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7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse

by Lewis Howes on October 19, 2011

image of linkedin icon

In my opinion, the most powerful social media profile you can use is the LinkedIn profile.

Most powerful that is, if you are looking to do more business and/or achieve your professional goals.

There’s a certain mindset LinkedIn members have when they spend time there.

They don’t browse through pictures and videos of their friends.

They don’t go there to share 140 characters of their current status.

And they don’t go there to watch panda bears sneeze or talking dogs say “I love you”.

Although other social networking sites have their place and purpose, none of them have the professionally directed power of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn means business!

Your LinkedIn profile says everything about who you are professionally.

And since it tends to rank well on Google for your name, people will read your LinkedIn profile when they want to do research on you, your product, service, or company.

In other words, what you say on your profile will have an impact on the amount of business you do on LinkedIn.

Here are 7 ways to enhance the copy on your profile to ensure that you get everything you want from LinkedIn:

1. It’s all about the headline

Headlines are everything in newspapers, magazines, and on blogs.

They are just as important on your LInkedIn profile, because the headline the first thing that shows up anytime someone does a search online. A simple way to ensure your headline doesn’t suck is to follow a simple formula.

Tell people specifically:

  • Who you are
  • Who you help, and
  • How you help them

Tell them in the fewest words possible. Make your headline compelling and you’ll increase your chances of more meaningful profile views.

2. Get personal

Although LinkedIn is the “professional” social networking site, you want to reserve the first part of your “Summary” to add a personal note about yourself.

People don’t want to look at a resume with bullet points of past sales achievements (barf!), they want to know a little bit about your background. They want to know who you are.

To achieve this, add a personal intro about your goals, what you’re passionate about, and what you love to do in life.

This small touch of transparency will help you connect on a personal level with anyone who views your profile.

3. Spell check. And then check again.

You probably have no clue how many deals are happening day in and day out on LinkedIn.

I hear success stories all of the time about people landing their dream job, getting hired for a major consulting deal, finding 7 figure investors, receiving major sponsorships, selling out tickets to live events, and more.

The potential for what you can accomplish on LinkedIn is nearly unlimited.

However, I also hear about people who are completely turned off by a prospect with a bare-bones profile, or worse — spelling mistakes. Make sure to spell check everything and have others review it to give you their feedback.

This small step could make all the difference in your interactions on LinkedIn. You what they say about those first impressions.

4. Make a call to action

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not having a call to action on your LinkedIn profile.

If you spend all of this time crafting a great message but don’t lead the viewer anywhere, all your work will have been for nothing.

In your “Summary”, or in your LinkedIn welcome video make sure to tell people what site they should go to for more information, what number to call to get a free consultation, or the best way to email you.

Don’t leave your potential customers and clients hanging. Give them a place to go next (and a reason to go there).

5. Social proof is powerful proof

Social proof helps influence others into making a “buying” decision.

LinkedIn makes this step easy by providing 3 primary sections to add social proof:

  • Education. Adding the college or university you attended provides your education credentials, and increases the value of your personal brand.
  • Awards. This section is the one place you can brag about yourself a little. Include any past accomplishments or industry awards you can think of that will increase the value of your profile.
  • Recommendations. The more recommendations you have on your profile the better. This is the best form of social proof, as it conveys credibility and authority. The best way to receive recommendations is to give them first.

6. Improve your search rankings

If you want to get more leads and sales, then the easiest thing you can do is become easily found on LinkedIn for keywords in your niche.

Think about what people would be searching for on Google to find your business, service, or product (for example, mine would be “sports” or “LinkedIn Tips”). Make sure you add your keywords throughout your LinkedIn profile in five main places.

Learn more about where to include your keywords and increase your LinkedIn SEO here.

7. Stand out from the crowd

With close to 130 million LinkedIn profiles, many of them look the same.

Don’t join the herd of boring “glamour shot” profiles. Instead, do something creative in your copy to market yourself on LinkedIn, stand out, and keep people coming back for more.

Add LinkedIn’s blog application, sync it with your twitter updates, or include other advanced applications to help your profile stand out from the rest.

Take your profile to the next level

As LinkedIn continues to grow in numbers and gain more media attention, it will prove to add more value to your brand and business.

If you want to get the most out of your efforts with LinkedIn, take the time right now to implement these 7 steps and watch your profile take off.

About the Author: Lewis Howes is the author of two books on the topic of LinkedIn and the creator of the #1 LinkedIn training course Linked Influence. Receive his free LinkedIn marketing tips and connect with Lewis at lewishowes.com.



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Copyblogger Weekly Wrap

by Johnny B. Truant on September 18, 2011

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Here’s an actual conversation I had with Brian, which I may have paraphrased and/or written while getting a massage from a clown:

Brian: “So, do you want to start writing the Wrap again?”

Me: “Sure, sounds like fun. Are people missing it and wondering when it’ll come back?”

Brian: “No, not really. We got all kinds of mail asking when the radio show was going to return, but nobody’s asked about the Wrap.”

Me: “Has anyone specifically said that they’ll complain or cancel their subscription if the Wrap does return?”

Brian: “No. Nobody has said that either.”

Me: “Okay, then.”

So, back by popular demand — you didn’t explicitly protest it, so you get it — announcing the return of the Copyblogger Weekly Wrap!

Here’s what happened this week on Copyblogger:

Monday:

Would You Trade Your Boredom for Stress to Have Your Own Business?

My wife wrestles with this decision all the time. On one hand, she would never trade the boredom of a job for the hair-pulling stress of entrepreneurship as Sonia describes it, but on the other hand she has no choice because she’s shackled to me. It’s as if I’ve taken her hostage. And I think that’s real question this post asks: When’s the last time you took someone hostage? Or it might have something to do with an entrepreneur’s mindset, but I’m not good with symbolism.

Read the full post here.

Tuesday:

What a Navy SEAL Can Teach You About Becoming a Fearless Writer

Brian’s too nice to come right out and say it (or, more likely, he wants to appear to be too nice to come right out and say it), but the moral of this post is “Don’t be such a wimp.” You can be inspired by other writers, historical role models, or contemporary badasses, but the ultimate perspective-maker for the fear you experience when writing just might be the brave men with the guns.

Read the full post here.

Wednesday:

How to Become an Unforgettable Writer

Dude. Robert Bruce copied a Charles Bukowski poem into the WordPress posting area and called it Wednesday’s content. That’s the laziest, most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard more than one Maroon 5 song. Go read it, though, because it turned the comments section into a bunch of artsy types wearing berets and smoking while holding their cigarettes “the European way.”

Read the full post here.

Thursday:

Want to Be a Better Marketer? Start by Becoming a Better Teacher

This post is a roller coaster. Girl writes book and becomes bestselling author; girl becomes teacher and thinks she sucks. Girl discovers that all teachers feel that way. Girl offers six solid tips for dealing and being awesome anyway. It’s basically the same story as in the Robert Redford movie The Natural.

Read the full post here.

Friday:

Are You Flushing Your Marketing Down the Social Media Toilet?

Ah, the social media toilet. You know that one, right? It’s the one that gets totally full of everyone else’s crap and which you can never flush from your life. Well, this week, Robert and Sonia discuss said toilet along with other mystifying items like Led Zeppelin IV and the strategy of writing bad headlines (or not). Don’t miss this one.

Read the full post here.

This week’s cool links:

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant specializes in heretical personal development and business advice. You should sign up for his free series on how to start making more money blogging whether you plan on being heretical yourself or not.



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The Idealist’s Guide to Raking in Tons of Cash

by Sonia Simone on February 21, 2011

image of poodle with sunglasses

I know what you’re thinking.

You see the title of this post and you see who wrote it and you just might assume that I’m going to ask everyone to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Again.

Maybe you figure that idealism is all well and good for pink-haired bleeding hearts, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

Sure, it’s great to donate and volunteer and do pro bono work … later. Right now, you’re trying to make the cashflow work. Right now, you need to take care of your family. Idealism is going to have to wait until you can afford it.

I totally understand this line of thinking, because I used to think the same way. The only problem is, getting trapped in this mindset will keep you broke.

Because if you think that idealism is something that you choose instead of making money, you’re kind of missing the boat.

How to make more money

Q: How do you increase your business’s bottom line?

A: You get more customers, or you start charging a price that generates more profit.

Q: But how do you do either (or both) of those things?

A: You find a way to help more prospects to become customers, or you do a better job helping your existing customers.

The bigger the problem you can solve or the more people you can solve it for, the more money you stand to make. That’s the fundamental principle behind a good value proposition. Simple, even if it isn’t always easy.

Where we can sometimes go off track

Somewhere along the line, it gets hard. No matter how great your ideas or how mad your skills, you’ll have some tough weeks.

That’s when it can be easy to decide that the whole “being good” thing can wait for a better week to come along.

You know what happens next. Companies start to cut corners, or abuse their employees (who then go on to abuse their customers). What used to be cool and delightful gets a little … less delightful.

Those companies aren’t evil. (Well, most of them aren’t.) They’re just focused — just like you might be.

When you want and need money, you focus on what can make more of it for you. And if you aren’t careful, you can forget that the best way to increase profits is to help more people.

You might start to make decisions based on spreadsheets.

Which is another way to say you start to make decisions based on fear.

You ask, “How can we make these numbers add up in a better way?” And when you do that, the idealistic vision you started with begins to look like a naive dead end.

Let’s talk about a real business

Is it a good financial move to pay four or five times the going rate for African jewelry if you want to resell it in America?

Business 101 says we’ve got to control costs. Helping the vendors or artists you buy from is nice if you’re a billionaire with good hair like Richard Branson. But it looks pretty unrelated to your business’s profitability.

But take a look at what Keza does every single time it works with an artist in, for example, Rwanda. They do, in fact, pay their artists more than the going rate. A lot more. And they make a big profit on every sale.

The artists win. Keza wins. And the win is bigger than that, because Keza’s two missions are to improve Africa’s image in the eyes of the West (eyes that are used to only seeing misery and disease in charity commercials) and to bring the continent some of that “trade, not aid” that Nelson Mandela and Bono keep talking about.

Keza could have leveraged the different costs of living, as many companies do, for easy profit. Paid the street value of pennies and come back home to sell the necklaces for dollars.

From the spreadsheet perspective, that would have made good financial sense. Spend less, make more. Worry about profits now; worry about helping Africa later.

That gets you to being Cost Plus. Which is, I’m sure, a perfectly nice company. But it’s not a remarkable one.

Keza is nothing like Cost Plus.

Keza gets its jewelry into red carpet events, and luxury stores like Barney’s. They’re not chasing the lowest common denominator — they’re finding work that’s exceptional, and delivering it to the wealthiest buyers on the planet.

Keza has a better product, and it tells a better story.

Without Keza’s idealistic mission, its great win-win-win story, and a superior product, could it achieve the high status and esteem required to sell at those high prices?

The perfect balance: Profitable Idealism

If you’ve read any of my posts or taken my courses, you know I’m big on win-win.

I’m not willing to “leverage” when that means that I make a lot and someone else gets a crummy deal. I don’t feel good if my kid is thriving at the expense of someone else’s kid.

In fact, my kind of thinking led a lot of people to tell me I’d never be really successful — that I didn’t have the killer instinct.

No one tells me that any more. (Not, you know, that I’d gloat or anything. Because that would be wrong.)

So ANYWAY, when our own Johnny B. Truant and fellow Copyblogger contributor Pace Smith announced Profitable Idealism, I may or may not have attempted some celebratory cartwheels. It wasn’t very dignified, but fortunately no one was watching except the cat.

What’s Profitable Idealism?

Profitable Idealism is a comprehensive guide to creating a business that makes money (maybe even big money) and makes the world a better place.

I’ve known Johnny and Pace for a couple of years now, and I think they’re the right people to teach this course. They both have highly profitable businesses, and they both have a mission to change the world in their own unique way. (They’ve also brought in a bunch of brainy, wise folks to help teach the course — I know nearly everyone involved, and they’re all amazing.)

Johnny started with the profit side of things and Pace began as an idealist, but they ended up in the same place: with businesses that succeed because they’re focused not just inward, but also outward.

They put Profitable Idealism together because there’s more to creating a profitable idealist business than just slapping a charitable venture on top of your existing business. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll end up with an “idealist” side that drains time and money from your business instead of bolstering it. Or, you’ll end up doing a lot of good, but will find yourself unsatisfied and unable to find the true win-win that allows you to make any money for yourself.

Pace, Johnny, and their six detailed case studies (Jared Angaza from Keza is one of them) can show you how to do it right, so that you end up with an entity that truly helps everyone … including you.

(And if you don’t put yourself into the equation, my friend, that’s not idealism … it’s just being a chump.)

Copyblogger is happy to be a marketing partner for Profitable Idealism and the links on this page are affiliate links. As you’ll find if you spend any time with us, we don’t back anything we don’t believe in — and this course couldn’t possibly fit better with our “Third Tribe” approach.

The course consists of:

  • Five live course sessions with Q&A,
  • Six case studies of profitable idealist role models that you can steal all kinds of great ideas from,
  • Extensive interaction, and …
  • … if you beat tomorrow night’s pre-registration deadline — a shot at one of 114 great bonuses.

Pre-registration for Profitable Idealism ends tomorrow, Tuesday 2/22, at 11:59pm Pacific time. After that time, the price of registration goes up by $200 (which is still actually a really good deal), so if you want in, now’s the time!

Check out Profitable Idealism today. Learn how to make more money, and change the world.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger Media. Share your idealistic insights with her on twitter.

P.S.

No, really, you’ll spend a lot more money if you wait until after tomorrow. Go check it out now.

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The Easy-to-Use Tool that Helps You Build a Breakthrough Blog

by Zack Grossbart and Justin Evans on October 7, 2010

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As a digital branding and marketing agency, our company has encouraged, coached, and cajoled clients over the years on the importance of blogging for building traffic, buzz, and organic search.

We watched some clients grow by leaps and bounds, attracting hundreds of thousands of blog visitors per month.

And we watched others clients stumble along without ever gaining the momentum we were working for.

Of course there are a lot of factors that drive success or failure. But among the blogs that succeeded on a huge scale, we noticed two common factors.

First, the breakthrough blogs had a strong editorial calendar. And second, they used a thoughtful, strategic approach to managing editorial content.

What is an editorial calendar, and why do you need one?

An editorial calendar is just a fancy term for a publishing schedule.

If you blog regularly, you should look ahead at least one month and make some decisions about which posts you want to publish on what dates.

It’s really that simple.

An editorial calendar is the foundation of strategic blogging. That little bit of planning goes a surprisingly long way toward getting the most audience reach from your blog content.

1. An editorial calendar lets you plan ahead

By planning your posts ahead of time, you drive perseverance.

An editorial calendar encourages blogging as a habit, wards off writer’s block, and ensures that you never miss another deadline.

It’s a small, subtle thing, but you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes in your mindset.

2. An editorial calendar adds structure to your creativity

Many bloggers worry that an editorial calendar will straitjacket their creativity. Actually, the opposite is true.

Writing comes to many of us in waves. Struck by a bolt of inspiration, a blogger can write two or three posts in an afternoon.

That’s fine — keep writing about what inspires you. Then use your editorial calendar to publish each post according to a plan that keeps your target audience in mind.

Staring at that blank screen and trying to come up with a topic can be one of the most stressful aspects of blogging.

But you’ll find that when you make those decisions weeks in advance, you actually come up with more and better ideas. You’ll be more creative, not less.

3. You can take a great concept further

An editorial calendar is a powerful tool for maximizing the reach of your content, while removing the pressure of having to generate new concepts for each post.

Say you’ve got a great topic in mind, one you know your readers care a lot about. There’s no reason to blow it all in one day.

Would it make a valuable series, parceled out over a period of time and then gathered into a content landing page? Could you run some interviews or line up some guest posts on the topic? Or go multimedia and round up a few engaging videos or cartoons on the subject?

Whether you write everything yourself or use guest writers, planning ahead lets you group your content more effectively. Once you start looking at your blog a month at a time, you can develop patterns and make sure your content is well-balanced among all the readers you serve.

4. You can be proactive and capitalize on search trends

When you pair planning with a strong foundation in SEO, you start to build your audience highly efficiently.

An editorial calendar helps you pay better attention to key outreach strategies, such as blog post titles and link building. At a more advanced level, you can use it to plan and time posts related to your target audience’s search behaviors.

Capitalizing on search activity can be as simple as timing posts and topics to synch with public holidays or product launches. Or it can be as complex as doing deep keyword analysis and planning content around trending search terms that will deliver maximum traffic to your blog.

Why Stresslimit developed the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin

After years of hacking together editorial calendars for our clients, using Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs, we wound up in a long discussion with our close friend (and brilliant engineer) Zack Grossbart.

Beyond our mutual excitement about blogging and the power of editorial calendar strategy, we shared a passion for open source projects and wanted to give back to the WordPress community. We also wanted to develop a tool that would make our lives and coaching our clients more efficient, easier, and simply cooler.

Our clients were excited about the idea of using an editorial calendar. But there was no single tool that enabled us to eliminate “busy work” and free up more time for strategizing and creativity.

We were also in synch with Zack on our love for creating simple, intuitive interfaces that help people manage complex behaviors.

An eight-month collaborative project was born: co-developing, co-designing and re-iterating the WordPress Editorial Calendar.

We’re excited to announce the launch of version 1.0 of our editorial calendar plugin, which is (in our humble opinion) the killer tool for managing and driving the success of any blog — from the small and personal to the large and corporate.

We invite you to take the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin for a spin at this link. It’s free, and we think you’re going to get a lot out of it.

Here are some of the things you can do with the plugin

  • See a month’s worth of posts at a glance.
  • Juggle your calendar by simply dragging and dropping posts from day to day.
  • Quickly edit your posts’ titles, contents, and publishing times.
  • Publish posts or manage drafts.
  • Instantly see the status of your posts.
  • More easily manage posts from multiple authors.

And you can do all of that right from the calendar interface itself. It’s simple and intuitive.

No plugin alone can make you a brilliant strategist. But the WordPress Editorial Calendar is a tool that will encourage more strategic habits, thinking, and behavior. Check it out here.

About the Authors: Justin Evans is the founding partner of design branding and online marketing agency Stresslimit. His clients include Fortune 500 companies, startups, NGOs, and global thought leaders. Zack Grossbart is a programmer and author whose sensitivity to user experience and design has driven success for many Fortune 500 companies. He blogs about code and about user experience design, and is releasing his first book as a free serialized release at The One Minute Commute.

Editor’s Note: We use Stresslimit’s editorial calendar plugin here on Copyblogger, and we think it rocks. There’s no affiliate relationship, we just found it a nifty tool and think you’ll get a lot out of it.

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