Optimize your personal LinkedIn profile
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 9:12 am
In France, half of the working population uses LinkedIn. Among these users, 91% of B2B decision-makers say they use it to get information before making a purchase (source: Hubspot).
The LinkedIn social network has become essential for all professionals, especially in B2B. It is a content sharing platform, a messaging tool and a powerful prospecting channel, particularly effective for generating leads.
You too can take advantage of its many features to achieve your business goals. Prospecting on LinkedIn is less expensive and less time-consuming (with the right methods) than more “traditional” practices. When well thought korea telegram out, digital prospecting increases the productivity of your sales team, as well as their results.
Want to start prospecting on LinkedIn? Here are our 5 tips to finally get started.
Your LinkedIn profile is not just a CV: it is a shop window . It helps build your online reputation and, even more so, that of your company. This applies whether you are an independent consultant, a sales agent, a financial director or the boss of an SME.
When you create your LinkedIn profile, you become a brand. You must therefore promote it: this is what is called " personal branding ". This is why it is crucial to take care of every detail of your LinkedIn profile. It must arouse the curiosity of visitors, reassure them and encourage them to take action.
Best practices for optimizing your personal LinkedIn profile:
Choose your profile photo carefully: it should reassure your interlocutor and reveal part of your personality;
Take care of the cover image: personalize it to enhance your value proposition;
Have an explicit title: it must explain in three words what you do (pompous and overly long titles should be avoided);
Write a compelling summary: think about storytelling to present your background and expertise, and capture the attention of your visitors (this is an integral part of your Inbound marketing strategy to convert your prospects into customers through content marketing ).
Good to know: Personal profiles are more effective than a company page on LinkedIn. So encourage your employees to develop their online presence rather than feeding a page whose content will ultimately be less visible and less effective.
#2 Speak up on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a content-first social network. Active profiles that create native content, comment, and share posts are given more prominence by the algorithm.
Therefore, it is in your best interest to speak out on LinkedIn to gain visibility… and credibility . This is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to your potential prospects: your turnover therefore depends (in part) on your content strategy!
Every post, every comment, every share should reflect your expertise and skills; but it should also bring value to your network. You need to create content that engages your audience .
The more relevant you are, the more reactions you will generate. This is positive for your visibility on LinkedIn: the algorithm takes into account "likes", comments and shares to position a publication in the news feed of its users.
Best practices to improve the engagement rate of your LinkedIn posts:
Prioritize native content : publish directly on the social network rather than sharing a link to a blog article or your website (avoid any external links, because LinkedIn prefers to keep its users on its platform);
Ask questions in the comments : this is a simple technique to improve the visibility of your post and encourage your network to react;
Tagging people in your post (ideally 1st level ): this must however be consistent with your content;
Limit the number of hashtags : unlike Instagram or Facebook, there is no need to multiply the hashtags, only 2 or 3 are enough;
Find the right timing to post : Test and analyze the performance of your different posts to determine the time, day, and frequency of your LinkedIn posts.
#3 Target your prospects on LinkedIn
Once your profile is ready, you can start your prospect search on LinkedIn. If the goal is to generate leads, the standard search function is limited. That's why we encourage you to opt for the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool .
This social selling tool helps you find prospects based on specific criteria. You can filter your searches to optimize your prospecting and maximize your sales results. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can even be coupled with your CRM software to facilitate your daily management.
Before launching your prospecting campaign on LinkedIn, it is important to know your marketing personas . It will then be easier to target your searches. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you, for example, to filter the results according to the company, the sector, the workforce, the function or even the seniority.
You can also search for profiles using keywords . In this case, you will have to be specific. If you type “marketing”, LinkedIn will scan all the profiles looking for this keyword. For example, you could very well have in the list a painter who studied marketing for six months at university. But this will certainly not be relevant for your digital prospecting.
If you want to search for exact terms, you can put them in quotation marks (this also works on Google search engine). LinkedIn will then select profiles that specifically contain the keyword you are searching for.
Finally, to find prospects on LinkedIn, you can also join groups . This allows you to connect with people with whom you share common interests (or who match your marketing personas ).
Best practices for finding prospects on LinkedIn:
Use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool : it is comprehensive and allows you to precisely refine your prospect searches;
Define your marketing personas : this allows you to quickly identify the search criteria to prioritize;
Choose relevant keywords : Focus on specific terms, as LinkedIn scans an entire profile for the keyword you are searching for;
Joining groups: This is great for interacting with prospects, no matter how small the group (quality over quantity!)
#4 Take care when contacting your prospects on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has the advantage of integrating a messaging tool. It is a way to communicate with your prospects in a much more personal way . For comparison, email marketing, although effective, tends to seem more "generic". LinkedIn thus offers you another possibility of approach, personalized, which also guarantees a better opening rate than email.
Getting your prospect to open your message is a first step. Above all, you need to pique their curiosity to encourage them to take action (which you explain). To do this, your LinkedIn message must be clear and concise. It would be counterproductive to try to say too much: a message of more than 1000 words would discourage your audience. You can hit the mark with just 300 characters, as long as they are deliberately chosen.
To build your message and be impactful , you can follow this simple three-phase plan:
A hook (usually a question that raises a problem),
Your value proposition (the solution you provide),
A call to action (this could be a link to your website).
Best practices for starting a conversation with a prospect on LinkedIn:
Stay concise : favor short and structured messages to ensure their effectiveness;
Take care with your spelling : a simple mistake can ruin all your efforts;
Include a call to action : you must clearly explain to your contact what you expect from them (answer a questionnaire, visit your website, etc.);
Use A/B testing : test two approaches to determine which one works best with your target audience.
#5 Automate your prospecting on LinkedIn
All the points we have discussed so far involve repetitive tasks . This is especially time-consuming if you have to deal with a large number of profiles.
This is why prospecting on LinkedIn becomes really effective when you opt for automation .
You can thus gain in productivity and performance thanks to specific tools, to associate with your LinkedIn profile. They allow you, for example, to create automatic connections with interesting profiles. You can also use them to extract data in bulk from LinkedIn in order to enrich your CRM: this is what is called web scraping .
By automating your prospecting on LinkedIn, you could also:
The LinkedIn social network has become essential for all professionals, especially in B2B. It is a content sharing platform, a messaging tool and a powerful prospecting channel, particularly effective for generating leads.
You too can take advantage of its many features to achieve your business goals. Prospecting on LinkedIn is less expensive and less time-consuming (with the right methods) than more “traditional” practices. When well thought korea telegram out, digital prospecting increases the productivity of your sales team, as well as their results.
Want to start prospecting on LinkedIn? Here are our 5 tips to finally get started.
Your LinkedIn profile is not just a CV: it is a shop window . It helps build your online reputation and, even more so, that of your company. This applies whether you are an independent consultant, a sales agent, a financial director or the boss of an SME.
When you create your LinkedIn profile, you become a brand. You must therefore promote it: this is what is called " personal branding ". This is why it is crucial to take care of every detail of your LinkedIn profile. It must arouse the curiosity of visitors, reassure them and encourage them to take action.
Best practices for optimizing your personal LinkedIn profile:
Choose your profile photo carefully: it should reassure your interlocutor and reveal part of your personality;
Take care of the cover image: personalize it to enhance your value proposition;
Have an explicit title: it must explain in three words what you do (pompous and overly long titles should be avoided);
Write a compelling summary: think about storytelling to present your background and expertise, and capture the attention of your visitors (this is an integral part of your Inbound marketing strategy to convert your prospects into customers through content marketing ).
Good to know: Personal profiles are more effective than a company page on LinkedIn. So encourage your employees to develop their online presence rather than feeding a page whose content will ultimately be less visible and less effective.
#2 Speak up on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a content-first social network. Active profiles that create native content, comment, and share posts are given more prominence by the algorithm.
Therefore, it is in your best interest to speak out on LinkedIn to gain visibility… and credibility . This is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to your potential prospects: your turnover therefore depends (in part) on your content strategy!
Every post, every comment, every share should reflect your expertise and skills; but it should also bring value to your network. You need to create content that engages your audience .
The more relevant you are, the more reactions you will generate. This is positive for your visibility on LinkedIn: the algorithm takes into account "likes", comments and shares to position a publication in the news feed of its users.
Best practices to improve the engagement rate of your LinkedIn posts:
Prioritize native content : publish directly on the social network rather than sharing a link to a blog article or your website (avoid any external links, because LinkedIn prefers to keep its users on its platform);
Ask questions in the comments : this is a simple technique to improve the visibility of your post and encourage your network to react;
Tagging people in your post (ideally 1st level ): this must however be consistent with your content;
Limit the number of hashtags : unlike Instagram or Facebook, there is no need to multiply the hashtags, only 2 or 3 are enough;
Find the right timing to post : Test and analyze the performance of your different posts to determine the time, day, and frequency of your LinkedIn posts.
#3 Target your prospects on LinkedIn
Once your profile is ready, you can start your prospect search on LinkedIn. If the goal is to generate leads, the standard search function is limited. That's why we encourage you to opt for the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool .
This social selling tool helps you find prospects based on specific criteria. You can filter your searches to optimize your prospecting and maximize your sales results. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can even be coupled with your CRM software to facilitate your daily management.
Before launching your prospecting campaign on LinkedIn, it is important to know your marketing personas . It will then be easier to target your searches. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you, for example, to filter the results according to the company, the sector, the workforce, the function or even the seniority.
You can also search for profiles using keywords . In this case, you will have to be specific. If you type “marketing”, LinkedIn will scan all the profiles looking for this keyword. For example, you could very well have in the list a painter who studied marketing for six months at university. But this will certainly not be relevant for your digital prospecting.
If you want to search for exact terms, you can put them in quotation marks (this also works on Google search engine). LinkedIn will then select profiles that specifically contain the keyword you are searching for.
Finally, to find prospects on LinkedIn, you can also join groups . This allows you to connect with people with whom you share common interests (or who match your marketing personas ).
Best practices for finding prospects on LinkedIn:
Use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool : it is comprehensive and allows you to precisely refine your prospect searches;
Define your marketing personas : this allows you to quickly identify the search criteria to prioritize;
Choose relevant keywords : Focus on specific terms, as LinkedIn scans an entire profile for the keyword you are searching for;
Joining groups: This is great for interacting with prospects, no matter how small the group (quality over quantity!)
#4 Take care when contacting your prospects on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has the advantage of integrating a messaging tool. It is a way to communicate with your prospects in a much more personal way . For comparison, email marketing, although effective, tends to seem more "generic". LinkedIn thus offers you another possibility of approach, personalized, which also guarantees a better opening rate than email.
Getting your prospect to open your message is a first step. Above all, you need to pique their curiosity to encourage them to take action (which you explain). To do this, your LinkedIn message must be clear and concise. It would be counterproductive to try to say too much: a message of more than 1000 words would discourage your audience. You can hit the mark with just 300 characters, as long as they are deliberately chosen.
To build your message and be impactful , you can follow this simple three-phase plan:
A hook (usually a question that raises a problem),
Your value proposition (the solution you provide),
A call to action (this could be a link to your website).
Best practices for starting a conversation with a prospect on LinkedIn:
Stay concise : favor short and structured messages to ensure their effectiveness;
Take care with your spelling : a simple mistake can ruin all your efforts;
Include a call to action : you must clearly explain to your contact what you expect from them (answer a questionnaire, visit your website, etc.);
Use A/B testing : test two approaches to determine which one works best with your target audience.
#5 Automate your prospecting on LinkedIn
All the points we have discussed so far involve repetitive tasks . This is especially time-consuming if you have to deal with a large number of profiles.
This is why prospecting on LinkedIn becomes really effective when you opt for automation .
You can thus gain in productivity and performance thanks to specific tools, to associate with your LinkedIn profile. They allow you, for example, to create automatic connections with interesting profiles. You can also use them to extract data in bulk from LinkedIn in order to enrich your CRM: this is what is called web scraping .
By automating your prospecting on LinkedIn, you could also: