While in Duluth, MN at the 2015 Zenith Social Media Conference, I sat in a session entitled, LinkedIn Secrets! Building a Dominant Profile, 15 Minutes a Day. Here are the take-aways that you can implement right away:
Via Marty Weintraub Founder, aimClear 
- There’s nothing typical about what Marty Weintraub has to share.
- This is not about how to engage or optimize your profile.
- This is about building an powerful distribution network where thousands of focused LinkedIn users friend you.
While the process Marty outlined is not complicated or difficult to do, it IS time consuming and at times a bit mind-numbing. So, why do this? The huge benefit of free distribution of social content is overwhelmingly worth the investment of time.
All you are after is getting people to look at your profile, but the process will enable you to identify lots of people focused in your vertical space.
The #1 thing you can do to get LinkedIn to value you is to get people to look at your profile.
If you don’t get into the elevator, then there is no pitch.
LinkedIn is well worth your energy. LinkedIn is a social business network marketing monster. Every Fortune 500 company is on LinkedIn. 92% of Fortune 100 companies buy recruiting products. The fasting growing segment in LinkedIn are students.
“If I didn’t have help to do this, I would break my fingers to do it.”
How to move yourself to a Top 1% Profile
It’s human nature – you check me out; I check you out. This is the human reality that can be leveraged to massive effect in LinkedIn.
- Identify highly targeted users using LinkedIn advanced search
- Visit those users profiles while logged into LinkedIn
- Don’t hide, you want people to know you took a look at their profile
- Keep an eye on what percentage of the people you look at view you back (viewback percentage)
- Of the group that takes a look at you, watch how many request connection with you (followback percentage)
After several months of testing, Marty’s team found that 20% of the people you view will check out your profile in return and 2% will request a connection when they visit.
LinkedIn does not hide the algorithmic proclivity to judge accounts based on views.
Time For a Little Demonstration
First, get your LinkedIn profile back up to date, if you haven’t touched it in a while. And upgrade to a premium account. The search features we are going to show you are not available to a free account.
Take the time to add a cover image. Most people won’t scroll through your full profile. Make what appears “above the fold” count. In particular, treat the combination of cover and general information as a banner ad for yourself and your brand. While dusting up your profile, take a moment to visit your account settings.
Make sure that the people you visit can see who has checked them out. No hiding here folks! The whole idea is that you’ve shown interest and you want them to show interest back.
While you’re still in this settings menu, also make sure that what you share in LinkedIn can be seen. The whole idea is that you WANT LinkedIn to help you distribute your content, it can’t do that if you don’t have things set to friendly sharing mode.
Now the real fun begins
Choosing who to view here in LinkedIn is like cultivating audiences in any other social network. You picked people on Twitter and Google+ based on their shared interests. This is no different. If you want to rise to the top 1% of LinkedIn profiles in your industry, you need to visit other people in your industry. But don’t stop there. The end game is to get your content in front of the right people. Limit who you view to the most relevant to not just your industry but to your business.
So let’s look at a quick example that I would use.
One of my working goals is to reach out to SEOs that have the decision power to implement use of AuthorityLabs tools. So, I want to limit my search to people at companies large enough and in a decision-making position.
And here is why you need a premium account, these advanced search parameters aren’t available to free users, but are critical to the success of this tactic.
Choosing to limit your search to 2nd degree connections is like having a friend point someone out to you. When the person you visit see that you have trusted connections in common, they are more likely to go take a look at you. The rest of the choices are based on who you need to reach.
- Be sure to SAVE that search so that you can get alerts from LinkedIn about new people that fit your criteria.
- The rest is all about taking the time to go look at everyone in that search list. This is where it gets time consuming and why you need to save the search.
- Power Differential, the psychological driver’s seat.
Treat this like you did relationships in middle school. Flirt but don’t friend 😉 You pique the curiosity of others by checking them out. Remember when your school chums would let you know that that cute red headed girl liked you? What did you do? You started paying attention to her, checking to see if you might like her too. Then she notices that you’re paying attention. This behavior is what opened the doors to that first conversation and the chance to get to know her. This tactic is like that, but on a much bigger scale.
Permanent free distribution to connections and 2nd degree = why this is important.
Some things to think about when defining your searches.
- Influencer Distribution – media, rebroadcasters, bloggers
- Lead Generation
- Recruitment
- Thought Leadership Branding
- PR
