How to Get Your LinkedIn Profile Actually to Help You
Daniel Alfon is undoubtedly an expert when it comes to LinkedIn. As one of the platform’s very early users, having joined in 2004, he has gotten 18 years of experience optimizing profiles, sales strategies, and more throughout his tenure. In a recent episode of Starting Y with Joe Menninger, Alfon gave Joe some tangible tips on re-designing his profile and showing him how to use LinkedIn as a sales tool. Known as “social selling,” this can be a powerful way to make sales online when done effectively and efficiently — both things we learned from the conversation between Alfon and Menninger. The episode was full of helpful advice for those looking to take more control of their sales through their LinkedIn presence!
Get Daniel’s book here: https://amzn.to/3lzYOar (AL)
Hint: You get most of this episode if you have your LinkedIn profile in front of you.
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Additional Material from Daniel
1. 9:45: How to reply to an incoming invitation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEuiyvLHa8E
2. 11:30: Joe’s profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joernmenninger/?originalSubdomain=de
3: 15:45: The AI tool Joe is talking about: https://jasper.ai?special=xS6hL-_
4: 25:40: Free Cheat Sheet: https://www.danielalfon.com/#freebie
5. 26:50: My LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn
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The Hosts:
Michelle a radio and podcast host based in Silicon Valley. She is a lawyer by training and has worked in and with many startups, especially fintech and blockchain. Currently, she is working for several non-profit organizations and startups. Michelle is the host of the Stanford Radio Show “Laptop Radio (Wednesdays 2–4 PM)”, which is also available as a podcast (https://linktr.ee/laptopradio). You can learn more about Michelle here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laptopradio/
Jörn is a podcaster, startup scout, and entrepreneur based in Frankfurt, Germany. He has over 12 years of management consulting background, focusing on financial services and capital markets and working as a startup scout. He hosts an English podcast covering the German startup scene (https://linktr.ee/startupradio). You can learn more about Jörn “Joe” here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joernmenninger/
Our Intro is based on Quantum Jazz’s piece “Orbiting a distant planet,” published under Creative Commons.
Automated Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:12] Here we ask entrepreneurs actors investors Innovative and artists on The why.
Why they are doing what they are doing what motivates and drives them and why can’t they stop.
[0:24] We will start in five four three two one hello and welcome everybody this is Joe and you’re listening to starting why they show on the entrepreneurial mindset today I have Daniel he would meet joining me from Israel hey Daniel how you doing hey Joe how are you thank you very much for having me.
It’s totally my pleasure and we have to tell our audience that we are in our call for I think around 20 minutes already and you massively helped me to improve my LinkedIn profile we will soon get to that and of course your LinkedIn profile and my LinkedIn profile will be down here in the show notes actually I did not make a screenshot before but I bet actually unbundled a little bit everything I’m doing right now, starting Y and start operator their 0 which is just awesome but first let us introduce yourself who you are and what you doing, with pleasure JoAnn my base schedule like you said I help startups and entrepreneurs leverage LinkedIn it’s a very powerful platform and since we started the conversation a thousand new people have joining teen every second three people sign up, so let’s make it work every second three people sign up.
Yes LinkedIn has close to 850 million users every second according to linkedin’s July statistics three people somewhere sign up.
That is like the same amount of people Facebook is losing their signing up on LinkedIn.
[1:52] I think there’s a business model there maybe you should explore it migrate your Facebook profile to LinkedIn using gesture.
[2:02] Because LinkedIn has not been around for like 30 years so how did you end up becoming a LinkedIn expert because I can imagine when you grew up you want to be a rocket scientist to fireman but not LinkedIn expert Maybe yeah I didn’t top of my list I signed up to four length in early 2004.
And that means I had a lot of time to make all sorts of mistakes I made all the mistakes in the book and I learned from my mistakes early on.
In 2006 I hailed the quota carrying sales position, and for the first time link he showed me the name of the exact person within the organization I needed to reach out and Joe that has slashed my cell cycle by 30%.
[2:47] It’s enabled me to meet my quota because prior to LinkedIn.
We had to spend a lot of time just in order to understand what is it that this person does and what is it that the other person does, and then I started helping friends those friends ended up asking me to train their staff and their teams and at one point you wake up and say okay this is what I’m doing.
Let me specialize and drop everything else understood understood and I’ll be wondering how did you do yourself before LinkedIn for the very simple reason because you reach out to somebody in large organization they just met you back sorry I’m the wrong person to talk to and of conversation they never reply again so you’re absolutely back like for if you remember the life pre LinkedIn then it was either major trade shows, we should go into a message in in Frankfurt or elsewhere and me people get a lot of business cards and then follow up when we get home, or do some inside sales with phone messages trying to speak with people, and obviously social selling has changed everything and and now our.
Clients may be conduct eighty percent of their sales cycle before we even speak to them.
[4:04] Twenty years ago we would meet sales people because they would help us learn what’s happening outside.
But today the buyer is way way more educated than the seller.
Mmm I see so the by is more educated than the seller that sounds pretty much like you’re at a disadvantage and how can you level the playing field again.
It’s a great question and trying to think about the questions that your ideal client with the ideal Prospect struggles with.
[4:37] Is the beginning of the solution.
If you’re helping say companies that want to tap into the German startup market and they have no presence in Germany they want to buy Innovative startups, maybe some older companies that don’t have the Innovative vibes.
Then you need to ask yourself what question do they struggle with first why Germany how large is the German startup scene.
And then do we need someone here how would the communication our work for us do we need.
To work with you on that level do we need to do something else and if you manage to answer the question based struggle with, then by providing content that educates your ideal client you becoming the only seller in town.
Not by saying work with me, by saying this is the size of the German Market you need to understand the differences between the German startups and other startups and this is these are a couple of success stories I had.
[5:38] With this company or with that company I can help you identify the right startups in Germany and help you tap into their innovation.
Understood and.
First I have two perspectives for this interview one of them is what we just went through you need an external view on your own, LinkedIn profile because that’s basically your your your business card you validation your business and a lot more for everybody you approach on LinkedIn for the very simple reason, that it’s only thing they may be ever seeing from you hearing from you so that’s basically the first impression.
[6:19] That’s so true and when we Google the entrepreneurs name in many cases their LinkedIn profile will Top the list.
So it doesn’t matter whether they logged in this morning or six months ago their clients their Tech Partners they’re the people who want to join those taught up everyone will find their LinkedIn profile and you need to make you customer friendly or customer ready.
[6:40] And yes improving your profile is usually the first step you need to take into account can you guess what is the number one activity that LinkedIn users perform.
According to LinkedIn statistics after logging in what would be the third the most frequent action anyone reforms Arlington, I guess it’s either liking some status or interacting with the status or checking messages.
[7:04] Excellent so that many likes in many messages but there’s an activity that even that is even more frequent and that is visiting other people’s profiles.
[7:14] And if you think will be the interaction sending invitations checking the messages sending in the messages yourself or sending an invitation or engaging in any way usually either starts with you visiting someone’s profile or end if someone sent you an invitation, until you can check that Personnel before we decide whether you’d like to accept the invitation or not so we need as entrepreneurs we need to make our profile.
Stand out and explain the story in a simple way.
[7:43] Okay and now we get to the core of because many people would just stick with this highlight and then they are good but I have like speed learned what you been talking about basically what we did we used an may I tool to help me write content and basically I split up what I did at startup way that I do I put them in the right order for me.
Scout consultant podcaster and we even change the text, of the static why description for the very simple reason to include all the necessary keywords that Google Bing and especially LinkedIn are fetching, and can you explain a little bit more in general how you approach this process what you need to think about first, what’s most important perspective Q start from this point of view from this angle excellent with pleasure so the very first question I would ask you is.
[8:45] As an entrepreneur you need to stop considering LinkedIn as the CV repository but treated as a website that needs to convert your ideal reader.
[8:56] A website that needs to convert your ideal reader so for the reader if I’m a company interested in the German ecosystem.
[9:03] It’s less relevant for me to know whether you worked with Deloitte until 2016 or 2017 where is important for me is to see how, you will becoming part of the solution for my problems so reread your profile and tweak your profile so it answers the questions your ideal reader has let me suggest three simple question number one who’s your ideal reader some entrepreneurs listening to this may same ideal reader on LinkedIn is a client.
Others May say actually my dear reader is an investor or a co-founder or a part of it so you need to decide who’s your ideal reader, then what sort of equate way I have when interesting question in between how can you discourage all the coaches that are reaching out that’s Mission Impossible job there’s a limit to what we can do.
[9:58] Okay there are lots of automation tools most of those coaches haven’t even visited your profile haven’t read and haven’t understood it you can simply ignore them.
Every now and then if you have an interesting or intriguing invitation request incoming invitation you could actually reply to that person without accepting, and that is also something that we can add to the show notes there is a tweak for you to reply saying thank you very much could I be of help to you and if that person replies it says yes I’m looking for my company’s looking for a scout then you would continue the conversation, but if they want to sell you stuff you’re not interested in you don’t have to actually accept the invitation so question number one was who’s your ideal reader.
[10:39] And question number two very simply if we manage to have your ideal readers look at your profile what action would you like them to perform.
After they read your profile so say I’m based in South America and Brazilian Innovation manager and I want to tap into the German ecosystem and I bumped it to a trophy, maybe a listening to the podcast and then I visit your profile what action Joe would you like me to perform after visiting your profile.
Best would be to reach out for helping them with their problems.
Excellent so the third and last question is this once we identified the ideal reader and the action you Joe would like them to perform try to help them.
[11:18] By removing the obstacles and by providing them with the right information.
In the right order at the right time for them to understand that they need to reach out to, and if you can bring up your own profile we can see it visually.
Because your profile check out the show notes has a banner on top of your profile photo uploading the banner is an overrated Kiki take you 30 seconds.
But simply adding a banner makes your profile stand out from 90 or 95 percent of LinkedIn users.
So use it and decide whether the batter has to represent your startup in this way or that way and also change or tweak or improve your headline because sometimes our current headline would be I’m a co-founder XYZ.
[12:10] No offense but he’s the name XYZ doesn’t open the door.
For your ideal reader you need to explain why they need to read the imagine a Run a search and I found.
354 results I don’t have time to visit them so the headline that’s the most important real estate has to make me.
Curious about what is it exactly that you do and you can consider your headline to be an ad there attracts your ideal reader, it’s challenging but you have done it with your own head like he’s I’m packing always to start ups to really write in plain language because we are doing that at a data and we call it and this last time we call it it’s a marketing term nobody outside of your organization will ever understand it and if you put it in your description instead of the more common more frequently used description you will never get a hit especially in the headline.
That’s absolutely right and I thank you for saying this because our profile is not here to serve us.
Profile is here to serve our ideal leader and maybe the term you’re thinking about is more accurate but if your clients use.
[13:26] X then you need to speak their language and nor sort of keywords could be buried down sit down and the something you would put in the external space where everyone can see should be plain simple.
Bring the point of cross this is how we help you, exactly and I think it’s very very important thing to really have in mind that in sale that and Outreach and you know what they told me when I started in Consulting it’s ridiculous and it never works but he should.
Right.
A slight in a way that your grandma understands it and the same should be true for the headline rate even though my grandma is is not alive unfortunately anymore but, she would have big trouble in to understand what I’m writing now, your absolute or how can you find the right level between everybody understands and keeping it professional is that a trade-off.
It is some sort of trade off the way to do it I think would be to use the more the narrower terms in a section that is below the fold.
Not in the headline not in the about section but buried somewhere down and the headline in the about section should speak to everyone because many entrepreneurs, make the mistake of only addressing the right person for them but as you know the other people working with them.
[14:50] I could tell them hey I think Joe maybe the right Scout for us.
[14:55] And how can they recommend that action if they haven’t understood what you bring to the table so you need to do have to sort of readers one is the ideal reader you’d like to contact you.
[15:05] And the second is everyone working with actually soon as she mentioned you or send a link to your profile and say hey check that person out if you you in plain English plain German a lot easier for them to understand, yes this is relevant for us okay we got the headline how about all the description of the jobs you’re doing what are you providing because, as I said we got into it very deep and basically I structured everything that I mashed up in like, one position at startup rated R O I split up in three different positions I ordered them according to my personal importance and then we made descriptions, LinkedIn using an AI a link down here in the show notes to the AI and basically we gave them like one sentence the keywords to be included and then hit generate.
[15:58] And basically you can read on my LinkedIn profile what came out and it’s out for the impressive.
It is it is I’m almost thinking you were the Mind behind the AI there I don’t even know the founder but it’s an awesome tool oh don’t get me wrong I do believe that there are many many others out there that’s just one I’m subscribing to I’m using because it helped me out already quite large and it’s again and again and again.
[16:24] Like what I had to learn also for podcasting it’s the keywords you have to have the right words in there that stupid stupid machine can understand what you’re talking about, and they put you in the right bucket in the right order whatever you want to call it that they understand what you doing because only if this if you right, good enough that a stupid machine Co optimize can understand then you’ll be seen, absolutely there are two algorithms involved here so let us maybe point about the difference between one is the LinkedIn algorithm that you mention it’s important because every year Joe billions of searches are run on the LinkedIn platform, you want people to find you want your ideal Prospect to find but you don’t have to Discount the human eye the human algorithm, so the ideal thing would be to write a sentence that would make sense for the reader for the human eyes while incorporating the right keywords in a natural way, this is our challenge as we can write a series of keywords for the algorithm but if as a reader someone visits your co-funding and he’s turned off.
Through less likely to convert a less likely to reach out to you so you could say.
[17:41] I help companies Enterprises corporations mid size small medium sized companies tap into the German Market by acquiring companies MMA investing or x-rays, this includes a series of keywords you can obviously improve them but it also makes sense for the reader if I redesigned their stand what you bring to the table, and there are other elements to thin also get inspired looking at your profile again even before the experience there is a featured section so feature the best, converting resources you have everyone making it visually attractive and appealing will make more people stay on your profile understand visit the podcast.
Visiting your website in understanding why do you need to reach out to you if you interrupt simply go to your profile and have a look at it the way it’s structured.
Is a great example of making it customer-friendly on Prospect ready.
Understood and whatever also didn’t know you can even order all the jobs you had everything you did it’s so simple but there is.
[18:48] On your job suppositions there is an edit button and then there are like two how do you call it chevrons in different directions next to the plus and there you can order Arabia oh yes and instead of chronological ordering it you can drag and drop it as you like or you can position step means put the most important first because I always had starting why podcast don’t get me wrong it’s very important to me and I wish I could make a living on that I’m just doing it as a hobby but it had to put the job which I’m actually making money ahead of it and that was something I realize yeah that would be great to do but I didn’t understand the importance until then you’ll happy to understand that really here thank you very much it’s very simple really and the fact that you started starting why, don’t tell the latest doesn’t mean that he has to be first and it’s best for you to prioritize and not for.
Phonology for LinkedIn you know the ideal order you know what you’d like people to know about and I have here let me quickly check.
[19:51] I have something like 15 positions on there from my vocational training at a thrift Bank two internships I did in China with McKinsey to my full-time positions, and what I’m doing right now it’s celebrated oh, we have seen profiles before that have more than 50 positions what would be your recommendations to 60 perceptions everything you have or cut it down to the really necessary stuff.
[20:21] Wow that’s a great question we have to remember that LinkedIn cut it anyway so after a number of position people will need to click on show all and my assumption is that most people don’t click on show.
So what you could do is simply go back and decide whether some positions could be combined so you would combine one two and three projects wanted to three internships.
Into one position you would say with Mackenzie and with chai Castle or everything in China to One Umbrella position and that would make it a bit easier for people to understand another possibility Joe is to add.
[20:58] Either voluntary for boards and stuff like that or lectures or projects this would not break the order of the chronolog on a logical experience section while adding another.
Piece of information you can show your reader by fusing projects.
Or other or voluntary or something else 50 experience job positions is too many for most people to digest.
And the question is if you have there like two or one.
Current top position that is important that’s what you making your living from right now.
Do you really need 57 other positions to distract the people from.
That’s absolutely right it’s information overload and another question you can ask is where do you get most of our clients from say you had a regular source of clients.
And you would not need to mention that activity on LinkedIn because you have a special partnership with someone who sends you qualified leads then what you could do is use LinkedIn to act to attract another type of projects and other type of prospects.
[22:06] And that’s a special partnership could be buried somewhere or not as prominent.
Make it aligned with your interests on LinkedIn you want to promote activity a or do you want to promote activity be.
[22:22] Trying to please everyone is very unlikely it’s difficult you have to prioritize.
[22:29] I do believe we switched in between from your inside perspective to the outside perspective but first when step back you have to insect perspective as I said you should make it as easy as possible best would be to talk to colleague to talk to somebody if you are in a company from sales, don’t talk to the pr people gives a day old do so much formulation on your profile that at the end again nobody understands what you’re doing not even the algorithms personal experience so that is one perspective and the other perspective is who is your target audience where is your marketing channel that’s basically you should see it as an entrepreneur as part of your marketing funnel right.
[23:07] Absolutely who’s your ideal reader and how can you help them understand the true part of the solution and another suggestion that’s very easy is to ask someone you’re not connected with to bring up your LinkedIn profile either in a zoom call or via the app and have them look at your profile and tell you what they would do and sometimes you will be amazed first of all because what LinkedIn shows you is not necessarily what we chose other people the profile photo would not be there for some people and that’s the way they understand that they need to make their profile photo public because they always say it but what’s important is not the way you and I see it but the way are doing readership the contact information most entrepreneurs believe that it’s easy to people can message them, Patrol 99% of people cannot message you freely only thing unless they want to extend an invitation request so have someone bring it up and then listen to the results and they would say okay when you when you write x y z do you mean this or that.
And instead of educating them list of the question thank them.
And reflect about those answers into all those questions three people don’t understand the key term you’ve used and these are your ideal readers.
Then you may go back to the drawing drawing board and replace that term with something that’s clearer and more aligned with what you want people to understand.
[24:24] Which leads us to the Fine question.
Are you actually making a living helping people to optimize their LinkedIn and secondly of course very very interesting is.
How.
Or the other way around said what are the most frequent mistakes you are seeing their being made Oh and before that I have two more questions, I see more and more people especially here from Germany only putting in their first name for example urine .m.
[25:04] Would you recommend that and secondly just like three four bullet points in the headline would they are actually doing instead of full sentences, would you be in favor of the anonymised way and just the headlines.
Okay so I think in many of those entrepreneurs don’t even realize that the last name is not visible.
[25:26] And I would recommend everyone to turn it on so most people will see everyone should see your last name it also helps in terms of search as if I look for meaning there and I only see em I’m not sure it’s you.
Right so you want people to find you.
And Thus Spoke what I could share with you is a free Chichi that would help people make a more converting headline, examples like before and after a simple formula and a way to make their profile headline as attractive as yours.
Instead of saying co-founder XYZ make it about the reader in help them understand why you talked to the solution.
[26:05] And yes they do make a full-time living out of it I started early enough and that’s one of the advantages of specialized.
I see so basically what we’ll do right now we already talking about a food in 30 minutes about your LinkedIn profile I do believe we could talk about it for 30 days and will you still not have it fully discussed yeah he’s laughing I think I hit the point here and secondly I think it’s enough to keep the people thinking to start them thinking, and of course we will provide down here in the show notes your LinkedIn profile my LinkedIn profile after Improvement Plus of course the sheet you promised us we will link down here in the show notes as well.
With pleasure thank you very much and I love course the way I usually help my clients starts with improving their LinkedIn presents their profile page but it also elaborates on their connection strategy if their content strategy and their lead generation so profile is is the first layer but there is a lot more to that we may need more time one day to discuss it thank you very much for having me.
[27:15] It will be a pleasure to have you back next year and then we talked about the next layer on LinkedIn.
Thank you very much oh hey my pleasure have a great day bye bye.
