking in daily, LinkedIn can no longer be ignored when it comes to using it as a tool to grow your business. In my experience as a business coach though, I’ve noticed that most people don’t understand how to leverage LinkedIn to grow their business or increase their sales. Here are a couple of key things that you need to do if you want to dominate LinkedIn and turn it into a lead generation machine for your business:

Key #1 – Drive Pre-Qualified Traffic To Your Profile Page

The first key to dominating LinkedIn is that you have to drive pre-qualified traffic to your page. You can do this easily by optimizing your profile, so that the people and prospects that you want to find you can do so easily. Here’s how:

Optimize Your Headline

Your headline is the most important part of your profile. It should include who you help, as well as your website address. The important thing here is to make sure that you are using the keywords that someone would be using to search for you. Additionally, having a high quality, professional headshot is imperative. People are visual, and having a professional photo of yourself will help to drive more clicks to your profile.

Coach’s Tip – If you have any articles, interviews, or quotes in the news media, a great thing to do is to put the media symbols under your picture. This will set you apart from other people, and give you instant credibility.

Effectively Use Keywords

You want to use keywords in your title, summary, experience and other sections of your profile. The more relevant keywords you have in your profile, the higher you will rank when someone searches those terms. So, if you want to be found, keywords are a must!

Coach’s Tip – A little known great place to do this is in the Interests section, where you can simply list out the keywords that will help people find you when they are doing a search.

Leverage Your Summary

Most people use the summary section to summarize their work experience. Most people won’t even read this section, because they really don’t care to. What they care about is how you can help them. So, you want to leverage the summary section by listing out your target clients or customers, briefly explain the problem that you solve, and then give them a call to action, so that you can drive them to your website or another location where they can learn more about you. Additionally, you should do the same thing in the experience section of your profile.

Coach’s Tip – If you would like an example of how to do this, you can check out my profile here.

Key #2 – Effectively Use Calls To Action

If you want to create leads for your business, then you need to drive traffic from your LinkedIn profile to your website, another social media site, or a lead page where you can collect their e-mail address and contact information. The best way to do this is to leverage your summary section and make it about the prospects and clients you are trying to attract. State the problem(s) that they have, how you solve them, and then use a simple call to action to drive them where you want them to go.

Coach’s Tip – If you would like an example of how to do this, you can check out my profile here.

Key #3 – Market Yourself

The key to leveraging LinkedIn is the fact that when someone does a search, Linked In will search 3 deep into their network. So, the more people you are connected to, the deeper your network is, and the easier it is for people to find you. Here are a couple of ways to take advantage of this:

View Other Peoples’ Profiles

LinkedIn will show you the most recent people that have viewed your profile. Most of the time when someone sees this, they will click on the people that have viewed them, to see who they are. This is a great way to drive more traffic to your profile.

Identify and Reach Out to Your Key Target Customers

Do a search on the types of clients you want to attract, and then invite them to connect with you. Once they are connected to you, then they will receive your posts and updates. Once connected, they are basically in your marketing funnel. This is especially effective when you are connecting with people that have a large number of connections, as it builds depth to your network.

Coach’s Tip – When reaching out to someone to connect, do a little research on them, and send them a personal e-mail (not the prescripted one) telling them why they should want to connect with you. This is way more effective than the standard e-mail, or none at all.

Become Active In Groups That Contain Your Target Customers

There are currently 200 conversations a minute going on in LinkedIn groups. By joining groups of your potential customers, you are networking and building relationships with them. This is a great way to warm them up, and then get them connected to your profile.

Use LinkedIn to Connect with the Media

Most media people are constantly searching LinkedIn for people to interview and quote. So, if you have a profile that’s optimized, it increases your chances of being found. Additionally, you can do a search to find these people, and reach out to connect with them and add them to your network. This is a great way to get to know the media, and over time, generate quotes and interviews, which is great for public relationship and what I call social proof. This will really help to establish your expertise.

Coach’s Tip – Use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to identify media types that are looking for quotes and interviews. Then connect with them on LinkedIn. You can sign up for HARO at www.helpareporter.com

Post Value Added Articles and Links

Everyone that is connected to you will see whatever you post on LinkedIn. So, you can add value and establish your expertise by posting articles, videos, quotes and other helpful information. What you don’t want to do is spam people. So, I recommend a 10 to 1 ratio of value added stuff from other sources to 1 from yourself. This will ensure that people don’t get turned off.

If you follow these 3 keys, you’ll find that your LinkedIn profile becomes a lead generation tool that will create a lot of business for you. So, execute the tips above, and start making some more money!

Coach’s Final Tip – If you need some help with your LinkedIn profile, sign up for a Business Breakthrough Session with me here, and I’ll be more than happy to walk you through this.