Social media, content marketing, digital marketing – buzzwords since the noughties, and the finance industry is starting to listen. While there are plenty of “experts” telling you that you should put your business on every platform and be snapchatting your clients or posting your lunch on Instagram, as a financial adviser, who has the time? Not you – and rightly so. But where should you be, if you want to be on the wave that is digital marketing? The answer: LinkedIn.
There are six million Australians actively using LinkedIn. Given that’s about one in two of the working population, your target market is on LinkedIn. If that’s not enough of an incentive, consider that in conjunction with Google, LinkedIn is the number one search network when it comes to googling a name. In layman’s terms if you’re not on LinkedIn, thus not on Google, you don’t exist to potential clients.
There are 200,000 engineers, 78,000 small business owners, 113,000 managing directors and 25,000 doctors all actively using LinkedIn. With a little bit of effort (emphasis on the little) you can be talking directly with your target market in a matter of days on this platform. So where do you start?
Right now, how about getting out your laptop, smartphone or iPad and head to the LinkedIn website. The easiest and most effective thing you can do immediately is start a profile and put a little bit of information on there.
The most important thing about a profile
The most important thing about a profile is to have a photo that represents you as you are right now – for two reasons: you are 19 per cent more likely to be connected with if you have a photo; and trust. There’s a bunch of science behind the trust issue, but in simple terms, if someone finds you online and requests a meeting, you will lose a lot of trust if you don’t look like the image you’re portraying online. So start on the front foot, by putting up a recent photo of your face in a professional setting.
If you’re willing to take it further, and with the stats above let’s hope you are, here are the top seven things you can do to create an All Star profile on LinkedIn:
- High resolution photo – for professionalism and for trust
- Keyword rich summary – the summary is searchable by both Google and LinkedIn, so put in here what your specialties are and who you love working with
- Call to action in your summary – people love being told what to do, so ask them to call you today
- Specific figures of your results (summary/jobs) – keeping in line with privacy of course, but if you have something that’s particularly noteworthy without breaking confidence, share it
- Responsibilities and achievements in your work history – responsibilities are easy to share and people love to hear about them. Potential clients want to know what you’re good at
- Extra media – this includes PDFs, video, images and your website. If you have a “why” video, share it here. A why video is a short clip, ideally less than 90 seconds, that is you talking to your target market about why you do what you do, why you’re passionate about it, and how you can serve them
- Contact details – most important, if you do want people to contact you outside of LinkedIn.
It’s alive!
With these seven things, you’ll be given All Star status by LinkedIn in no time. Where else can you claim that title? But what do you need to do to keep it “alive”? If you have 10 minutes each day you can keep your profile up-to-date and connect with people on a meaningful level. If only all relationships were so easy. Your 10-minute schedule should look like this:
1 minute: log on and respond to any connection requests.
2 minutes: scroll through your updates to see what your connections are saying. Like or comment on one thing as a minimum.
5 minutes: go to the ‘Groups’ section and connect to a group that interests you (doesn’t have to be work related) and a group that your ideal client is likely to be in. Each day, check in and see what’s going on. Be helpful and comment when it gives value. Importantly: Do not sell. Connect with people you find interesting.
2 minutes: share something with your audience. Perhaps it’s a news article you saw this morning or a rate update. Just a small update will keep your audience engaged.
That’s it. With that 10 minutes, you’ve kept in touch with your current connections, created more, and engaged in a group environment exposing you to more connections and potential clients. Over time, this will see your network grow and become a source of clients for you.
Are you an overachiever? If you are, check out LinkedIn Pulse. Here you can post your own articles and become a blogger in your own right. This will expose you to an even wider group of contacts who will want to connect with you. But always remember compliance; never give advice, and if you do, make sure it’s very general, is stated as being so and is a dated post.