Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Estherof IPA Group, bringing premiere online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of Stump Social Media training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Welcome back to another episode of the Monday morning marketing podcast. Today we're joined by Niaomi Johnson, expert LinkedIn profile writer, who has been writing profiles on LinkedIn for a good number of years. And we're going to be talking about L everaging LinkedIn for Business Success. Welcome, N oomy.
Hi, thank you for having me.
You're very welcome. Why LinkedIn, first of all? There'sloads of profiles or loads of platforms out there.
Why LinkedIn? Yeah, each platform has its own flavor, itsown reason for being. Linkedin is the one for business where the expectation iswe are going to talk about business. If you are on Facebook, you will run intopeople who are there solely for a personal reason and they will not appreciateyou reaching out. If you're trying to get into a corporate, for example, andyou find the secretary of the CEO on LinkedIn, she is not going to be bestpleased with you marketing to her or promoting anything to her because that'sher personal space. I often think of it like centre parks, which is a UKholiday park, the swimming pool and the trees and the cabins and all of thosedifferent things. Our ideal clients pretty much go there and they go there withtheir families and their dogs. If you walked up to them on a Saturday afternoonand said, Oh, by the way, I sent you an email. Did you get it? Or, Oh, I runthis business. You run that business. Can we have a meeting? They're going tobe pretty annoyed at you because that's a personal holiday. It's time for them.
They're not in business mode. You'd have to be very, verycareful with managing that relationship. Whereas with LinkedIn, you areeffectively at a business networking event. Someone is on there for businessreasons and it's a clear, easy approach and you're not going to have any ofthose social issues of stepping over the line.
When people have a personal profile on LinkedIn, do youthink they're more open to engaging in a conversation? Or does it take acertain type of posting or certain amount of information that goes in theirsummary, perhaps, that means that they're prepared to be open to conversationlike that?
It depends what you're there for and what they're there for.If they are clearly looking for a job, then you're probably not reaching out tothem anyway because they aren't your ideal customer. There is a lot that goeson at the moment where people are sending cold emails to people saying, Hey, Ican help you with your website. There's no relationship there. I think we allget those messages and think, Oh, for goodness sake, I just connected with you.Thinking you're going to add value to my network. You're going to be aninteresting person and commenting, sharing content, but actually you're justselling it to me. That is the biggest no, no on LinkedIn. It shows a real lackof sophistication. Interestingly enough, the unopened messages that I have inmy other inbox, LinkedIn has two inboxes where people have paid for the emailto me who are literally cold marketing to me. What surprises me every time is Ihave seven highest ones that are just the recent ones that are showing are allpeople saying, I can do your social selling for you. And it's like, Well,clearly you can't because you're giving me a cold message.
It's very much it is about building relationships. It's verymuch about building a network in your community. Yes, it comes down to the postthat you're sharing. And more importantly, if you want to convert them tosales, it comes down to your LinkedIn profiles.
Yeah, because just when you were talking about the messagesthat we get, I absolutely love getting messages from people. I'm beingsarcastic here. I can't pick up on the tone. I love getting messages frompeople offering the same services that I do. Just read my bio, read my profile,and you wouldn't have wasted a message to me because there is absolutely nopoint in reaching out to me to do all these things that I already do.
Yeah, and obviously it's automated software that's doing itas well, which will get you into trouble with LinkedIn anyway, because it goesagainst their policies, because it goes against the ethos of the platformitself, which says everything, doesn't it really? Yeah.
And have you seen the platform changing recently? BecauseI've noticed personally that a lot more people are sharing more personalinformation about their trips and they're using emojis and they're using loadsof hashtags like they do on other social media platforms. Are people not usingLinkedIn correctly or has LinkedIn changed?
Yeah, LinkedIn is always evolving. I think that the emojithing, you bang on with that. That is something that's coming in a lot. You'llsee in my headline, I've decided to use them instead of the slash. I think itis because color is so important and it does lift a profile. It lifts out ofthe mundane of words and having to read the words and it creates an impression.I think these are really good. Somebody said yesterday on a talk I was giving,they said, Oh, it's becoming like Facebook. You're expected now to sharepersonal things. I actually push back on that. And I said, Actually, I reallydisagree with a lot of things that people are sharing. They want engagement ontheir posts and they want to feel popular and they want to have followers. Now,my big thing is as an expert entrepreneur, as a thought leader, you need to bedoing pay... You want this paid business and you want to be spending 70 % ofyour time doing the job. If you're spending all your time doing marketing, Iwould suggest that you're not keeping your expertise going anymore because yourexpertise are starting off with fledgling in marketing.
You're not in the coal face doing the job anymore. Getting10,000 followers is vanity statistics, in my opinion. If you cannot convertthat into paid business and you're not spending 70 % of your time doing theclient work, then you are literally wasting time and you're caught up insomething that isn't worthwhile doing. When it comes to people sharing morepersonal content, I would question how is that personal content actuallyleading to them actually getting paid business? Or is it actually just making themfeel like, Oh, when I got 10,000 comments and views on this post, I'm doingreally well. And actually selling really quite vulnerable stuff in order foryour business to work. I just think you're just selling off the most privateparts of your sofa not actually any great return. I'm not a big fan of doingthat. I think it's about sharing valuable content that helps to solve a problemand signpost people and bringing people to an awareness that they have aproblem in the first place, that the status quo that they're living in, thepayment they're living in isn't normal, that there are solutions. And I'll tellyou, I saw this last year, someone shared a post about their wife having, Ithink, four miscarriages and how he felt about it and all that thing.
And it had nothing to do with his business message. He wasjust sharing it. I thought, It's not your story. It's not your pain. It's yourwife's pain. And you're selling it out in order to get yourself clicks andeverything. Your profile is not even customised properly that someone wouldfollow you and want to buy from you if they just felt the sympathy of comingthrough to look and see what you're about. And if it's not connected with whatyou're writing about on your profile, if you're a cancer survivor and you putthat in your headline and you post about it, and it's part of your mission andyour why and how you relate and connect with people, brilliant, go for it.That's really great. But what this guy did is he put it up, but he was tryingto get a popular post. He hadn't any consideration for how triggering thatwould be for a woman who has come back to work in the last three, four weeks orlonger of, I've just had a miscarriage and I'm now putting myself back to workand I've logged on to LinkedIn. I'm going to be really positive today and getmyself going again, and just how triggering that would be.
And it had no purpose. And if it's not got a purpose ofactually helping that person, yes, get triggered, but move forward, why is itthere? I decided with this theory and this annoyance this type of post that Iwas going to post up about my graduation last year from an MBA. And instead ofjust saying, Hey, I've got an MBA. Here's my photo of me graduating just sopeople who know me would care. I decided I was going to test this out and I puton there age six, I got told this and age 13, this happened. All thesediversities that come to me with the message being, don't let anybody tell youthat you should be, don't let anyone put you down. I did it very specificallyfor a very specific reason. But actually it does relate to the general businessmessage I have in some respects. I got hundreds of comments, I got 10,000 plusviews. I proved the point. But also it didn't lead to any new profile visitsand it didn't lead to any new leads or connections. Okay, that's my story. Itwasn't highly, highly emotional, painful thing that goes massive.
It weren't massive enough for me, but it proved the pointthat if it's not leading to business and it's not part of your mission, whyshare such personal content? Let's not be like Facebook. Let's keep the messagealigned.
Yeah, the Facebookfication of LinkedIn is a real thing andI'm glad that Esther has brought it up and you've been able to answerresponsibly about it. Linkedin has obviously for many years been used as aportal for jobs, but it's now a marketing tool for people who are happy inthis. But I also see it, hopefully for hopefully correctly, as a search engineoptimization tool as well. One of the top reasons that people approach aspecialist such as yourself is because they want to get found for what they dobest. Where would you tell them to particularly work on in the profile? Howquickly can they see some traction after they've made these changes?
Yeah, absolutely. It's all about relationship at the end ofthe day. You can meet someone at a business networking event and they will gothrough the normal process of I'm going to connect with the people that I metat the networking, which is absolutely fantastic thing to do. If we had moretime, I'd share stories on that, of just how good it is to do. You can bet thatsomeone you met in networking is going to connect with you. If you're at thatnetworking event and you do a 60 second pitch, there's only so much you couldcommunicate and most people will probably forget it. When they come to yourprofile, they are looking, they might just be going through the clicks of it. Butthat's somebody you want to interrupt in their day to have them go, Oh, this isactually more than I thought, or This is really good. The idea being that thatperson can really understand what you do and can refer you. And if someonecan't refer you, if they don't understand the problem that you solve. So youcan meet someone face to face and they can buy from you and the LinkedInprofile will never come into the equation.
But, and this is something I talk a lot to the privateinvestors that I speak to, there are always hidden decision makers. And thereare people who say, Oh, why are you buying that from Esther? My mate can dothat for you for cheaper. But actually, the problem that they're thinking isgetting solved is not the problem that's getting solved. Actually, Esther isthe best person to do it, not their mate who they think is. And so when thatperson, that hidden decision maker who has the ear of your prospects, the earof your client, who will cause these questions to happen, when we actually needto speak to them as well in the profile, that when they come to it, they go, Ohyeah, okay, I get the problem. I get why this is the person's the expert. I gotit. So it all forms part of the marketing mix. When someone googles you, yourLinkedIn profile will come up as part of that mix and they will expect to lookat it and see something that makes sense as a basic. And then also on the otherside is, sometimes you can literally just have a LinkedIn profile working foryou and you don't need the website and other things, depending on who you areand what career you're doing.
That's controversial then.
It depends on the type of business. It really does and whoyou are. And if you're still figuring out your message and who you are and whatyou're selling, and actually a website company is going to be really like, Ohmy gosh, it's so unclear, I don't know where to start. So they'll actually wantyou to test your message and be confident on LinkedIn first and then come withsomething very precise. So LinkedIn profile is so key because for every pieceof content you send, share, and every comment you make on someone else'scontent, and every message you send is going to drive someone to that LinkedInprofile, and you are going to want to make an impression quickly. Your LinkedInprofile for anyone visiting is a distraction to their day and they will beasking, Is this a good use of my time or is it a rabbit hole I don't want to godown? So as soon as someone comes to the profile, you want to set context. Whatis the conversation I am here to have with this person? And it needs to grabtheir attention like, Oh, this is who you are and what you do.
Background image is really vital for that. And thenanchoring that again with what you're saying in the headline, This is theproblem that I solved. So I don't necessarily want to know that you're abusiness consultant or a business coach. Sometimes putting the title isrelevant just to anchor things down. But actually, I want to hear the movement.What is the development and the time? What is it you're going to help me with?And then obviously, anything you put in the headline has to be anchored again intothe About section. And the About section needs to feel like a conversation,like I'm meeting you. The last thing I want is a sales message. And the lastthing you want to do is assume that every person coming to your profile needsthe help that you are offering because they're not. Only about 10 % maybe ofthe people that you meet and have your networking is actually an ideal client,but everybody's someone that can recommend. So when you actually raiseawareness of the problem that you solve and you stand for something very clear,that will have people go, Oh, my goodness, right. I need that.
Oh, my goodness. And they identify with it. Or they go, Oh,my God. My friend needs that. I should send them this. Send them this profilethat really explains it. Or you'll leave them with something that the next timethey're at a business networking event, someone mentions that problem and goes,Well, have you tried this? This is actually the right way to go about it. Andactually they're just quoting your LinkedIn profile. T hen they either rememberyour name and recommend you, or the awareness that you've just gone to that newperson, their brain is now so primed, and of course, that we're all connectedand linked anyway, it's very likely that they will come across your profilewithin two weeks and go, Oh, my God. That's what this person is saying. And itwill draw them in. So there's some really vital elements you want to get righton your profile, but it has to feel like a conversation. It has to feel like arelationship. And I have to feel like I'm getting to know you, not just being,I do this, I do this, do you need help with this? I'm here, I can do this, thisis my background.
Because why am I reading it? Why do I care about you untilyou become relevant to me?
Wonderfully put. It was actually. How about the peculiarcharacters out there that are known for doing a number of things? Not that I'mthinking of anybody in particular, me. When you wear several hats.
At.
The end of the day. Just a random example, digital marketer,speaker, journalist, podcaster.
Free and her.
With that too. What do you do then? Because you want to tryand get a diverse audience because you've got all these little fingers in pies.How would you go about doing it that way?
Okay. Well, I would obviously say with the podcast, are youtalking about digital marketing? Yes. Exactly. It's one route to market. You'restill solving your problem. It's just a route to market. I can't remembereverything you just said. My brain has just forgotten it. Specifically,conceptually, I get it. Everything you've just said is a route to market.They're all the same thing. It's about standing in that instance, and I'll talkabout the other instance, which is different. In that instance, it's aboutbeing really clear about the problem that you solve, and then these are my waysof doing it. What you can do, and you'll see on my LinkedIn profile, I madethis update about six weeks ago, wanting to take advantage of the new functionis that I have the profile company and then I have split myself up into jobroles underneath it. That's one thing you can do. Only three will actuallyshow. You can have more, but you want to keep your three as the main ones youwant attention for. A lso, you can add a piece of rich content media under itas well. So you want to have your call to action like I've got asked for aLinkedIn profile review.
Those things are standing out. So you can split yourself upinto the job role and say podcast, but actually, what is the problem thepodcast is there to solve? And what guests do you want? And who do you want tohave approach you? And how can I find out more about it? And how can I listento it? All of that can go into that entry and you've got 2,000 characters,including spaces to actually to really just pitch the podcast and what you wantfrom it. And it is part of the company of the digital marketing because it's aroute to market. So it's about seeing them as routes to market rather thanseparate things. When you are somebody who does have separate things, what youwould do there is you would put in the different entries in the jobs, theexperience entries, and depending on what you're pushing at any one time, youcan adjust. If the entry is date to present, is still open, the order can bemoved. I have a client who every fortnight, every week, he promote somethingdifferent and it's different one of his businesses. And so we just move it, theorder, so that if I see that piece of content in that week, that's the thingthat's going to be at the top.
And so sometimes private investors are doing something withone of their companies that are really pushing. And so then usual, I'm aprivate investor, do you want me to buy your business? We'll just drop down andthat company will come up and their position in it will be the main thing. Sothat's one thing you want to do is consider having the different job positionsfor the different things you're in. But also, and I've illustrated it just now,is you want to chunk up. You are a unique individual. You are not a fragmentedindividual. You are unique in all of these things tied together, these threadsall tied together. You are the threads of the same jumper. I've never said thatbefore, but it's effectively the same thing. You are not fragmented. You are notmultiple people. Therefore, when I talk to you about the different things thatyou do, I will be able to chunk up and find the overarching theme that makesyou you and makes you stand the problem that you stand for. It's that in theabout section that we want to tie all together and we want to point atdifferent things.
One lady yesterday came to me, she's a life coach and she'salso an executive assistant. It was in a group session, so I didn't really getdown to the nitty gritty of it. But if she is intending to stay as an executiveassistant, and actually she really enjoys that and she enjoys the lifecoaching, there's no reason to hide that whatsoever because a lot of people,they do want two jobs. You can say you like both. Actually, you can make itpart of your story and your reason for being and your reason for working with acertain type of client. So when you pitch it just right, all of these thingslike, I'm a life coach, but I always have a full-time job or part time job,becomes part of your branding message. And it actually gives you much moreclout and stability and it really can resonate with your audience. And peopleoften say, do I need two profiles? I've never come across it that somebodywould, unless they're in a job where the job has sat on down and said, this ishow you will present yourself on LinkedIn, and this is how things should be.
If that is the case, set them up a separate LinkedIn profileand let them be responsible for your connections in that regard. If you go tonetworking on their behalf or you tend to Zoom on their behalf, then thatprofile comes up. But generally, it's always one profile and there's somethingoverarching that allows all of these things to come together. Wow.
How do you follow on from that? There's just so much that.
You just.
Don't really think about whenever you open up your LinkedIn.If you're opening it for the first time, if you're listening and you don't evenhave a LinkedIn profile, these are all things that can help you get set up. Ifyou have one, you've had it for a long time, go back, review it. We said,things have changed. There are other things on it you can add links in now,right? You can add a link into your profile.
There's different pages you can go for now. Company pages,services pages. It's just getting bigger and bigger. It's becoming quite themonster is our LinkedIn.
Don't use it like Facebook. Yeah. It was 2012, they tookservice pages away. Oh, no, it was different things that they've had, eventsthey've had, and they've taken it away. Then COVID happened, they broughtevents back. It's quite interesting. But the profile, and I totally agree withyou, Esther, about reviewing your LinkedIn profile, because I had the samecontent on my profile for about seven years, I think, and the market itselfevolved. Just saying, Hey, everybody, wake up, you need a LinkedIn profile wasno longer enough because obviously my market got saturated with other peoplewriting LinkedIn profiles as well. But actually, there's something very uniqueabout the way I do it and how I do it. And that's what actually I upgraded. Andeven two days ago, I was splitting up my books into the different job entriesso that I could feature the books better. I haven't finished it yet. There'smore I can be doing. I just was getting that bit going. So it's well worthreviewing and reviewing how the different functions come into play and how theycan be used to better feed your sales funnel. It's all about knowing what youroutcome is.
I cannot stress enough that your outcome is to book salesappointments. Because without sales appointments, you can't get sales. Ifyou're not booking sales appointments, then you are absolutely wasting yourtime on LinkedIn. If you cannot get people to book sales appointments or askyou to speak at events and podcasts such as this one, then it's not working.This is prime because we've not actually, if I may say, we've not met beforetoday. You approach me completely out of the blue and said, Will you be on mypodcast? That is the definition of it working. A lso, I've had several peopleapproach me and put themselves in my diary for an appointment. I opened mydiary, never heard or seen of them before. I have a half an hour conversationwith them and they part with full grand. Do you know what I mean? In half anhour.
You have no idea how much we've been stalking youbeforehand.
That's it. You don't know.
You never know.
Who's watching. You never know who's watching and wherethey're coming from. One thing I do have on my website, which is the profile. Compan y. I'm just preempting your next question actually here. Yeah, go ahead.The profile. C ompan y. On there, there's a diagnostic and it goes beyond, Oh,why is your LinkedIn profile... It looks at why is your LinkedIn profileactivity not... Sorry, your LinkedIn activity is not getting you the resultsthat you want. And it goes beyond, Have you thrown your headline? Have you gota headshot? Because actually, when you've done a lot of this training withgurus who teach you about LinkedIn, they'll teach you about messaging content,building up your followers, all of those things. And they will brush throughvery, very quickly the profile. Now, I've already written a book on just theprofile alone, and I could redo it and make it 10 times bigger. Just thepsychology of how people try and how it all comes together, which I actuallyhave written two books if you think about it in that way, because I've gotthree books altogether. But there's a lot that goes into the LinkedIn profilejust in itself.
The diagnostic on my website asks you questions that look atthe business structure and the business foundations and then checks in a fewthings like how is it actually working for you? One of the questions is, dopeople reach out to you and ask you to speak on their podcast or at theirevents that you've never heard of? That's actually one of the questions.There's a diagnostic there that people can use to really look at are thebusiness foundations structured in the right way? People are very welcome to reachout to me and actually go through the answers of that question and see where itcomes out. It gives you the answers as well on it. Then also there's a templateon the website as well that people are very welcome to download that templateto write their own LinkedIn profile. All the content actually from my book,what to put on your LinkedIn profile. I haven't updated that book since 2018,to be honest, because I put it on the website. The template is linked to thepages on the website, which all the guides of how to write each section. Peopleare very welcome to come and get the template and use my guides and write itfor themselves.
Then also they can book a conversation with me where I willreview your LinkedIn profile for you. Those three options are on the.
Pink bar. Or she can speak at your event.
As well. Yes. You can also find that bit as well. There'svarious options there, but I'm very passionate about the LinkedIn profile. Ihave been for 10 years now. I've been reviewing them for 10 years. Then aftertwo years, I was like, Oh, this is ridiculous. People can't write their ownprofiles. Let me do it for them. That's when the profile company began.
You are an absolute niching goddess.
Thank.
You. Well, yeah, you can't get much more niche than how manycharacters?
Yeah. My brain is very strategic as well. So I niche a lotof people. I'm like, Okay, this is the problem you solve. This is where youneed to be. This is how you need to do it. And that's really my superpower, tobe honest. And then getting it to words.
Brilliant. Well, again, the page is the profile. C ompany.If you would like to find all that stuff that you know we just talked about,thank you so, so much. nice so much, N ome, for being on with us today. And wepromise we weren't stocking for that long.
Probably since my growth while in December, actually. Icould probably try. Well, this is evergreen, so let's say about 10 weeks. Thankyou so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure and to answer yourquestions and everything. So thank you.
No problem. We'll be back next week, guys, with anotherepisode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Until then, bye.
So who knew that LinkedIn would have so much to offer fromjust one profile page, Esther?
Just the section about me. Nobody wants to know about me.That's what I was thinking.
They don't. They don't. You are irrelevant. Yeah.
Getting it from the queen here.
Yeah. I mean, the people that write, Oh, I'm this and I'mthat. You can spot a CV one easily. But sometimes I come across people who areconsultants and they actually do need to bring a new business for the businessthey're in, and they're very highly technical, very highly niched. I look at itand I'm like, Oh, you're just a consultant in a massive organization. You're selling your sofa your next role. But actually they're not. It's just they'vewritten it all.