How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to turn it into a lead machine?

If you want to develop your business, recruit, sell your product or service, you will have understood that there is plenty to make much more profitable encounters on LinkedIn than Tinder 💔.

But who says large professional social network, says increased competition. To excel on LinkedIn, and become THE reference in your field, it is essential to transform your LinkedIn profile into an over-optimized sales window. The window is your profile. The product is you. And we will see together how to explode your sales in 4 ultra-detailed steps to explode your acquisition via LinkedIn! ⚡️

Here are the 4 steps to follow to optimize your LinkedIn profile and transform it into a real lead machine:

1. Making your LinkedIn profile stand out from the crowd - Your personal branding 💡

To stand out among 830 million users, there are no 4 ways.

You have to get noticed, stand out from the crowd and become unmissable on the platform.

To get there, let's start with what other users will see in their feed the first time they discover you. A little clue 👇

Your profile can be discovered through 3 ways:

1. One of your posts,
2. A reaction or comment to someone else's post
3. A news related to a change on your profile.

Regardless of how you are discovered, there are only 3 things that will stand out:

• Your photo
• Your first and last name
• Your title

To attract people to your profile and make it discovered, you will be able to play on these 3 elements via an atypical photo, emojis, color and a catchy title!

The Linkedin profile photo

Let's start with the photo!

Today, there are more and more color heads 🔴🟠🟣🔵 roaming around on LinkedIn... Coloring your photo is a good idea, but not the only one. Here are a few more recommendations to differentiate yourself:

• You can use slightly different shapes, for example, a hexagon.

Example of Hugo Hassler, Co-founder of Upcut

• Use a color gradient.

You saw that one coming, admit it.

• Add accessories 👑👒🧢🕶

Example of the famous cap of Thomas Ryvol, or even the Nerf of Theo Lion

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As you will have understood, all techniques are good to stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself from conventional photos. Changing the appearance of your profile photo will allow you to be remembered without necessarily remembering your name or your head. The striking element of your photo will serve as a differentiating element in your personal branding.

And if you are a team, I advise you to harmonize your photos to create a pattern and generate a strong brand image through the presence of each member on LinkedIn.

A small example of our profile photos at Leadix.

Your name

So no, I am not going to suggest that you change your name and first name. Relax.

On the other hand, here too, it is possible to stand out from the crowd, for example by adding emojis. This will allow people to associate an emoji with you, it becomes an integral part of your branding.

Example:

How not to mention the famous Otter ofAmandine Bart.

Once you've been able to get noticed in the LinkedIn feed, thanks to your photo and name, it's now time to pull out all the stops to push you to click on your little head and discover the rest of your profile. I'll give you all the keys to get there in the next point.

2. Attracting people to your profile LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a big professional network. You will therefore find a multitude of different jobs, positions and activities. Everyone will have an interesting service for someone else, but your goal is to be sure to attract those who might be interested in yours. In short, the goal is to attract your ideal customer.

Remember, you are the product we're trying to sell.

So you're going to use the 3rd element, Your title, to “pitch” in a few words, why should your target audience click to discover you.

So you need a catchy title.

Here, in a few words, you can understand who I am, what I do but especially what I can offer you. I am the co-founder of Leadix, an agency that helps B2B businesses propel their acquisition. So if you are in B2B, and you are looking to increase your sales, you have every interest in coming and see what I am doing more closely.

Yes, you have finally arrived on my profile 👀

We can now move on to the main course 🍽

3. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile for conversion

If you want to increase the visibility of your publications among your audience and boost your popularity on LinkedIn, the first thing to do is To activate the LinkedIn “creator” mode.

Switch your profile to creator mode

This new creator mode will allow you to access additional features that will be very useful, especially if you want to develop your network and/or do b2b prospecting on LinkedIn.

To activate creator mode on Linkedin, here is the tip:

1. Go to your LinkedIn profile
2. Click on the section “Designer fashion” in the “Resources” section
3. Activate creator mode
4. Press “Next”
5. That's it ✨

Beyond boosting visibility, creator mode will allow you to highlight a key element that you did not have access to with a traditional profile: Calls To Action (often written CTA), or in other words, links to content external to LinkedIn.

Use theThe Call-To-Action on your LinkedIn profile

One of the advantages of going into creator mode is being able to add additional CTAs, which is essential if you want to be able to convert your visitors into appointments, and your appointments into customers.

#1 First CTA

The first CTA is fundamental because it is located at the top of your LinkedIn profile, it is directly visible to users. It is the first one that a visitor can click on. I advise you to link your site (if you have a company or a portfolio) or your connected agenda (Hubspot, Calendly, etc.) directly if you are a freelancer or self-employed and do not have a website.

#2 CTA in the “My Selection” section

In the “My selection” section, you can put a CTA again. This can be either a link to your site, to an article on your blog, to one of your offers or you can use to highlight one of your best LinkedIn posts.

You can put as many posts, links and articles as you want in this section, but be careful to choose the first 3 because they are the most visible and therefore the ones that people see first. 👀

My advice: put your website there (for the first one at least), and if you have posts that worked well, don't hesitate to add them, it's always good for “social proof” (or social proof in French).

#3 CTA in the “Experience” section

In the “Experience” section, you have the opportunity to add a 3rd Call To Action. This one is positioned lower on your profile, this is important because it means that the person who sees it must have scrolled to the bottom of your profile and was therefore probably interested in you. This is therefore a person who has taken the time to learn about you, and who is therefore more advanced in your acquisition funnel.

For this reason, your last CTA can directly be a link that redirects the person to a page to book a call or a meeting with you.

Standardize your Branding

On LinkedIn the competition is tough, once your prospect faces your profile, you must be sure to differentiate yourself as much as possible from your competitors, and to present your added value as clearly as possible. That's where your personal branding comes in.

Having a colorful profile will help you differentiate yourself. All you have to do is choose a color code that suits you and that's it.

For example, you can choose the main color of your site, business, or brand.

To standardize your entire branding and optimize your LinkedIn profile, consider using the same color for the background of your profile photo and for your cover photo, or at least keep a color reminder.

Use your LinkedIn banner as a summary of your offer

The cover photo is a complement to your title, it is used to briefly present what you can bring to the visitor, your product or service, and how it meets a need. Given the size of the banner, it is clear that it is one of the main elements that your prospect will see. It should make you want to go further, or to click directly on one of your Call to Action.

You can see your LinkedIn banner as a trailer or trailer on Netflix 🎥, if you are not convinced by the trailer, you will surely not watch the movie. 🍿

Quick advice: avoid putting a photo of your last vacation, I am sure that the landscapes of the Bahamas are magnificent, but this space is rather dedicated to professional information, and to the value that you can bring to your customers.

And if you're not a Photoshop ace, don't worry! On Canva, you can create and customize your Linkedin banner for free. There are also templates already designed to give you inspiration, you only need a few minutes to adapt it so that it fits you and the DNA of your brand.

Do not hesitate to go and have a look, I am giving you the link here.

Complete your profile with an engaging description of yourself

After seeing the items highlighted in your “My Selection” section, as well as your latest activities (your latest posts), users will naturally come across your description.

This description has a simple role, it is the paragraph after the title. Your title, we talked about earlier, is the sentence that summarizes who you are and your value offer, directly available on your profile.Your description has the same role, except that here you have a lot more space. Use it wisely. Use this one to give more details about who you are, what you do, and how you can help the person who visits your profile. Do not hesitate to close with a Call to Action as well 👌.

Add social proof

When you search for a restaurant, you look at the number of stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️ on its Google listing, right?

It's called social proof, and it's an extremely powerful selling element.

The idea is not to be the only one to say “I am the best”, because even if you are, you certainly lack objectivity. So, using recommendations from your network can tip the balance in your favor.

To do this, do not hesitate to ask for a little help from your network. Your acquaintances (friends, colleagues, customers...) can write messages of recommendations or even certify your knowledge and skills.

This key step allows you to add value to your profile and highlight your skills.

Quick tip: Start by recommending your LinkedIn acquaintances and connections and they will surely do the same in return.

Humanize your profile thanks to the story on LinkedIn

Like on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, you can now put a story on LinkedIn.

It is very little used, and that's all to your advantage in differentiating yourself!

So I recommend using it to make your profile more dynamic.

The story of your profile will allow you to humanize your LinkedIn profile as much as possible and to break the ice 🧊⛏ directly with your prospect. A bit like saying hello and welcome to him in person when you meet him.

The idea here is to put the human back at the heart of the exchange. Never forget, people don't buy from a business. They buy from other humans.

Beyond the visual aspect, the LinkedIn story will also allow you to pitch in more detail who you are, what you do and why we should follow you.

Customize your LinkedIn URL

If you want to share your LinkedIn profile, all you have to do is send your URL. If someone clicks on it, it will come directly to your profile, do you see the importance?

Each profile has a unique URL but it is often a series of letters and numbers that make no sense. 🤯

My advice: Personalize your URL with your name + first name, it's simple, effective and easy to remember and it will allow you to optimize your Linkedin profile.

A profile with a neat URL will always give a better first impression and believe me that's important. 😉

Now that you have a profile set up like a war machine ⚔️, it's time to feed it.

It happens in the 4th and last section:

4. Feed your profile with quality content related to your business

Now that you have been able to attract a curious visitor to your profile, present your value offer to them, and arouse enough interest for them to click on your website and make an appointment with you, congratulations!

Unfortunately this curious visitor was a friend, happy to see that your profile was evolving. It is therefore time to look for other visitors, and more particularly visitors who will be sensitive to your value offer.

In other words, go and find your ideal customer profile (or Ideal Client Profile - ICP for bilinguals).

To do this, you will be able to make the most of the content creator mode, and regularly publish content related to your sector of activity. Your objective will be to arouse the interest of your audience, to attract new people to your profile (increase the size of your audience and your relationships) and to demonstrate your expertise to this growing audience.

The area of corporate branding has long since given way to the air of personal branding. It is therefore by learning to best develop your personal image that you will be able to develop the visibility of your company as well.

Congratulations on making it this far, you now have all the keys to transform your LinkedIn profile into a lead machine. 🧲

And make your personal branding a major marketing weapon!

PS: Can't wait to see you on my LinkedIn feed!

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