we have talked about using LinkedIn for maximum effect in a previous blog. In this blog, we will look at maximising your profile and how the company and personal profiles can work together.
Personal Profile
LinkedIn is all about building relationships through the company page and your personal profile so make sure you maximise your opportunities.
Ensure you have a profile pic, nothing worse than this being blank. people buy people so the person you are trying to connect with and build a relationship not being able to visualise you isn't a great start.
Also, make the most of the banner option, and ensure this is relevant to you and as a founder, your business. It doesn't need to be the company's logo enlarged but something that resonates with you.
I use the following
As you can see it's a statement about passion. I chose this as I think my passion for what I do in everything in life is important to me and hopefully shows, prospective clients in my case, that I will bring this passion to their business too.
Whatever you choose remember the profile pic will sit in the bottom left so you need to ensure what's obscured doesn't change the understanding of the image.
You will see on the above image there is a speaker symbol after my name, this allows you to record how to pronounce your name if it's difficult. As you can probably guess mine isn't, so I have used this to record a quick intro as to what I do. It needs to be succinct as you only have a few seconds to record your message. If you want to find this click on the pencil edit and it's in the edit intro section. Your audio recording as you can see in the image below.
In this section, you also have a headline section. This should not be your job title as you can see this comes below. This should be used to state your strengths, share what you do, and what you are looking for. Keep it professional but friendly.
Further down this section, you can also add a website. This can be your company website or another area if you think this is more relevant. Maybe, you need to promote your expertise in your area so want to link to an area that promotes your research in the sector, possibly a link to research gate.
As you will see if you check out my profile mine links to my blog page within my website as I have found from my analytics this is the most frequently viewed page.
In the about section, you have a much larger word count to allow you to give a flavour of yourself. Where possible include examples so don't just say you are results driven but follow this up with an example like, In one role I took product XX from launch to £xxx.xxx revenue in 18 months.
Also make sure to talk about yourself as a whole not just work, remember people are looking at your profile ahead of starting a relationship with you so knowing a little more about you will help this process.
In the profile section, include as much as you can. you will see there are 3 sections Core, Recommended and Additional, each is a drop-down menu you can click on any of these to add information. I would say the core section, as the title suggests, is required.
From the recommended add as relevant. If you are a scientist founding your first company it might be relevant to add any management or business courses you have completed that haven't led to a formal qualification.
In the additional section, if you are bilingual and looking to sell in a different country this would be good information to add. Again the volunteer section allows you to show a little more about yourself with areas that are of importance to you.
All this will allow someone, a potential collaborator, employee, customer, distributor, or investor to get a much better picture of you. This will in turn significantly increase the chances of them responding to your request to connect or a direct message.
Please remember this is just the first step, having a great profile won't mean people are queuing up to connect with you and invest or buy your product but it will put you in a great position once people check you out. To get people to do this you need to engage with LinkedIn. Through both your company page, your profile, and the profile of any other key team members.
You need to be engaging on topics that matter to you and the business, sharing your thoughts and ideas with potential contacts. If you have commented on a couple of posts from a potential investor then reach out to ask them to connect, in the note you can say something like. I found your comment on xx very interesting it made me think about xxx for our business. This sort of note shows you have done some homework and is far more likely to make them connect with you and start a relationship. As we said in a previous blog don't make the comment I would like to connect so you can invest in us or worse still so we can sell to you xx.
As we have already said in this blog people buy from people so trying to do all this from the company page will be far less effective you need to show who you are and what you are about, you can link to the company page or share posts from the company page on your personal posts, by all means, but you need both to work together as part of a plan for an effective strategy.
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