If you work LinkedIn well, you will find that you attract people to your profile almost like a spider in a web. This section is all about positioning yourself as an industry expert, the person people go to when they need a specific skill, product or service. The more you can climb the niche ladder the better, the ladder contains 4 descriptions, and it’s about moving yourself from being in with the crowd to the top of the tree, once you get there you can charge more for what you do and compete with less people.
Many people who do what you do are generalists, along with about 70% of the market, these people cut prices to compete, and they are fighting to win new clients claiming to be everything to everyone. These people earn the least amount of business and will always be struggling financially because they have no defined niche or expertise. This may be you, or not, either way the quicker you move out the generalist space the better.
You find generalists in every sector, from Recruitment to Accountancy to Printing to Marketing. Think about who you compete with and also analyse your own business are you one of hundreds of generalists? If so you will find it harder to stand out on LinkedIn.
The next bracket up is what are known as ‘Specialists’, these are people who have chosen to specialise in a particular area and consists of about 25% of the market. For example, there is a Financial Advisor that both of us know, who specialises in helping families with children who have special needs. He is the only person in Ireland who specialises in this challenging field and knows how best to help families who need it, he is able to get grants, apply for funding and ensure that the children have a brighter financial future by working with the parents. As a result he has a name in the market, is referred on a regular basis and is becoming a go-to expert locally on this subject.
By having a LinkedIn profile that reflects your speciality you are going to come up first in specific searches and have significant credibility against your competition, people who specialise can gain significant market share in their space. What could you do to specialise more?
When you become an authority on a particular subject then you can start to really ramp up your visibility and credibility, there are only a small percentage (3-4%) of people in your field who elevate themselves to this level. There is no co-incidence that the word ‘authority’ has the word ‘Author’ in it! If you want to become an authority or be seen as an expert in your field, then the best activity you could work on is writing a book.
You will see that your credibility skyrockets, you will attract people to your profile on LinkedIn and other social media sites, and you will be booked more for both consultancy work and speaking opportunities if you are considered an Expert or an Authority in your chosen line of work.
When we use the word celebrity, it does not mean Hollywood film star or pop sensation, it means that you are the number 1 go-to person globally for what you do. Take Life Coaching and NLP, Tony Robbins would be considered the ‘celebrity’ in this niche, take the world of networking, Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI (Business Network International) would be considered the ‘celebrity’ in this niche. Both of these people have written multiple best-selling books and are world famous.
Tony Robbins packs out conferences and seminars with tens of thousands of people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to see him, he charges infinite amounts for appearances at corporate events, personal consultations and more. Why? Because the world sees this person as the ‘go-to’ person in their field, less than 1% of people who do what you do ever get to this level of status. If you really want to know how to become a Key Person of Influence, we recommend the book ‘KPI’ by Daniel Priestly. This is all about finding and dominating in a particular niche.
So how does this all relate to LinkedIn? The next 10 tips are all going to focus on how you can start to position yourself on LinkedIn as someone who knows what they are talking about in your chosen field of expertise.
Share articles, blogs, reports, presentations and videos that relate to your industry and be the first to post about them. This will help to position you as someone who has their finger on the pulse and is in the know about your field of expertise. There should be about one article per day going up to show that you know what you are talking about.
If you cannot be on LinkedIn every day but you want to guarantee that there is great content feeding your LinkedIn profile (and of course other online networks), then using a free automation tool such as Twitterfeed will help you to look like you are always using LinkedIn and feeding great information to your network.
You use Twitterfeed by finding a blog or article stream that you like, are happy with and constantly puts out great content you would be happy to share. If you are in Business Coaching you might choose HBR (Harvard Business Review), if you are in Online Marketing you might choose Hubspot etc.
Then you follow the 3 simple steps on Twitterfeed once your account is set up and choose the frequency of posts plus which online sites you want to feed the latest articles out to, and you are done. This way you can always share information first and show your LinkedIn contacts that you are on top of your industry, helping you to position yourself as someone who is in the know all the time.
You can learn more about Twitterfeed here: http://twitterfeed.com I also recommend Buffer which you can find at bufferapp.com
If you don’t find the time or don’t have the inclination to write a book, then blogging can be one of the best ways to position yourself as an expert. In relation to LinkedIn you can use your status updates to get your blog into Groups, into your status updates and shared with your wider networks. Blogging not only helps position you as an expert in your field, it also helps your website to appear in search rankings on Google and helps to build a list which you can then market your product or service to.
Always remember that blogging is about sharing great content for free, and in no way should it be used for selling. Great blogs get shared, they increase your visibility and of course your credibility. You will generate new leads and prospects from blogging and your LinkedIn profile can be used to share your blog. You can add a link to your profile on LinkedIn both in the contact section of your Personal Profile, a link on your Company Page and also a link added to your Personal Summary.
If you don’t have the time to write articles then use sites such as http://Fiverr.com to outsource this to people happy to write great content for websites for as little as $5.00.
We already talked about the importance of keywords for your professional headline, always ensure that the main niche keywords run throughout your LinkedIn profile, summary, current job(s) and company page. If your niche is very specific, not too many people are going to pop up in Linkedin searches when they go looking for someone that does what you do. This will help you to position yourself as an expert in your niche.
Free is a great way to get people interested in your niche, giving away free reports, free content, free resources and tools is a fantastic way to show people that you know what you are doing in your space. You’ll see in the free chapter which is being given away at the end of this book that there are 3 free business templates to use which help business owners to become better givers, and by doing so they grow their business. This positions Sam as a person who knows all about giving to grow a business. What could you give away in your business? A great place to give away freebies is through your LinkedIn profile.
Even if you are new to public speaking, you can use your LinkedIn profile to position yourself as a Speaker on your subject. Even if you have only done a few local events, and even if they were not paid you can really start to use your LinkedIn presence to get invited to speak at more events. You can offer yourself as a speaker through organisations, networks, professional bodies and more. Your LinkedIn profile could get you booked for many speaking engagements especially if you choose a niche that few people occupy.
If you are going to dominate in your chosen field of expertise then you should learn the skills you need to present in front of an audience, you can highlight your speaking topics and experience on your LinkedIn profile. This tip won’t be for everyone, but if you work LinkedIn well and focus on this aspect of your niche then you will find that you get booked more and more, and you can start charging more for fees to speak. We regularly get booked to speak at conferences and events as experts in LinkedIn, very few people speak well on this subject and both of us are regularly booked through our online networks to speak and consult with companies who are looking to generate more business from LinkedIn.
You can use the Groups to your advantage by looking out for discussions started by other members in the group where people are looking for help on a subject which you know a great deal about. So if you are into reducing costs for companies, you could join the group ‘Cost Reduction Strategies’ on LinkedIn and keep a look out for posts where people are asking for help in reducing a specific aspect of their business. Always remember to respond with useful advice, in a non-sales way to help the other person solve their issue.
Active members of groups are profiled by LinkedIn and other members of the group will see you regularly contributing to help others. The groups function can be a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field and will help you to generate new clients.
What we would like you to do now after reading this book is to check your current number of times your profile has been viewed in the last ‘X’ number of days. It will be different for every reader as some of you will be more active on LinkedIn than others. Write down that number, this is now going to be referred to as your ’Visibility Factor’.
Our goal is to ensure that your profile views is increasing all the time and that you are attracting people to your profile through all of the techniques we have shared here. The great news is that whatever your number is today, it is going to go up considerably by just taking a few small simple steps to increase your visibility.
Now look in the same place, on your home page on the right hand side you will see how many times you have appeared in search results. When you choose ‘See More’ then you will be taken to a page full of statistics about your LinkedIn visibility. This will tell you how well your new profile is working, based on the keywords that you have used in your profile. The more times you appear in search results the more likely that someone will connect with you, find you or do business with you. 5.7 billion searches took place on LinkedIn in 2012, our goal is to ensure that you appear in more of these search results from now onwards than when you did before you read this book. Write down now the number of times you have appeared in search results in ‘X’ number of days and keep tracking it as the weeks go on. You will see a dramatic change in your search appearances.
LinkedIn likes to email its members with regular updates about what is happening in your network of contacts. So if someone changes a job title, or starts a new position in a new company or is celebrating a work anniversary, then LinkedIn will share this via an email summary. They will also share when people add new items to their profile. The key to appearing on this ‘Updates’ is to regularly change your profile. You might tweak your professional headline, you might slightly change your job title even if you are in the same company and role for example. Either way keep your profile up to date, and frequently change your information, as every time you do your name appears in the Activity Feed and you will also stand a chance of being in the update email that LinkedIn sends to your contacts.