Having personally reviewed and rewritten hundreds LinkedIn profiles over the past few years, and having built my entire business around training others how to utilize the platform to generate business for themselves, I’ve learned something very important.
Technology, the Internet and Social Media have become the great equalizers of our time. Today, anyone with enough creativity, passion and hustle can carve out a niche online and build a massive platform, generating scores of sales and revenue as a result.
At the same time, more than ever, sales and business deals – especially on LinkedIn – are reverting back to a time long since forgotten.
It’s a strange dichotomy, but one that you must understand (and apply) if you want to generate more business for yourself using LinkedIn.
Best of all, the strategy I’m going to show you only takes 90 seconds or so to execute once you have the pieces in place.
The Secret to Generating More Business with LinkedIn
Before I explain what this method is, I need to share a common thread I’ve seen in reviewing hundreds of LinkedIn profiles over the past five years.
The Small Business Owners, Coaches, Consultants, Trainers, Sales and Business Development Executives generating the most business for themselves on LinkedIn are doing it the same way – by building out and showcasing their “personal brand” on the network.
These professionals have figured out the fastest way to stand out from the competition and close a deal on LinkedIn is to replicate the face-to-face experience that is the cornerstone of sales transactions and business deals.
Think about it. In real life, when you meet a prospect and make a sale, what happens? You talk to each other. You smile. You build a relationship. You feed off one another’s emotion and enthusiasm. You, as the person doing the selling, work as hard as you can to make sure the prospect feels like he or she knows, likes and trusts you before a sales pitch ever enters the conversation.
The 3 Minute Trick to Selling More on LinkedIn
While you can’t set up personal, face-to-face encounters with all 400 million LinkedIn members, you can make yourself more unique and showcase your personable, human side by adding a video to your profile page.
In fact, just a quick, 90 second long, “Welcome to My Profile!” video will do the trick.
Here’s how it looks on your profile page:
Below are a few examples of “Welcome To My Profile” videos you can draw some ideas from:
- Dan McKnight (Sales Professional)
- Ray Edwards (Copywriter, Author, Speaker)
Why Video Matters So Much on LinkedIn
Adding video to your LinkedIn profile page is as simple as copying and pasting a YouTube or Vimeo URL over to LinkedIn. (You can see how it works here.)
Of course, creating a video to share can be a bit more complex. The good news is that technology has made it easier than ever to accomplish. For instance, almost all iPhones and iPads shoot 1080p HD video, and there are scores of affordable microphones and tripods you can use with your Apple device.
Long story short, you don’t need a Hollywood-quality production team to create a good-looking, quality-sounding video of you sitting in your office or standing in a scenic outdoor location talking on camera.
What to Put in Your LinkedIn Profile Video
The content of your on-camera video is easy: Just replicate what you say to prospects in real life.
Answer these types of questions on camera:
What’s your name? What type of work do you do? What products or services do you offer? What audiences do you serve? What’s the biggest value or benefit customers get from using your products and services? What makes you unique or different when compared to your competitors? What do you enjoy doing outside of work? What’s the next step if we want to talk more with you?
Just talk to the camera like you’d talk to a new prospect. Be conversational and relaxed. Do not try to memorize lines or use a script. It feels forced and comes across poorly in almost every instance. Instead, a conversational, friendly tone that showcases your personality works best.
Don’t Want to Be On Camera? Do This Instead.
If you are not comfortable on camera, you can still make video a key part of your LinkedIn profile page. There are all sorts of videos you can make, from ultra simple, click-and-drag animated videos that look professional to screen recordings where you demonstrate your expertise to fun, movie-style trailers that you can make in just a few minutes using a program like Apple iMovie.
With all that said, the best possible video type remains one where you are on camera, talking directly to a prospect and looking him or her in the eye. Text cannot replicate the emotion, passion and nonverbal signals you send to a prospect when they see you on camera.
This is Your Opportunity to Stand Out on LinkedIn!
I’ll close with this: The professionals who are using video in the ways I’ve described are also some of the most successful people I know of on LinkedIn in terms of generating more sales and revenue.
So start using video on LinkedIn ASAP – and watch your sales increase as a result!
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