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Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

So there's a big difference between being on LinkedIn and using it. So how many of you are on LinkedIn in here? Yep. You guys look around awkwardly at each other. How many people are using LinkedIn? Exactly. Great. There's one or two of us. And I think that the big distinction there is just looking at kind of hey, most of us are on it, right? There's a lot of people in the world that are on LinkedIn, but they're not actually using all the features. So that's really what I want to do today, is I want to give you that, and I want to show you all the paid features that you can do. So it's been described in a lot of ways. It's a place where people see that you're a credible individual professionally. It's someplace where they think, okay, brand, like this is their personal brand. This is where I'm putting out in the world my personal brand. It's trust-building. It's like hey, I know this person, I want to do business with this person, I don't know if they're a credible individual or somebo...

dy who's done something that they say they've done. Well, there's a lot of information to be looked at on there. People are going on there to get jobs, right? Or to employ others. They're also going on there to look for leads. New customers, new clients. So that's something that people have been doing on the site for a long time. They're looking for people to partner with. They're looking for people that are going into business together. They're also looking at knowledge, right? They're reading every day. I wake up every day and I read a ton in my news feed. I read articles. Maybe some of you have written them, right? But it's circulated information on different topics that I care about, and I can go in there and consume to my heart's content, because there's so much information on the platform. And then there's content. Content that's not just the written form, where I read, there's videos now, native videos, there's people that are sharing information, there's also lots of really robust media that would be like photos and things like that that are experiential, so they're sharing what they've been doing. And then there's the network. You're building a network, right? Anybody ever heard, your network is your net worth? Right? So that is so true. Who you know, whether you're trying to get that job, the kind of second degree of separation from you and another person that you're trying to connect with. All that LinkedIn has done is being able to build out this web of showing you how you're connected to everyone else. It's a beautiful thing, right? If you've never seen The Six Degrees of Separation with Will Smith, anybody seen that movie? Yeah? I freaking love that movie. One, that's Will Smith is amazing in that movie, but also because it shows that we are all interconnected in some way. We are all connected in some way. And LinkedIn does a really job of showing that support. If you're in here and you own a company, if you're in here and you are a director of something or a manager or you have some positional title. One, that LinkedIn does, is it shows you have peers in the game, right? You have people who also own businesses. You have people who also do your job out there, somewhere. I guarantee it, in this room, there's somebody that probably does your job out there, unless you have like a crazy unique job where you're kind of like, I create massive murals on the side of the Empire State Building. Just one. Right, like that? That's very unique. That's probably not, that's going to be the one, but you try to find people that are also doing and have done, or are currently in the trenches with you, and that you can relate to, and that's been a fantastic place that I've found that too. And then the awesome one is dating. I think it's so funny because when I talk to my teams and most of them are still in the dating game. I am not, I've been out of the dating game for almost ten years. My wife somewhere, hey honey, right here, just said it. Dating is funny because this is the one places where it's not gated. Like if you go to Facebook or you go to Instagram, those are gated, you can say, I'm private, I don't want to talk to anybody, right? But in this case, on LinkedIn you cannot do that. So a lot of people have used it for that purpose, and I think it's only going to probably... I don't know, LinkedIn Dating, maybe someday? LinkedIn dating app? I don't know how that's going to work. Jeff Weiner will hate that. Okay. So here's some facts that you need to know about LinkedIn. If you're not active on LinkedIn, you are actually missing 80% of your leads. Okay? 80% of your leads is a massive number. That's not funny anymore. If you're missing 80% of your leads as a company, that's called dead, okay? 20% doesn't get it done. That's not how you stay around. Actually, you know what a really crazy percentage that isn't in my deck? That 95% of businesses fail. That's an epidemic. That's not a problem. That's terrible. That means that, hi, you people in the front row right here have a business, everybody has a business in here? They made it. Right there. In fact, maybe just two of you. You two. You're smiling. Just you two made it, right here. Everyone else, you didn't. And I'll tell you that the reason why people usually don't make it is a couple things. I don't have enough clients. I don't have a good process. Yep. You've got to have clients to make money. You got to have customers to make money. Got to have a good product. That's another one. I can't make your product great. I can't make your service great. But those are usually the things, and you're missing a lot of it if you're not active on LinkedIn. So studies show that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, and 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. That's huge. And for our purposes here in social media week, is that on average, 46% of all social media traffic coming to B2B company sites is from LinkedIn. That's almost half. That is a lot, okay? And here's the other big one. 546 million people are on LinkedIn. 200 countries, 200 countries and counting. I know that for a fact that that is world domination focused and that two members of every second. Two new members every second. This is not a, I mean, this is a force to be reckoned with when you're thinking about a professional site that used to be just some place where you'd put your resume. Now you've got an unbelievable amount of people, and the nice part is that when you think about it, 546 million people, y'all. All right. So Texas, I have to give some context, I use cowboy boots every once in a while, I'm trying to be a cowboy. I try to use y'all. I'm actually from Ohio. So I have none of that. I grew up in like a city thing. I wear Jordans, like I don't know how to do that yet. But I'm trying my best. Because I think y'all is endearing. You ever met somebody on an airplane or met somebody, and they're like, "Oh, y'all just are so sweet." And you're like, "Oh my gosh, I love you. "I love you so much. "I don't even know you. "It's like I want some apple pie." I'll tell you that y'all is I'm trying. I'm trying my best and it's not, I just have to put it in my presentation. 260 million LinkedIn users are logging in each month. 260 million people are logging in. So it's not just 546 million people on it just to be on it. They're actually active on a monthly basis. That's almost half. Right? 260 million people, and in addition to that, 40% of those 260 users are logging in daily. So 40% of 260 million, I'm not a mathematician, but that sounds like a lot of people. Great. Moving on. LinkedIn has a user goal. So 546 isn't the end destination for them. No one's happy at LinkedIn. They're sitting around pining and figuring out and staying up at night. Jeff Weiner, their CEO, is probably sitting there going like, "Oh, man. "546, we got to get our crap together." Because their actual goal is three billion people, y'all. Three billion people on the platform. And their goal, if you ever listen to Jeff Weiner talk, who is the most articulate human being I have ever met in my whole life, just magnanimous individual. I've been waiting to ever use that word in any context, and that's a good one for Jeff Weiner. One time I listened to him and he said that at his core, what he wants is that every person who's a professional in the world to have a profile on LinkedIn. That is an ambitious goal. That is a crazy goal. And I actually believe they'll do it. I really, really do. The way they're pacing, the way this data looks, it looks like that we are early. So if you're sitting in this room and you're watching this for the first time and you're thinking about all this LinkedIn stuff and learning it, it's going to be a lot. Hold on to your butt. This is going to be a ton of information in this session. I'm telling you right now that you're going to sit here and your brain's going to feel like, oh my gosh, what just happened? Please somebody show me the recordings of this, because it's crazy, right? There's so much information. But what I want you to focus on is because we're still early. We're still early. 546 million? We're early to this thing. If the goal is three billion and Jeff Weiner is crazy enough to pull it off, we are early. Just keep that in mind as we keep going. 63 million unique mobile users. So mobile is where it's going. Mobile's even earlier for them. They just started launching way more mobile activity and tools for mobile, so make sure that you're understanding that mobile is a thing. Nine billon content on impressions on LinkedIn feed every single week. Nine billion, nine billion, nine billion. Nine billion content impressions. That's four nine billions y'all. You see there? Nine billion. And the reason why that math works is it's 468 billion per year, and that means that only three million people. This is their thing. This blew me away the first time I saw it. Three million people. That's it. Three million people are driving nine billion content impressions. Three million. And so what that means for everybody on here, is that if you're looking at a total 250 million active monthly users, three million of those, that's 1%, which means that there's amazing opportunity that three million people are driving those nine billion, which means if you're sitting here asking yourself a question, if I should be sharing content on LinkedIn, the answer is overwhelmingly... Yes. Yes. Yes you should, y'all. That didn't work. That didn't work as well. That didn't work as well, did it? It felt forced. It felt forced. But it is. It's crazy. It's a statement where you do feel like, oh my gosh, okay, so you're telling me that I have a major opportunity, that I'm still early enough that 546 million for some reason is not a big number, and that I need to go out there and be able to think about putting my content on this platform. Got it. It sounds insane. Okay. So let me keep going. 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, versus 13% of Twitter and 7% of Facebook. So not saying that our platform is better, but it is. Sorry, everybody else in social media. I just offended every social media instructor, like the rest are like, uh, okay, Billy Jean's teaching on Facebook on Friday, so he hates me now. No, we're friends. So do I have your attention? Does it make sense? Does LinkedIn seem at least valuable enough to pay attention to now with all those numbers? Yeah, a couple people are like, eh. Like I don't know. I'm not sure yet. I'm going to convince you even more. So how do I market on LinkedIn? We need to talk about it because a lot of people are doing it wrong, or that's just a question that you're having. So you're sitting here going okay, like I'm optimized and ready to mingle. Ooh, right? Single, ready to mingle. And now I'm ready to figure out how to do this whole marketing thing. That means you're spending money. You are taking money out of your pocket, probably not in real life, because you have bank accounts and we're all adults and we live in 2018. But I don't remember the last time I carried cash. Did you ever, do you guys carry cash right now? Anybody carry cash right now? Like I don't know. People keep asking me for money. Anyway, it doesn't, this is not going where I want it to go. This is like, okay, that's my personal thing, I'm on a mission. Okay. So how do I market online? How do I market on LinkedIn? Let's talk about it. First we've got to move this needle to talk about it. So start with your LinkedIn profile. And I know you're sitting here thinking this about marketing, you're like, "Wait a minute, Marcus. "I thought this was about marketing my business. "So why do I need to start with my personal profile?" People do business with people. I know, this isn't hard, guys. But it's not easy to grasp, okay? People do business with people. Which means that everyone at your company makes up your brand. Everybody. Every single person. I know you're thinking about a few of those people right now that make up your brand. Should they be on your bus? I don't know, okay? But everybody at your company makes up your brand. So can I see myself doing business is the question that everybody asks. But they don't say, can I see myself doing business with Dell? No, they go, can I see myself doing business with Jimmy, who works at Dell, who I work with and talk to every day? Can I do business with you, is what I think about all the time. So your profile is a big part of that. And if you think about your business page, this is a digital marketer's business page by the way. Isn't it lovely? It's gorgeous. It's pretty average. But it's still, it's there. We do a lot. But if you look at it, we have 153 employees on LinkedIn, and one of the reasons why you want to pay attention to that is because I said, everybody's a part of your brand. So when I go to this page, this is what's going to show up. They're going to go, you have 430, okay, you're there, there's your logo. Okay, this is what you're about. That makes sense to me. Oh, all those people work there. So when they click on it, they are a part of the brand, right? And here we are, back to the pencil again. And one of the things about the pencil, all across the site, you're going to see the pencil is a way that you edit. So make sure you keep that in mind. Pencil, edit. Pencil, edit. In this case, there are a few ways to edit your profile. And so if everybody at your company, I'm just going to let this play, and I'm going to get to it in a second. But if everybody at your company has a great profile, your brand, absolutely your company has a great profile. Because everybody in your company is an extension of your brand. So I want to just drill that into you, so every single person at your company should have a strong LinkedIn profile, because when people get to the page they are going to look at them as an extension of the company. So this profile part of it needs to be drilled in to at your level, because you're looking at it right now being like, I need robust images. They need robust image. Okay? So if you look at it here, the profile picture's really important. Obviously it's really easy to edit it. So you click on the pencil, and the pencil allows you to bring up two sections on the first piece of media. They added banners this year. They've never had banners, so this is actually a few years ago when they added banners, but banners were not something that was a part of the site, so we realized that if you do have a banner, there's three times more engagement to your listing, so you've got to have one. And I suggest that you actually make it branded, okay? And then when you put your profile on here, you're looking at it because you can bring it in here and filter it, you can adjust the contrast to it, they want to give you tools to make sure that your profile image looks really good, okay? And rule of thumb there is that it's 60%. 60% of your mug makes up the profile photo, right? Because I look across the site all the time and I just see people that, you know, it's like an avant garde photo or a side face, or like 14 people. You ever seen that? It's like, which one are you? I don't know, okay. I'm trying to date you, what's going on? Just kidding, no, no. But you need to make sure that your profile, because that's your first thing that people engage with. That image of you, right? CreativeLive, I'm talking about photography. It's still a sin, I feel like, you know? All right, so the personalization piece. So on the right hand side of your page, if you click on the pencil again, you can see that you can come in and adjust your website, you can adjust your phone number. I never put my phone number on there. Just so you know, it's a personal page. I don't do that. Does anybody feel comfortable putting their personal phone number on there? Anybody want to be solicited? Great. Okay, good, me either. I don't want to do that. So what you actually, you could go back here and the part that, there are only a few things that you can really personalize on the site, and more personalization the better. So if you click on this side again, so if we click in there, we understand that's your profile, your website, all that good stuff. If you click on this top profile URL, the LinkedIn.com/in/marcusmurphy, you can actually go in here and personalize that to whatever you want. So I suggest your name, if you can get it. Because some of you have like very generic names out here in the world, and that's why Marcus Murphy was already taken, so I had to throw an A in there. It's my middle name. I'm not proud of it, but it's okay, and so if you can grab your name right now, perfect. Get it. Go get it right now. If you can't, then you can also add a slogan there, something that would be a little creative, like you're the best salesperson ever. LinkedIn.com/bestsalespersonever. I don't know. I should take that one. I keep using it as an example, and I should just use it as my profile page. And then you want to also make sure that you're having a robust summary section as well. And so the summary section for anybody on here who's thinking about, and all this needs to be optimized before you go out there and mingle, remember? Got to make sure this is right. And I also believe in the narrative part of this. And they give you not only the option of 2,000 characters to write a story and be narrative, you also can add images in here as well. Robust media images. And not only that, is when people are going around looking at pages, they stay on your page more, especially when you start to add these really great images. And here's the section. Not only is it the summary section, but it's also in your experience. So every business now gives you the opportunity to write out longer narrative format and being able to share more about your business, and you can add all those beautiful media links pretty easy. Upload goes right to your computer. Links to videos, links to podcasts. And I am most excited about being able to add video. Because before it was such a pain in the ass to go out there and have like a YouTube link or a Wistia link and it takes them off of the LinkedIn page. Like the whole point is to keep people on the page. So you're going to see more integrations like this, where we're keeping people on the platform longer. And the same thing for the rest of your experience. So it's not just going to be your current position. It's also going to be all your previous positions, because those also needs some pretty, I don't know, what are the kid saying? Bomb images, you know what I mean? That's what we need right now. Some flavor. And here's the part, skills and endorsements, and I want to make sure that this is beat in. 99 is the number. So just like when you're looking at your profile and you're thinking about like, who am I connecting with? The 500 is what shows up on the page. This credibility piece is 99. And the wonderful part about all of this is it's not you telling everybody how awesome you are. The rest of your profile is that. It's everybody saying to you, okay, like hey, this is what I want you to know about me. I wear shades. I'm at LinkedIn. This is people telling you how great you are, and what they think you're great at, and they say leadership, management, public speaking. These people have endorsed you for that. And so here's where you can adjust that. So pencil again. Edit it up. In the skills section, you can see the top three. Those are the only ones that are going to show. So if leadership, management and public speaking are there, that's what people can click on and endorse you for. So on, by the way, on the desktop, on the desktop they can go ahead and do this. On mobile, they actually cannot. They actually have to go through a series of like, did I work with this person, when did I work with this person, was it good work done with this person? So they've added a few different layers on the mobile side. And you can also adjust it. So on the bottom here, you can move those endorsements, like what people have endorse you for, up and back and forth. So if you're sitting there going like, man, I just want to get my sales endorsements up, they need to be in the top three or no one's going to see them. They can see them, but they have to hit another button, and typically when I'm scrolling through a page, I'm not going to expand that section. I just want to see your top three endorsements. Cool. Recommendations. Got to ask for them. And when you do ask for them, they make it really easy for you to be able to do this. So here's the general recommendations page. It lives like three or four clicks down when you're scrolling down the page. And your recommendations show here in this section, and they can use scroll, you can actually pick who you want to show up and why and where. I would say to you right now that received and given is almost like should be an equal number. You should be out there giving people recommendations right now. In your mind, you're probably thinking of a couple people. I'm assuming right now you have at least one. Some of you are like, "Hell, no, I don't know anybody. "I'm not doing that." All right. Well, think about people that you want to give to so that you can receive. And in this case, ask people so they give you this ability to do that when you go up and click on Ask for Recommendation. So it says, who do you want to ask? And in this case I picked Ryan Deis, so CEO of Digital Marketer, right? And so he'll ask, what's the relationship status? How did you meet? What is it? So Ryan directly managed me. And then I want to go in and do Director of Sales and Monetization. That's what the applicable experience I had with that. And then it prompts you. It says hey, you're going to send a message to him. Right? And I'm like, hey, great. And you want to personalize this section. You want to make sure that they know who you are, and that they at least like you. Very good rule of thumb. And then you want to start talking to them specifically about what you'd like them to write. I actually, personally, when I asked for a recommendation, I'm like hey, I know we worked together in this capacity, right? I go, Rachel Williams right there, Rachel and I were on the Diversity Committee at Yelp. She's now the chief diversity officer at a new company, which I'm not going to mention, but she was the chief diversity officer at Yelp, and we created a diversity org at the Yelp Phoenix office, and I ran that group. And so she and I worked together that way, and I'm like hey, you know what, I really want this on my resume, because I care about it. Do you mind writing a little bit about it? She wrote the most glowing, over-the-top review about being like, Marcus is one of the most thoughtful leaders of all time. I was like, oh my goodness, like, show, show, show, show. Put it on my profile. Which brings me to my next point. You don't have to show everything. So, edit again with the little pencil button, and you can ask for revisions, or you can show, again, very funny that you can ask for revisions from people. Hopefully you know them and they're not offended by that, because they might just go, hey, your recommendation sucked, and I politely want you to write it over again. Maybe I'll write it for you. Anybody do that? Anybody ever come and ask you for a recommendation or a quote or something like that, and you know what, one of my mentors, Ryan Deis, you guys have maybe heard of, but he's our CEO at Digital Marketer. He will have people write it. Or have people thing about writing. Like hey, go ahead and write, because you know what you want people to say, like get my started. At least with a little bit so that I know that I don't have to go back and make 50 revisions to this thing. So I usually ask people the same thing. If they ask me, I'll go, hey, why don't you go ahead and stat me out. Like what are some of the things that you really want people to know, and I'm happy to do it. Especially if I think they're true. Because also, if somebody writes a recommendation for themselves and sends it to me and it's not accurate, I'm going to tell you that it's not accurate, okay? So make sure it's good. Interests and groups. Same thing here. Make sure that you're involved in those, groups are a great way to connect with people. The rule of thumb there, and the little hack, is that if you're not connected to somebody in the group, you can message them, which is pretty amazing. So you don't have to be connected, but if you're both in the group together, you can send them a private message. I love that feature. There's a lot of people out there that are probably like, yeah, I'm going to use that one. I'm going to use that one to connect with a lot of people. There's a lot of customers I want, and clients and prospects. It's a really good one for that. And then when you do actually reach all star status, LinkedIn does this beautiful thing with fireworks like that, and they show you and tell you that you're an all star. So they will give you this distinction. So many effects happening right now on this one. And then they will tell you if you've achieved it or not. And just remember, their all star status is not mine. Their all star status is not going to be the same thing that I think the all star status should be. All star status to them is having a photo, having five skills, your education has something in it, you went to high school somewhere, some primary school or whatever you did, your location, summary, industry and your position is filled out. That is all star status. An yes, there's a varying degree of all star status, all right? You can be in the middle there. But as you start to fill out more of your profile, it becomes more searchable. The reason why you want to be an all star and have that distinction on there is because your profile will show up more. Your profile will show up more. Because they're not going to put out a bunch of profiles in the feed of people doing stuff that have no photo, and no robust content, and your media doesn't exist, and it's just like kind of this profile that's not completely optimized, just so you know. So the more you optimize, the more you fill this out, the more you're going to show up. So that is the optimized and ready to mingle section of this slide deck. And so let's recap really quick, y'all. I'm getting there. Is it getting better? I feel like it's getting better. No? Does anybody actually use y'all in here? Like in a regular? Yeah? Does it sound... I lived in Georgia, so... Yeah, she lived in Georgia for a while, so she is an expert on that. I'm pretending to use y'all. I'm pretending to use y'all. So am I good at pretending to use y'all? No, I'm not. I saw your face. That's fine. I'm going to keep moving, because I hurt, everything hurts. So profile pic is important. Compelling headline. Make sure you have an epic summary, make sure that you're using that space, that 2,000 characters that you have. Maximize your experience, so everything that's in the experience section. Places you've worked. Photos. Video. Narrative. Education is important, so make sure that you are putting your education your profile, because it's a network, it's not just where you went to school or some credibility piece. You're actually connected to other people, so learn how to use that. Endorsements. That's people telling you how great you are in certain areas, but you can also be strategic and put the right ones that you want up there for other people to know. And I would put that at least they need to be something that other people would agree with. That's just a slight caveat there, because if you put up skills and then nobody's clicking on them, you're like, ummm, maybe that's not a skill. Maybe that's not what I should put up there. Recommendations, so make sure that you're asking for them. There's nothing wrong with that. And then join groups that actually matter to you. So don't just join groups because you want to talk to John Doe and that's the only way you can connect to them. Be authentic. Join the group. You're going to have better conversations with that person anyway and they won't hate you because you have something to say, okay?