Ep 12. LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Introverted Service Providers: Top to Bottom

Ep 12: LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Introverted Service Providers: Top to Bottom

So LinkedIn, can we just talk about this for a minute?

For some reason people find this platform still a bit too corporate, and I’ve had people say, I can’t hang out there. I just find it really boring or maybe you treat it like your online CV because you set up a profile years ago for work and haven’t really looked at it again.

And I get the reasons why people feel a bit cringe showing up on there because if you’re self-employed now you’ve got all of your like, past work colleagues, your bosses, your old school friends maybe, and you’re just like, oh my God, I don’t want ’em to see what I’m doing now.

Or I’ve had some clients say to me, I don’t want them to think, oh, who does she think she is right now?

I really, really get that, but at some point you’ve got to get past that and show up and be visible because people can’t buy from you if they don’t know that you exist or if you can’t show them what you can offer.

So if you’re someone who rolls your eyes at LinkedIn and thinks, ah, it’s not gonna work for me, it’s too corporate over there.

Or if you’ve got a profile and it is reading a bit more like a CV than a client magnet, then this episode is created for you because in this episode we’re gonna turn it into a true reflection of who you are, and offer, (so your personal brand), so that we can attract the clients that are gonna be a joy.

If you’re new here, hello. Welcome to Quiet Confidence. I’m Anita Popat, and this podcast is for us quieter ones who don’t wanna shout from the rooftops to be seen, but want to make a loud impact with our work.

Let’s get into it.

As normal, before you start optimizing your profile, we need to know the basics of like what you stand for, who you’re talking to, and what your main message is.

If you’ve listened to the previous episodes, you would’ve got a steer on that.

And obviously if you need help with that, then have a look at the offers on the website.

Right, so assuming that you know who you’re talking to, what you stand for and all that stuff, i’m gonna optimize your profile from top to bottom so you can walk through it with me.

One thing I will note is if people search for your name in Google, more often than not, people’s LinkedIn profile comes up on top of their, website. It’s worth optimizing your page as well so that you can get people who are searching for your thing on Google.

And in your LinkedIn profile settings, you can toggle which sections of your profile you want to appear on Google as well.

So that’s just a little side note, but I think that’s another [00:02:00] benefit of making sure that you’ve got a profile that’s up to date, because even if you don’t plan on using LinkedIn that much, it might be worth just updating your profile anyway in case you show up on search. 

Okay, cool. So Let’s start right at the top of your profile with your LinkedIn banner.

The default for this is normally just like a light blue with clouds, and if you look like your LinkedIn profile, it’s very text heavy. 

There’s not many places where you can kind of brand it and put your imagery.

Bearing in mind. It’s the biggest thing. And the first thing that people are gonna see when they land on your profile, you’re missing a massive opportunity if you just put a random picture or worse, leave it blank and just have the LinkedIn standard banner. 

Mine at the moment says marketing and content strategy for introverted business owners. So obviously if you’ve already optimized your Instagram profile or other profiles, then you could for sure bring that into your LinkedIn as well. We don’t wanna reinvent the wheel and obviously repetition of your message is a good thing.

So in this banner, have a transformation statement or a statement about what it is that you provide so when someone lands on your profile, it is really clear, like the change that you help people make.

 Or if you wanna be really strategic, you could change it to promote whatever you want to get signups for at that time. So I could change it to get people to listen more to the podcast.

Or if I’m gonna be launching something, I could encourage people to get onto a wait list or something like that.

 And you don’t need to go all fancy, like canva already has LinkedIn banner templates in there, so it’s really quick and easy to do.

So if you’ve got a default blue banner or just a random photo, I would really encourage you to change this because even changing this one thing at the top makes a massive difference.

Then we move down to your profile picture. Which should be a recent one. I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but there’s so many times I go to a networking event or if I’m meeting someone face to face for the first time, I’m gonna look for you based on what you look like on LinkedIn and the amount of times I’ve been catfished, like it’s not even funny.

Some people have aged a bit now, but they’ve put a profile picture of like their wedding day from 20 years ago. And when you try and match them up, or if you’re connecting with someone at an event, it’s a bit awkward to be like, oh, is this you? Or, um, I’m not sure if this looks like you. It’s a bit weird ’cause you don’t wanna say that you don’t wanna offend people, right?

And also think of it the other way, if I had a profile picture that didn’t look like me and [00:04:00] someone was thinking about approaching me, but wasn’t quite sure if it was me or not, they might not do that.

 We don’t wanna put any barriers up to people trying to approach us, in the real world. So make sure you’ve got a picture.

 Ideally not a selfie but a clear one, ideally from shoulders up, because again, on mobile, your face goes really teeny, tiny. And you wanna make sure that people can see your face when you’re connecting and commenting, which is even more important on LinkedIn because your comments can act like mini posts as well.

 Okay, fab. Now let’s move to your headline. And honestly, this is where I see the biggest missed opportunities. So your headline is that bit of text right underneath your name. And this is the bit that follows you around LinkedIn.

 It’s really important that it makes sense not only to the people that you’re connected to, but also for the people that are in your kind of second and third connections as well.

Because they’ll use that headline to make a decision as to whether they’re gonna check your page out or not. And then hopefully later connect with you as well.

So I want you to know that your headline is not your job title. Yes, you put your job title in there, but treat it more like your value proposition. LinkedIn gives you 220 characters.

And this is like prime real estate because it’s gonna show up everywhere that your name appears on LinkedIn and the first 50 characters of this are really important because your headline will cut off after that if you’re online commenting and engaging on stuff. So make sure that line makes sense on its own.

For example, my headline at the moment is marketing strategy for introverted service providers attract dream clients with a quietly confident marketing rhythm and content that oozes you. So my first bit marketing strategy for introverted providers, that makes sense on his own. 

So when I’m commenting on someone else’s post, it cuts off right after a full sentence, and it basically does what it says on the tin. If there’s people on the thread that I’m not connected to, they’ll be able to read the whole of that and see what I do really quickly.

And then the attract Dream clients with a quietly confident marketing rhythm and content that oozes you adds a bit more personality. It tells people the transformation I provide, in my style of words.

What you wanna do here, similar to Instagram, is think about your services and the keywords that people might be searching for that you wanna come up for. And create a headline that includes all of those, but also adds in a bit of personality.

So it’s got a [00:06:00] bit of you in there as well, and you don’t get mixed up with loads of other people doing the same thing as you.

Then underneath your headline, you’ve got an opportunity to add an external link for you to get people off LinkedIn and onto your email list or get them to listen to your podcast or your website or download a link magnet or something like that.

 Because it’s right at the top. Think about LinkedIn as your kind of top of funnel.

That link could take them to the nurturing stage. Whatever the next step from LinkedIn is for you. 

Then we have our about section, which always, always, always sounds like someone’s in a suit jacket and applying for a job and it doesn’t have to.

We can use some personality on LinkedIn, I promise.

This is where most people get it wrong. Like, this is where I went to school, this is where I’ve worked. This is what I do now, and it’s just boring, right? We’re not here to put your audience to sleep.

You want them to feel your personality, so here you wanna make it more about the kind of person that you’re trying to attract, and then weave the why you into it.

So always start with a hook that speaks directly to your sweet spot clients like situation.

At the moment, my first line is:

You’re a service based business owner who’s left the corporate world to pursue your passion and then realize that you’ve gotta do the marketing bit first to get the clients.

So you’re putting content out, but your audience isn’t turning into clients.

You’re winging it, you don’t have any type of plan and you post on the fly, but you want your marketing to be more strategic without feeling like you’ve gotta portray an extroverted version of yourself to turn follows into clients.

Right now you’re not sure how your quietly confident self can cut through the noise. It can. As soon as I embrace my introverted traits, I started attracting followers and clients who are a joy to work with. And I want that for you too.

And then blah, blah, blah. I go onto like how I help and how they can get in touch and stuff like that. So if you wanna read it, go to my LinkedIn profile.

The point here is that we wanna start with the problem that your ideal client is struggling with. So a lot of my clients leave the corporate world and they think clients are just gonna roll in and. Shock horror, they don’t, we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta actually put yourself out there and that’s the bit that feels really cringe or they dunno how to do it because they’ve been so used to being in the background and just doing the work or the work’s been coming in in their day job.

So I’m speaking to those and saying, I [00:08:00] get it and I get your situation. Here’s my story and here’s how I can help.

So definitely tell your story, but not your life story. Just share the parts that are relevant to your ideal client. Like things like how did you get where you are, what challenges did you face that your ideal client’s facing right now? Um, what did you learn that they’re desperate to learn?

So for example, instead of saying I graduated from university with a degree in marketing, I might say something like, after years of trying to fit in with the extroverted sales culture of traditional marketing agencies, I realized that there was a better way for us, quieter ones to attract our dream clients. So I set up by myself or something like that.

And then obviously it’s LinkedIn, so we still want to weave in our qualifications, your credibility, also your unique approach. Like this is my favorite part. What makes you different from everyone else doing the same thing as you, so you can explain a bit about that.

Mine is marketing strategy for introverts. And you wouldn’t believe, just by adding the word introverts into that, the amount of conversations it opens up because people find it really unique. So it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, it has to be really true to you, something that your sweet spot clients are looking for, and a unique way that you deliver that which is unique in itself because no one else is you.

And finally, yeah, we’re still on the about section. The thing so many people miss out is a call to action. So you’ve given them all of this blurb on like, I really understand what you’re going through and this is who I am and this is why I can help you. And this is my unique approach and this is why I believe, this is how I get you to where you’re going and it all sounds amazing. And then you stop. So if your sweet spot client’s reading all of that and think, oh my God, yeah, this is my person.

Don’t just assume that they’re gonna send you a dm, like tell them to do it. So my about section finishes with, let’s talk it through, say hello in the dms to get your journey started. And I know that might seem like, oh yeah, it’s obvious, but it might just act like a subtle invitation, and encourage them to do it there and then.

And if you want to, you can put your email address or website, underneath there, and it’ll turn into a hyperlink on mobile.

I would suggest the DM thing, because if people are on LinkedIn, they’re unlikely to come off it so the easiest next step is just to get people to DM you because it’s quick and they’re already on the platform anyway, so again, we’re removing any barriers to them getting in touch.

[00:10:00] So the about section was long on purpose because it’s really important that you make it mostly about who you’re trying to attract, and then weave in parts of why they should work with you throughout it.

 Perfect. Then we move down to the featured section. This is my favorite section because again, this is the only bit of your profile that allows you to put in any image or any kind of branding.

If you haven’t already turned it on, you can turn it on from your settings, I would highly encourage you to have that

 This is, an amazing area for you to take people off LinkedIn, where you can highlight like your offers or take them on to the next step.

 And it’s eye catching because you can add images and your own branding to it to make you look a bit different. So at the moment, I’ve got links to listen to this podcast. I’ve got links to subscribe to my newsletter. I’ll put in links to my offers, testimonials that I might have. You can put anything in there. You can highlight existing posts that you’ve got.

Um, you can add in articles, all sorts of things. So if you’re not using your featured section, I’d definitely use it because not only does it visually break up your profile and allows you to add your own branding, but it allows you to kind of take people off LinkedIn and bring them more deeply into your world.

 It’s really perfect for building your brand and showcasing your expertise. So again, if you’re promoting a particular offer or if you’ve got a blog, a lead magnet, or a podcast or a newsletter you wanna guide people to, you can put links to those in there. If you’ve got any posts that have got really good engagement or just really capture who you are, your expertise you can highlight those so that when someone lands on your profile, they can see that straight away. 

And I love this section because it’s really visual and interactive and people can click through to read all your stuff and download your resources without having to leave LinkedIn. So it’s almost like having a mini website. So think about what you want people to see when they first land on your profile and curate it with that in mind. 

Then after your featured section, you’ll see a roundup of your activity. which is basically all of your content and any comments, that you’ve made on other people’s posts.

If you’re not already posting on LinkedIn, trust me, this is the most introvert friendly platform of them all because if you don’t wanna share images or videos, you can literally just write text posts and they do well as well.

But if you do have a bank of images text and image post do even better. And they’re really easy to [00:12:00] create aswell because you just write and put a post in. There’s no faffing around to make carousels or reels or anything like you have to on Instagram.

From an introvert’s point of view, linkedIn is actually less draining, not only to look at because there’s less like visual clutter. So there’s not loads of videos or loads of images and things staring at you in the face. Like there would be an Instagram, when you’re scrolling your feed, it’s lots of text and images and lots of white space.

So in terms of overstimulation, there isn’t that much. And you can curate your feed so that you only see what you wanna see as well, which makes it even better.

 And then just to finish off content, people feel like they need to sound like they’ve just swallowed a dictionary or like they’re, the next news reporter, but you really don’t.

I post the same content that I do on Instagram, on LinkedIn.

Granted I might tweak the format a bit to suit, but essentially it’s the same words and pictures, and that’s okay. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel be a different persona than you are somewhere else on LinkedIn.

It’s really chilled and just think of it like a massive networking room where you’re just having conversations with people. And if that feels like, oh my God, I hate networking, then think of it as like Facebook 10 years ago or something.

 And if you’re really struggling with content, have a look at my content mixtape, which literally gives you a calendar of posts that you can post for the next 90 days.

So no excuses.

 That’s your posts. Then under your post, you’ll have things like your experience, your education, your skills, your recommendations. I’m not gonna take too much time on these because they’re not really that relevant.

 The bits that I’ve gone into detail are more important,

 Unless you’re applying for a job I don’t think I’ve ever scrolled to look at someone’s job history maybe that’s just me, but. If we’re talking about optimizing your profile, make sure you use keywords in here and just putting a bit of a blurb about what it is that you did, to feed the algorithm more keywords.

 And the next section, education is self-explanatory. Just choose your education in there.

Then you have a skills section. So this used to be right at the top, in the olden days, and this is where people endorsed you for loads of different skills. So if you’ve got some random ones in there, make sure you go in and edit the ones that don’t really apply and put the ones that you want to be known for right at the top.

This is really good for SEO, but also if you’ve got loads of endorsements for the skills, it shows your audience other people are actually saying that you’re good at this.

 [00:14:00] And then right at the bottom for some reason is your recommendations, which is your testimonials. This should really be at the top, but it’s not. So if you’re active on LinkedIn, I’d really encourage you to get recommendations on there because again, it adds credibility and it’s not just you saying you’re good at something, you’ve got people to back it up.

If you haven’t got any recommendations on there, or if they’re a bit old, you can actually request recommendations from people by, tapping on the plus button next to the pencil.

 So when you press that, you can ask for a recommendation or you can give a recommendation? I would do both, because sometimes if you give a recommendation to people, they return the favour.

So that’s your whole LinkedIn profile done.

 There’s another little advanced tip that I’ll give, which is to set up your public profile and URL. Which is basically your LinkedIn like web address. When you first set it up, you’ll get a random set of numbers and letters, but you can change that URL to make it your name.

When you go to edit your profile on the top right there’s a section that says public profile and URL. If you edit that, you can change it to, like, mine’s, Anita Popat instead of a random list of numbers and letters.

 Oh, and just a quick one. I promise I’ll finish this soon. I know it’s a long one, but this is an important one. So LinkedIn comments.

 If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, it works on like a tiered connection basis. So you have first connections, which are people that you are connected to. Then you have second degree connections who are people that you’re not connected to, but you have a mutual connection in common.

So they might be people who are connected with your first degree connections, and then you have third connections who you’re not connected to, but they might be connected to the second connections of the people in your network. 

So obviously the more people you connect to, the more these second and third connections grow and to grow your audience and your profile I would start with connecting with your second degree connections. ’cause you’re always gonna have like a connection in common.

Also even if you don’t have time to post, like you don’t have to post every day.

I would really encourage you to spend some time commenting on other people’s posts as well. It’s especially fruitful. I dunno why I said fruitful. 

 I never used that word, but we’ll go with it. ’cause I can’t think of anything else. Um, what I’m trying to say is, it’s especially advantageous on LinkedIn because when you comment on someone else’s profile, it’s not hidden like it is on other platforms, [00:16:00] so it goes out to a wider network.

What I mean by that is just say we’re both first connections and then you go and comment on someone else’s piece of content, who’s a second connection, meaning that you are connected to them, but I’m not.

What happens is when you comment on that post, while I’m scrolling through that feed, I might see the comment that you’ve left under that post.

So even though I’m not connected to that original poster, I’m still seeing their post because one of my first connections have commented on it.

And I’ll also see the comments of other people on that thread, which I wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t see that post in the first place.

So not only can I see your comment, but you’ve also introduced me to another potential new connection.

I hope that made sense, but what I’m trying to say in a long-winded way maybe is that on LinkedIn comments can still act as mini posts. if you spend a bit of time just commenting, your network will still see your comments popping up on their feeds as well.

So you’re still staying visible.

Okay, cool. I know this is longer than usual and I hope I haven’t blown your brain, but I just wanted to make sure that you could use this and actually optimize your profile so that it attracts your ideal clients and is actually a marketing tool for your business rather than something that’s just gathering dust.

 I’m not just saying this, I genuinely love hanging out on LinkedIn. If we’re not already connected, please find me there I’m Anita Popat.

And if you found this episode useful, please feel free to share maybe on LinkedIn with your network. Like, subscribe and keep showing up with quiet confidence so you can make that loud impact that you deserve. Speak to you soon.