Are you LinkedIn ready? – Optimise your profile today!
A recent LinkedIn webinar took me on a very insightful journey on how to utilise LinkedIn to create warm leads to your business website. The first part to this webinar was all about LinkedIn profile optimisation.
Before we delve into the ins and outs of your own LinkedIn profile, first things first you may want to find out what your competitors are up to before you go any further. Now, we all like to ‘spy’ on competition every now and then, but how do you do this without being noticed?
Head to your LinkedIn profile – click on ‘settings and privacy’- then on ‘How others see your LinkedIn activity’ and select private mode. You are now invisible to any profile you search. Remember to change this back once you’ve seen what your competitors are up to.
So, now you know how your competitors profiles look and the content they post to engage with their customers, now it’s time for you to optimise your own business profile to ensure it catches the eye of potential leads.
The first step is to make your business LinkedIn profile URL easy to find. Most URLS on LinkedIn have a stream of numbers at the end… this makes it more difficult for others to find your profile on a web browser.
I would suggest using your business name or related words to make it obvious to people searching for you. For example www.linkedin.com/company/bcrs-small-business-loans . This can be done in the ‘Admin tools’ tab in the top right of your screen.
Now head to the pencil icon just below your business page cover photo to improve the next section of your profile… Got it? Great!
Let’s start optimising!
1. Starting with your profile picture. The best thing to do here is use your business logo.
2. For your tagline use your vision statement to give visitors a snippet of what you do (you have a character limit for this section so ensure its short and sweet!)
3. The next step is to have your ‘call to action’ button which takes people to a relevant ‘landing page’ on your website. Directing them to your home page is not always the best place for your visitors to see first. I would advise taking them on a journey of your business and what you’re about starting with the ‘about us’ page.
4. The main focus for the overview section is the description. Ensure this gives a detailed but concise overview of your business including some USPs and contact information so customers understand you before even landing on your website.
5. The final essential feature for your profile is the ‘hashtag’ section. Here you need to select three relevant hashtags to make all of your posts visible on those relevant hashtag pages. Using BCRS as an example- we provide loans to SME businesses, so we use the hashtags #Lending #Business and #sme (look at different variations of your chosen hashtags and use the one that has the most followers)
Yes, its that simple! Go ahead and optimise your page and join me next week at Wednesday lunchtime to know exactly what to and what not to post on LinkedIn and how to increase your exposure which in-turn will begin to create warm leads to your website.
In the meantime, follow us on social media to keep up to date with everything BCRS.
@B_C_R_S
@BCRS Business Loans
Published by – Lauren McGowan – Digital Marketing Assistant
