How to Create a LinkedIn Business Page
(Episode 2 of 2 with Viveka Von Rosen)
In the last episode with Viveka Von Rosen, we discussed how we can make our LinkedIn profiles stand out and ways we can build credibility through LinkedIn. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to create a LinkedIn business page.
How to Create a LinkedIn Page
Here are five key aspects of our LinkedIn profile we should use:
1. Banner Image
When we create our LinkedIn account, we want to start with our banner image. This image takes up a large portion of the page, meaning it will be one of the first things visitors see. We should make sure it professionally represents our business and what we do.
“That banner or background image is key because it’s huge; it’s a third of the page of free marketing space for you,” Viveka said. “If you only do one thing, make sure that you’ve got good banners and make sure that it’s congruent across all your employees.”
Our cover photo should be attractive, eye-catching, and help convey our story. We could use a graphic image of our company logo, a photo of us at a significant event, or an image that captures our overall mission statement.
Above all else, we want to make sure our banners align with our brands. We should use our brand fonts and colors in our banner image. Part of brand alignment means making sure all of our employees and partners also represent our brand professionally on LinkedIn. We can give them the same image banner to use or a different variation that matches our brand.
2. Headline
The next thing our audience will see is our headline. This headline is often a job title and a short list of our credentials so our audience will know who we are without having to read through our entire profile. Our headline shouldn’t just be our title since most people won’t know what it means. What does “CEO of Vengreso” tell us? Not much. Instead, we can also include our motto or a short description of our main role.
We want our headline to have our key value proposition. It should have who we are and what we do. How do we provide value to our customers or other companies? What value do we offer? We now have 220 characters we can use in our LinkedIn headlines. This gives us more room to tell our customers how we can help them. It should be one of the first things they see.
3. Profile Photo
Our profile photo should be professional. This often means a high-quality headshot of us smiling with a basic background that isn’t distracting. “Make sure your photo looks like you so when they jump on a Zoom meeting with you it’s not like, ‘Who’s that?’” Viveka said.
LinkedIn users with a profile photo receive 21x more profile views and 9x more connection requests than those without any photo (Source: LinkedIn). Simply having a professional photo on our page will help our customers trust us and remember us.
4. About Section
If our profile catches the attention of viewers, they will read on to learn more about our business. The “About” section often fits right underneath our profile image, banner, and headline, so it is most likely the next thing our audience will read.
The “About” section is a more detailed summary of who we are and what we’ve done.
The most important thing is to show our customers what makes us unique and how we can offer value to them. We should highlight the key factors of our business, and sometimes this may mean one sentence with a link to our podcast. Other times, it may mean five paragraphs about our journey.
“Don’t try to be everything to everyone,” Vieka said. “You’re going to be nothing to anyone if you do that. Really focus on your buyer personas and how you can help them.”
When we focus on including our goals, values, and relevant experience in our “About” section, we can resonate with more customers and increase our credibility and brand awareness.
5. Content, Experience, and Featured Sections
Similar to our “About” section, in our content, experience, and featured sections, we need to remember to focus on our buyer persona. What type of content do they want from us? How can we use our experience to show them how we can help them? We should clearly reflect this in the blogs, videos, podcasts, and other content we share in these sections.
“How can you curate the right type of content for your audience so that they continue to come back and back and back again?” Viveka asked. This is what we want to focus on with everything we post or share on our LinkedIn profile. How will our customers benefit from our content? Why will they trust us based on our experience?
The key is to understand our audience and write for them. What will they find the most valuable? We should find their pain points and then use different mediums to support that.
As we discussed in the last episode with Viveka, we should include testimonials and customer reviews as part of our content to build our credibility. A great idea is to include these reviews in our featured section as well, since it appears higher on the page than our content section. We also want to make sure everyone is saying the same thing about our company. We want to be consistent.
With LinkedIn branding and content marketing, we want to make sure we are providing value. We shouldn’t just have a bunch of resumes on our LinkedIn. That’s not really going to sell us. We want testimonials, ebooks, case studies, blog posts, etc. We want things that will help your customers even before they buy our service or products.
Don’t just share job openings. Don’t just make it a recruiting page. We should use our company profile to build our culture. While we want potential employees to know what it is like to work at our company, we also want to show how we are benefiting our clients.
These valuable pieces of content can help us with our funnels. We can give bite-sized pieces of content through LinkedIn and then get people to realize that there is better value if they pay for additional products. We have to prove to our customers or clients that we have something of value, and then we can prove it to the general public.
How to Build Your Network
After we’ve built a business LinkedIn page, we can begin to connect with people. However, we should be intentional about who we connect with; we don’t want to just go and connect with as many people as possible. We should only connect with those who are our target audience.
When we want to connect with people we shouldn’t immediately friend them because we wouldn’t do that in normal life. We should talk to them first. Whenever we send a connection request, we should include a personalized message and explain why we want to connect. Don’t ever start with “Buy from me;” start a real conversation. Then, once we have that foundational relationship, we can pitch and say, “Let’s meet up.”
“The trick to quality connections is starting the conversation first,” Viveka said. “Do whatever you can do to build that real relationship even before you invite them to connect. The likelihood of them actually accepting that invitation goes through the roof. Does it take longer? Absolutely. . . . But we’re talking about quality connections here, not just quantity.”
Once we have the connection, remember to continue the conversation. We can leave voice mails and video messages. It is a great way to give people a real sense of who we are. We can also welcome them to our community. It’s a way of thanking them for accepting us, and it keeps the conversation going.
In this welcome message, we don’t want to sell them anything, but we can offer them free things. We could offer them a useful eBook, video, or some form of content they’d be interested in. The more of a relationship we create, the more trust is built. As we continue to learn more about this person, we can learn what they’re looking for and explain how we fill their needs.
The best way to build our network is to focus on quality over quantity. The more people who stick to our content and actually read and engage with it, the more likely LinkedIn will push our content beyond our connections, and the more our customers will trust us.
Key Takeaways
Thank you so much Viveka for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:
- Our banner image should be attractive, eye-catching, help convey our story, and be aligned with our brand.
- Our headline should include our key value proposition.
- Our profile photo should be professional and high-quality.
- Our “About” section should show our customers how we can help them.
- Don’t try to be everything to everyone. We should focus on the needs of our buyer personas.
- Our LinkedIn page should be filled with valuable content such as blogs, videos, and testimonials. We don’t want a LinkedIn profile that looks just like a resume.
- The best way to build a network is to focus on quality over quantity.
- Before we connect with someone, we should start a conversation. After we’ve connected, we should continue that conversation.
Connect with Viveka
To learn more about or connect with Viveka:
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Visit her website at Vengreso.com
- Read her books on Amazon
Next Steps
- Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
- Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.
