LinkedIn Optimization: Elevate Your Profile For Greater Visibility

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host, Tracy Hazard. Today we have something very exciting to go over with you and share some things Tracy and I have been doing to take our LinkedIn profiles to the next level. So this is about LinkedIn optimization. Elevate your profile for networking success. A great thing to talk about here as we are getting into a new year, right?

And I want to be clear, elevating your profile is an extreme important part of your business model and everything that you might be doing. But it's also really important to promote your podcast that way, to get better guests, to build the listener base. Doing all the things and all the growth that you want to see on your podcast has to work hand in hand. Especially if you have a business podcast. It has to work hand in hand with LinkedIn. With a LinkedIn strategy is the number one place that we have, both of us, Tom and I, and our clients find success in growth in guests and clients. So let's think about it from that perspective. So we want to really build that out. We have been, Tom and I have been working on many, many over the years. I think we've tried four at least different LinkedIn programs of some kind, where sometimes you optimize your profile, sometimes you have a direct messaging program, sometimes you use connection request systems, all those different things. Over the years we tried many, sometimes we had good success for a little bit of time and then LinkedIn shut stuff down and then other times it was really working, but then the company messed up and they didn't do what they were supposed to do. So, like we've had like some very hot and cold results from LinkedIn programs and services that we've used, but we've had some great success with the partner that we're bringing on today who's given us some of this advice, although I've of course customized it for all of you podcasters out there, but for optimizing your profile. And so Linked Va now is one of the partners that we're talking about and they've got a wonderful LinkedIn profile optimization guide that we're going to share with you in the blog post for this episode. And, and remember, our blog posts are now@podcasters united.org which means our tips are there too. So this will also get added to the tip library. So there's going to be any which way you want to get this profile optimization guide. And what we're going to talk about today, you're going to be able to access that. So keep that in mind. So here's the thing. Tom and I decided to enter into this program, test it out, see if it was great, see what we could do with it, so that we could give you advice on how to use it. We decided to approach it from two different directions. One, I have a podcast that has a lot of guests on it. Tom doesn't. Our podcast here is what Tom, it's tips. It's tips and topics. Right? Yeah. So it's our live coaching. So it's a totally different model. So I decided that I would use my LinkedIn profile to do a guest strategy, because I know many of you like to do that. So I needed to change my profile a little bit to get that working and make sure that the Bing factor, my show was worked in there in a way at which it was prominent so that it would be very clear to anyone who I might message and invite on my show. On the flip side of that, Tom's main role is in potitize, right. Is to be sales, marketing, promotion, assistance, tips, advice, like all the expertise that he has here, he needed to make sure that his profile fills that out. And as I'm going to show you, because I'm going to share my screen right now. It looks really bad right now. And I did this. I left it just for this episode. I didn't optimize it.

Okay, so I'm the guinea pig here. And those of you listening to the podcast, we love that you listen to the podcast. I prefer listening to podcast audio, too. This is one you're going to want to go to the blog post, as Tracy said on podcasters united.org to watch some of the video on this and or see screenshots of what Tracy is sharing now on video. And just in my own defense, yes, my profile needs or needed help.

It's a little out of date.

It was a little out of date. And part of that's because LinkedIn changed some things. So if you're like me and you sort of optimize your profile years ago and set it and forget it, well, this is a lesson and a reminder that you can't just do that.

So here's what I'm going to show you. So what you can see on the screen right now is that Tom's profile photo is over to the left. And you can see it used to be centered. That's the way the style used to be. And that's why there's this big gap in the banner image on the background, because it used to be in the middle, but now it's covering information and things that was there before. So we definitely want to update it. So the first two things on our list is to update these visual items because they're the things that people see when they come by. Think of the banner as the sign for your business, your brand. It doesn't need to have your name in it. It doesn't need to have your show name in it. If your show name isn't predominantly below it and Tom's isn't, it's Potati's Brandcasters Inc. Is the company below it. So his show does need to be in there. So feed your brand. The show that you're listening to right now needs to be up there and needs to be seen. So I'm going to do a quick little update here because I've got them all saved on my desktop and I'm just going to do a quick little update to the background photo. All you do is you click on it, you go and change photo. The size is really important and it's all in our guide already, but the size is 1584 by 396. I'm going to actually drop in a photo because I didn't have one that was sized perfectly for this, but I have one that works.

Wait, you mean you haven't already done something new for my profile? I thought this was the real deal.

I didn't. No, sorry. So you can adjust it. This is the YouTube banner. So if you take your YouTube banner and you're using the usable area. See, there should be space right here for his head. Like it looks like it would. Perfect. You can zoom it, you can straighten it, you could do what you want. We're going to hit apply. There's a key factor here. Whenever you do this, it's not going to show up here. You have to refresh.

That's a good tip because I meant a lot of us would probably be like, oh, it didn't work. Right.

Right. And so then you go and look at it and you go, oh, well, maybe it's cutting off the P. Maybe I'D like to shift it over to the right. You play with it till you get it where you want it. I am also if you want to change your profile image, and I'm going to do this because I don't like the white background here. I think it's a little stark for you and you're not really smiling and you should be smiling in this photo. So I've got a better image that I've chosen and I know you don't love it.

I think that's a smile. You're not going to use that black and white image again, are you?

You just click on it and you change it. I'm not gonna use your black and white image.

No, because that one's like 10 years old.

Oh, add photo. There we go. I was not in the right place. Upload. So you can take a picture right there. You wanna take up about 60% of the image. Like, your face needs to be about 60% of the image. And so I'm gonna use this one because you're smiling and see how nice this is? So. And I think the color is gonna work better with the background. Now we can go shift it out tomorrow and pick a different image. It's not going to matter. Right? You can make these adjustments at all times, but I think that looks a little better. You look friendlier. You look like somebody I'd want to talk to. You've got your glasses on. Because I hate it when you don't have your glasses in the photo. I actually think it doesn't look like you, but that's just me. So anyway, so we've got this going on here. You could put whatever you want up here. I wanted to make sure POD itizes front and center. I want to make sure we have podcasters, United States. You don't need my photo up here. We'll probably. When I go to do the final on this one, I'll have them put the feed your brand logo here instead of us. Because you're already here. You don't need to be seen again. Right. So that's kind of the way to do it. So those are the first two items you want to do. Fix your banner image and fix your photo. Because most people don't read stuff, but they look at it, right? Two very important things. The other thing is just make sure this all looks professional to the brand imagery that you're trying to convey. Now the next most important thing is this headline. See where it says intensive content marketing and podcast production right there. That headline is in the profile. Settings here and you can go down and you can use. I like the additional name. I'm just going to show you that here. See the additional name. You could put something in parentheses. Great way to work in some keywords. Mine says former in columnist because that makes people select me. One of the things here is if you put podcast promoter, if you put I'll get you on itunes. I like see those all the time. Which drives me crazy because itunes is out of date as it is. If you put that here, I won't accept your friend request. Don't be pushy here. Put something that you're an expert in, whatever it is that's important from a keyword standpoint, but don't be pushy. Here's the place right here that you can do this. Now what I discovered is it doesn't tell you how many characters it is, but it's 220 characters including spaces for the headline. For the headline here you have a lot more space. It used to only be 120, so I actually just upgraded mine and added a whole sentence. So I got to add I'm the host of the Binge Factor and feature brand which is really great for you to be able to have that extra space to add your podcast right in the headline because that's going to do you some good if you're trying to seek guests out there. So this is a great way to do it. I do not recommend you click the write with AI button because every time you do it it goes and it tries to give you your title of your most news like oh, CEO and co founder. It's not any good. It's trying to revert you to a very resume styled thing. Not really what you want for a headline. So don't use that. I'm just going to go and copy over here where I wrote yours already and drop that in here and then I'm going to save it. Okay, there you go on that. So the intro's now saved. Remember again, you have to refresh over here to get it to show up. There you go. It does. Look how great that is. It's fitting. It's perfect. The next area I want you to check is make sure your creator mode is turned on. The creator mode opens up tools. Look at this. It opens up tools. It gives you five things that are your profile topics you can put in. It gives you LinkedIn, live audio, event newsletters and a follow link. These are some important things that you're going to want. So make sure you turn on your creator Mode, everyone should be able to qualify for it. I think there's a few restrictions, but very few. And if you don't qualify right now, it'll tell you how to qualify for it.

I am not very active on LinkedIn, so if I qualify, any of you can qualify. Yeah.

Anyone who can. Yep. The other thing that I want you to pay attention to is up over here in the top, your public profile and URL. And if yours doesn't say your name, fix that. You can change it once every so often. Like, I forget how often you can change it. Like once a month or once every 60 days or something. You can change it. So if you just changed it, you may not be allowed to change it again. There's some people out there who advise you to put, like Tom Hazard, podcast expert or podcast producer. I do not. I think you're much safer with it being exactly as it is. Because what happens when your role changes and you've got links out there in your website on social media platforms, somebody is linking to your profile and you change that name, it will break. There's no way to create a forwarding. So keep it simple, keep it evergreen. Keep it something that will really work.

For you, I guess, unless your name is John Smith and there's a whole bunch of you, you might have to get a little creative.

Right, yeah. Get a little creative there. So now we're going to go down and fix your about section, because this About Facts section hasn't been updated since you were a wtff.

That was our very first podcast host.

Like a really podcast. Yeah. So I just typed in and copied this right off your Tom Hazard website. And I'm going to just drop it in here.

All right. So that's my speaker site. Yeah.

This is your speaker site. Yeah. Here's where I do recommend write with AI.

So you paste it in first, and then the AI will massage that language, what's in there and make it better.

Yeah. And so I found it does a pretty decent job and it kind of puts it in this first person. See, it says, I'm Tom Hazard, a podcasting expert. So it changes it from the way that it was in your speaker site. So it's kind of nice.

All right, cool.

Yeah. And so actually it went too small. So I'm just going to revert back to where it was to what I typed in there, because it undid that.

So now you're not going to use the AI?

I'm not going to use the AI this moment because I'm not going to Spend the time to edit it like I would.

I see. So you don't want it to be too short, Is that what you're saying?

I don't want it to be too short. You've got 2,600 characters to work with here and they were going to make it under a thousand. I definitely don't want that. So I'm just going to type this in and I'll come back and edit it later myself. This is no big deal. I'll write it again with them and then massage it. You can always undo. You should have saw me undo it. So now you want to add skills. You want to definitely add all your podcast skills here. This is definitely something. Video podcasts, podcasting. Don't want to forget that. You can have up to 5 promotion. We want to do podcast production. Okay. And let's say content marketing. How about that? Okay. And we'll save those. So now your about section is twice as long as it was. Right. Really good. And it's got basic information in it. And now look at your top. Skills are appearing now. Here's the next thing. Your companies, your experience down here. Do you see how we have WTFFF down here?

Yeah.

Right. So we have all of that information here. At any time. You can add a company, you can add a position. Being a host is a new position. So if you just launched your show, you're the host of feed your brand, we could add this in as a brand new position. Now I'm going to show you, I'm going to stop this share and share something different. I'm going to show you what happened. I updated my position.

So there's a way. And I'll show you in just a moment back on Tom's. Because I'm going to update his position and share it and show you exactly how we did it. But I updated my position so I'm taking a new position here.

You know you did. You're not sharing yet, right?

I'm about to. It's coming.

Okay, good.

I'm started a new position here at Potatise. I am now the executive director of AI strategy here at Potterties. So up above this, which I'm not showing you because I wanted to zoom in on the results here, but up above this, that's what it said. There's a little post. This post was made on my LinkedIn and it posted out to all of the people in my network and it says that I was starting a new position. Look at this. Within two days. Because I only did this late Monday. 28 people have liked it, thumbs up, hearted it, done, whatever. I've gotten nine comments and 853 impressions on it and all I did was share the update change. So because I've taken on a new position, Tom's taking on a new position. So I'm going to go back to our Google Chrome. Here we go.

So you're saying the impressions are people that have seen it. Do you know what an impression is on LinkedIn?

Yes, impression is people who've actually shown it. It's been shared. So remember, not everything that you post goes to everyone in your network and not everyone in your network's paying attention. Right. So here we go. So Tom's new position is going to be. He is CEO. So I'm not only going to change this, but I'm also going to copy what I wrote a short paragraph for the new position as well because that's a little out of date what's there. So I'm just going to replace that into the description and everything else stays the same. But look up here you have the option to turn this on. Okay, so see I changed him to CEO and co founder full time position. This is the company. You don't have to put a location type if you don't want to. It's current. That's from when he started it. And I put in this description. Very important for you to update the position description. Now I'm going to turn that on, I'm going to save it and when I save it, it's going to ask me to post it. Okay, I'm going to skip that and it's going to automatically start sharing this. Maybe I need to just go to your activities, look at your post and it should be doing something about that anyway. So you'll just be able to share that out and be able to update your entire community that you've taken on a new position. If you add a position, it will do the same thing. So, so if I were to go back down here and do add and add a position as host of feed your brand podcast, you see, I can turn it on too. Oh, see updates take to two hours. So that's why, okay, post a feed your brand. You can put that, that's a contract, self employed, whatever you want to do here, you don't have to. You can type in the company. I have the binge factor set as a showcase. So that's also something you can do. It's in a different area. So you can also showcase something. You can add a showcase section which Then allows you to show more resources. Oh, maybe it's in here. Add a newsletter, add a link, add media. So you can add media here, you can add. Feed your brand here.

So this is in the featured. Featured section.

Featured section, yep, that's where it is. So they keep moving things around, right? So you can add media here, you can add your show. When you do that, you can then post that out and share that with your community as well. So those are some key things. So the photo, go back up to the top. The photo, the banner, the headline, very important here, your about me, which is down here about you, your company showcase, your show, publication, media, anything that you want to do there. And make sure every time you have an opportunity, put your skills. Every time they give you those hashtags, put your skills in there. Those are so important. And remember to use your good keywords. Remember when you put your show in place, your show is about business and finance, your show is about health and wellness. Make sure you put those key tags in there as well. Make sure you're putting them everywhere. And then last thing is, don't forget to turn on that creator mode. So those are the really important things to be able to make sure that you're getting shared out there and your show is being showcased. So that way, when you do what I did and invite people to come on your podcast, they see everything prominent there and it makes them feel like it's much more of a legitimate request from an established podcast host. Because it's so much a mystery out there. All of you podcast hosts out there know that there's this sort of hesitation to whether or not you have a good show. Because our statistics are not public, they can't see how many followers we have. They don't know how many subscribers or downloads. And because they don't know that, they're concerned whether or not you have a good enough show for them to be a guest on. So if you are seeking high value guests, making sure that you put this prominent on your LinkedIn profile can really make a difference for you.

All right, so obviously those of you listening to the podcast today, this was a bit different than our normal episode. So it was very visual.

A little bit more training and tip here. Yeah, to show you a little more.

Training and tip and very visual, you're going to want to go to the blog post@podcastersunited.org for this episode and watch some of the video. And we are going to have also some images that are screenshots from this in the blog, in the images that are featured there, a lot more information than the typical episode, because we actually have a program that Tracy and I are using within LinkedIn that you're going to want to know about, and all the information is going to be in that blog post as well.

So let's talk a little bit about what we're doing. So one of the ways that I have gotten us guests since 2014, right, I have been getting us guests for all of our podcasts, predominantly through LinkedIn. I will do outreach through there. People connect with me. When they connect with me, I take a look at them and I go, oh, you'd make a great guest. So I've been doing this in an organic way for a really long time. But the binge factor, my show is a very focused show. I only interview people who have a hundred episodes or more. They must have been a podcast host for at least a year. They must be consistently posting week after week after week. So I actually get inundated with requests, and I have to search through them and try to figure out who's valuable in the community, who's going to take action, who's on LinkedIn that's going to promote the show. And that's hard to do. So it's hard to do if all you have is an email list, right? So one of the great things that I was excited about when the LinkedIn program that we're using, Linked VA now, came to us was this opportunity for me to connect with podcast hosts everywhere, be able to share our live streams here, be able to share connection to you, Tom, and be able to vet them and screen them through based on their actions. So if they communicate, if they're networking with me, if they're trying to get me interested in them by communicating and having a conversation with me in direct message, then I know they're going to make a better guest on my show. But the problem is I don't have a lot of time. I don't know about you, Tom, but I definitely don't have a lot of time. So having those conversations and monitoring the chat is just not something that I can do.

It's not something I can do and do well either.

So I've used programs before that will go out and make connections to all the people who claim podcast host in their title. Right? You can do it through LinkedIn Premium or whatever they call it now. It used to be LinkedIn navigator, but now it's like premium, I think. And anyway, you could do that and you could put a list together, and then you can reach out to them every day yourself. You can do all that. You can do automation. But the automation part, without the direct message strategy and being in it constantly and nurturing that conversation, just is not good enough. So I was so excited about Linked VA now when that opportunity came to us, that they were going to help us with the concierge management of that model so that I could set the profile, I could set the messaging, but they could communicate and make sure that the right people got forwarded to me and I got the right people as guests on my show. And I have to say, so far, I'm going to let you share the results of what we've gotten, but the guests that I've had on my show from there have been more top notch than I expected. I expected them to be good because there's a screener, right, Like I told you, a hundred episodes or more a year or more. But these ones are really great at promoting the show after I have them on it because they're communicating LinkedIn. It's a predominant form of communication for them, a predominant form of promotion for them. So they do a better job of promoting us on LinkedIn.

Now. So that's what we're doing with your profile, Tracy, but with my profile, we're doing something quite a bit different, which is actually connecting with other podcasters and lead generating, using the whole process of connecting and then the message engagement, the conversations going back and forth, inviting podcasters to do one of a couple different things, which it provides them some very real value because that's really who we are as a company. But then really the whole point is lead generation for prospects for new potential customers for productize, and it's working incredibly well. What I mean by that is I'm not having to do anything other than the initial setup. And like you say, Tracy, to make sure the right calls to action are there, the links to book either a power podcast appraisal on my calendar or another kind of inquiry appointment. Occasionally, if there are questions that part of the conversation goes somewhere that it's not appropriate for the system to respond, then that's sent to me and I respond directly. But really, most of the time what's happening is I just see appointments booking on my calendar. I've created a special booking calendar, so I know it came from the LinkedIn program, so I can see that. And I'm having meetings with prospects. And so here's a few of the numbers. I'll share mine first, since I'm talking about that right now. So November was A partial month, but I got 50. Connection requests accepted. December, 167, January to date. And as the time we're recording this, I usually don't ground these in time, but I think it's important because of the numbers here. We're at January 10th, and I've already got 59 for the month. The messages that are going back and forth for the full month of December was almost 500 for me messages in January. So for 133. And then the replies are also. We have this data for the replies. But the point is, it takes having that kind of engagement to book, get appointments booked to generate leads, to nurture those prospects and get them to book a call. All that is happening without my involvement. So that is just a testament to how this program is working. I mean, I see the comments, I see things flash up on my app and people happy to connect and having good conversations. That's great. I don't have time for that in my business. And either do you, Tracy. I don't think so. For you, Tracy, November, you got two.

December's numbers in whole for them. Give them the whole number.

December's in whole. All right, well, I'll do the whole thing. All right, so profile views is one of the metrics. 12:30 in December messages. Well, that's getting out of order. Let me do connection requests. 570 sent out. Connections accepted for you. 198. So just about 200 message replies. 111. The number of messages that were total that went out are 530. And here's another thing that LinkedVNow does, two that I didn't mention yet. Endorsements. So this is reciprocity in action, really? Right. What do we call it? The power of reciprocity or something like that?

The law.

The law. Thank you. I was looking for the cliche, and it was escaping me. The law of reciprocity. So you're connected with somebody, you endorse them for something, they appreciate it, they tend to engage with you more. That whole process also happening with this program, and I know it seems a little weird, I don't know somebody. I'm endorsing them for something. Okay, I'll admit that's true. But again, law of reciprocity. We're trying to get engagement with people on LinkedIn, with people that are hopefully our ideal prospect, people we want to connect with and eventually get those bookings. So that's what's happening.

I want to go back to what you just said there. So I had 200 people, or just shy of it. 190 people except my connection request in December. Right, right.

198. Perfect. Yeah.

And I had 111 message conversations going back and forth. Think about that. Think about how high that is. Those people didn't connect with me if they weren't interested in having a conversation with me. Now I can't do that on my own. I can't have 111 conversations in a month and do my job. I just can't. But of that I think I had about six guests booked out of that, which is high for me because I don't usually book that many. So they did really book up my calendar over the holiday and into January here. And I've interviewed two of those people so far of those six that have booked on my calendar. So that's a pretty good ratio if you're looking to get guests and to have these kinds of conversations back and forth. And I've had many people who I would send them a tip or send them to one of our LinkedIn lives. That was also some of the sort of exchange things that happens in conversations that the VA team does and they would come back and thank us. They would say, oh my gosh, that was really valuable. Thank you so much. I'm following you now. So there's going to be much more long term results from these kinds of things if you have gives along the way and it's not just push sales. So here's the two tips Tom and I have before we go to talk to Linked VA now and have some more conversations. The two tips we have for you on the process is if you understand your who I'm looking for really great podcast guests who are active podcast hosts that I knew exactly who it was. Tom knows exactly who he wants to outreach to. If you know that and you can dial that in, you're going to be more successful here. The second thing, participate in the process. I'm so if you think that you could just let them do everything, it's not going to serve your core business. Participate in the process. Make it yours, make it your voice, add your own tone to things, make sure that your calls to action play with them a little bit till you get what you're looking for. I had it too loose in the beginning and I was getting too many comments and we had to tighten it up a little so we could really get to the truly active high value people. So make sure you participate in the process. It didn't take a lot of time. I don't think I spent 30 minutes a week for the first couple of weeks, that's it.

I'm not even spending that much time, quite honestly on it. But to really qualify some what Tracy's saying here, participate in the process, especially in the beginning, to set it up for me. This is very hands off the way I'm using it. I am not spending a lot of time every week. Yeah, in the beginning you've got to get the messaging dialed in, make sure it's in your voice, make sure that there's a whole process. Because this is, I would call it a done for you service. Absolutely. But you want to make sure it represents you properly. So you do have to participate in that process. Once you get that dialed in, set it and forget it.

Absolutely. Well, we're going to turn off the Feed you'd Brand podcast and say goodbye to all of you there. And we're going to turn on our Q and A session right now. So thanks everyone for listening to Feed you'd brand. We'll be back next week with some more topics for you and some more great results in how to promote and market your show.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwipod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.