Most people treat LinkedIn only as a job portal where they just come in, look for jobs, apply, and wait for a reply from the company. But that is just 1% of what LinkedIn is. It's a full-fledged social media platform where you can create content, build a personal brand, generate leads, and get high-paying jobs! In the last two years, Vaibhav has generated 1000s of leads, gained more than 190,000 followers, and got job offers from top companies. But how did he correctly do that? All of this through Linkedin! He has helped many professionals and businesses leverage LinkedIn effectively to generate high-quality leads.
Building a Killer LinkedIn Profile is imperative, mainly because it builds trust among people. If you can build trust with people with a well-crafted profile, the chances of getting a job or converting a prospect into a buying customer go up! Let's understand Vaibhav's Step-By-Step System: The first thing is Knowing your objective on LinkedIn, one needs to know before starting. Is it generating leads for your business? Is it building your personal brand? Is it getting a new/better paying job? Focusing on a single objective at a time and building the profile in a manner that serves the purpose of your goal is what Vaibhav recommends.
The second is to find your Target Audience. It may sound boring, but knowing your target audience is necessary to understand what kind of people to connect with, how to optimize the profile, and how to create content on LinkedIn. Here are some examples: I help businesses generate more leads using Facebook Ads/ I help people get more traffic to their blogs using SEO. Be to the point with these three questions, and you will be able to find out your target audience. But what if you are looking for a job? Ask yourself: What are your dream companies? Who could get you a job offer? What do you do? In this case, your target audience could be hiring managers in your dream company, people with similar roles as you, people in higher positions in your dream company.
3rd step is making your Profile Searchable, Clickable, and Approachable! The goal is to make your profile searchable, clickable, and approachable. Searchable is to optimize your profile so that you appear on the search results when your prospects search for the keywords you want to rank for. Clickable is to exhibit your profile in a way that encourages your prospects to click on your profile. Being Approachable is that the prospects upon visiting your profile are motivated to approach you.
He mentions about Optimization of Description by adding Target Keywords and sharing your story; make it engaging. Optimize your Job Description by adding keywords and describe your past jobs and current job role. Add media like PDFs, Images, Certificates, or LORs to build trust. Add Service Listings and OpenToWork, choose what you provide. Choose from the list of services available. Use a Great Cover Image, which is probably the second thing that people see on your profile after your profile picture. Show who you are, who your customers are, and whom you help with your services. Add your image if possible, and also publications you are featured in to build trust.
Add Skills to your Profile, add licenses, and certifications. Add Projects, Languages, Awards, and Honors. Use the Keywords you used in your headline and the about section here as well. It will help in LinkedIn Search Rankings! Endorsements are useful to build trust. Get endorsed by colleagues and people who know you. Recommendations are powerful. However, you don't need 100s of recommendations. Vaibhav mentions, "Use Resume Worded to outrank your competition. I used this tool to see how I am faring against my competition and what keywords my competitors are using to rank higher. You can also know where you need to improve to be more searchable. It scores your profile out of 100."
As per Vaibhav, your goal should be to score as high as possible using their suggestions! But you may ask, How do I take it to the next level? As per Vaibhav, to leverage LinkedIn and get to the next level, there are no shortcuts. You have to start creating content around your niche and services. Provide much value to your target audience by giving solutions to their pain points. That way, more relevant people will discover you and your content and, in turn, help you to generate a flood of leads! The key is to be consistent with content creation on LinkedIn to see significant long term results. "Consistency is the Greatest Growth Hack" is what Vaibhav, the Growth Hacker, always talks about!
