On LinkedIn? It's time to focus on your personal profile.

On Wednesday I had the privilege of attending and speaking at the first Professional Accountancy conference at the NEC, Birmingham.

I chose to focus on LinkedIn, and how to use the platform to win more business and advance your career. Given the nature of the conference my presentation was geared to finance professionals, but the advice below is applicable to everyone.

While most people know they should have a Linked profile, many aren't sure why or what to do with it once they have it. The aim of my talk was to clarify these points and some of the fundamental marketing principles behind positioning and communication on the platform.

One key point I emphasised is that while LinkedIn has the facility to create company profiles, it's your personal profile that has much more power and should be your primary focus.

In business and when it comes to career moves, people deal with people. Even though the majority of us are attached to one organisation or another, when we communicate we communicate as individual people.

Consider some of the most prominent and successful brands of our time. Virgin has Sir Richard Branson and Tesla has Elon Musk. In both businesses the personal brand of the founder has power and builds a personal relationship with the world that is far beyond corporate legal structures or concrete buildings.

As a consumer how often have you been frustrated in your attempts to communicate with a faceless organisation? Perhaps it's time to become the face of the organisation you work for? What I know from personal experience is that it's likely to be very good for you and your career, in addition to the company you work for.

Below you'll find a short two-minute video with a few excerpts from my talk, in addition to slides and a full transcript of the presentation. I hope you find the content useful, and I'd be very grateful for a like, comment or share.

Please click here to view the slides and read below for the accompanying transcript.

Slide 1

Ladies and gentlemen a very warm welcome to my session at Professional Accountancy today where for the next 45 minutes I’ll be discussing LinkedIn for finance professionals – what you need to know and why it matters. 

The big headline of this session is whether you’re looking to win more business or advance your career, LinkedIn is no longer an option, it’s an absolute must.

Saying that though, many people have yet to make it onto the platform or fail to use it proactively.

In the competitive world of business development or career advancement, getting more familiar with LinkedIn could mean more opportunities, profit or better remuneration.

Change to Slide 2

So, let’s begin with a bit of audience participation and a quick straw poll. 

1.   Please raise your hand and keep it raised if you currently have a profile on LinkedIn?

2.   Now being totally honest with yourself, please keep it raised if you’re using LinkedIn proactively to win more business or advance your career?

Ok, thank you – well the good news is that you’re in the right place.

Change to Slide 3

My name’s Simon Gray and I’ve been using LinkedIn extensively for the last 15 years. 

I should say that I’ve never been a LinkedIn employee, nor do I receive any benefit (financial or otherwise) for advocating the use of the platform.

What I share with you today is based on practical experience of using LinkedIn both to build my own business and to help others advance their careers.

I am an accountant qualifying with KMPG back in 2000 and spent the next 10 years of my life as a financial recruiter, first as a consultant then founding director of my own recruitment company. 

Starting my own recruitment business in 2008 as the financial crisis hit was no easy task, and one of the reasons we were able to get the business off the ground was due to the power and reach of LinkedIn.

Having become frustrated with the recruitment sector, in 2013 I left my own business and set up Career Codex Limited, where I help clients from across the world navigate the executive job market successfully using a system I developed, which I first set out in my book Super Secrets of Successful Executive Job Search.

Although I’m no longer a practicing accountant I’m heavily involved with ICAEW, as Chair of the Business Committee and a Council member. I’ve also spoken at the FC and CFO conferences, and in conjunction with ICAEW recorded a podcast series that you can find on SoundCloud and iTunes called The ICAEW guide to successful job search.

I’m on LinkedIn and in the spirit of today’s talk, please feel free to connect with me there, my username is simongrayaca.

Change to Slide 4

To be honest, LinkedIn is somewhat of a double-edged sword. With over 575m users and counting on the platform it has the power to give you unparalleled access to decision makers at the click of a button.

But…by the same token, it can also make standing out and being found increasingly more difficult.

This means before ever jumping on the platform you have to focus and make a decision on who you want to reach and with what message. 

Now owned by Microsoft we can expect LinkedIn’s importance to increase along with integration with systems we currently use each and every day.

All in all, LinkedIn is here to stay and is set to become more important in all of our lives – both personal and professional.

Change to Slide 5

Success on LinkedIn whether you define this as winning more business or advancing your career is all about personal branding and thought leadership.

Once again, it’s time for the audience participation bit…

…please raise your hand if in the last 30 days you’ve done a Google search of your name?

If you've never done this before, I'd advise you give it a try. 

Open up the search engine, type in your name and location and see what comes up. I do this periodically and am always surprised by what I find. 

It's a big clue as to what message is being communicated to the world about you and your business – who you are, what you do and most importantly what you stand for! Be aware, if nothing comes up that also sends a message in its own right. 

This is important because more and more people nowadays are spending an increasing amount of time online researching, before ever making a decision to do business with you and the organisation you represent or making a decision to hire you.

LinkedIn is a website in its own right and will usually be in one of the first few results Google throws up.

Your personal brand is what others say about you when you’re not there. If you're not taking control of your message to the world then there's a chance the narrative out there and people’s thoughts about you and what you do might not be what you'd ideally like them to be.

So, another quick question – hands up please if you would confidently describe yourself as an expert or thought leader in what you do?

Well here’s the thing – you’re an expert if you know more about a subject or topic than the person you’re talking to. You don’t need to know everything; you just need to know more. 

Thought leadership is communicating a message as an expert and leading light in your field. By positioning yourself as an authority on a specific topic, subject matter or industry sector, your expertise will be sought after and rewarded. 

Change to Slide 6

LinkedIn is the tool to build your personal brand and to position yourself as a thought leader. 

But to do this effectively, you have to decide on, know and understand two things:

1) YOUR Audience – who you’re talking to.

If you’re building your business – do you have a detailed understanding of your target client – their problems, aspirations – who they are, where they’re based and when they’re active online?

If you’re active in the job market – are you really clear and focused on the type of organisation you want to work for, and do you have a value proposition that will get their attention?

2) YOUR Message – this must be clear, concise and resonate with your target audience to gain their attention.

Building a personal brand is about being YOU (after all everyone else is taken) – it’s about YELLING OUT your UNIQUENESS!

Gone are the days of the generalist. Through the power of the Internet we all have the power to seek out specialists. It’s the specialist we want and the specialist we’re prepared to pay a premium for.

I remember a story told to me by the Chief Executive of ICAEW. It was about a practice firm that had decided to specialise in advising car dealerships. Car dealerships were all they did and through this positioning they quickly became the number one in this field. 

As a generalist they competed with everyone else, which means they ultimately competed on price.

As a specialist they were the business car dealerships sought out. There was no other choice out there, and as such they received a premium for the services they provided.

All that changed was a conscious decision by this business to identify a specific audience and communicate a specific message that would resonate.

Change to Slide 7

LinkedIn is the marketing tool for you and all you have to offer, but in recent years the marketing game has changed.

Marketing used to be about communicating a sales message to the biggest audience possible. 

Think TV advertising, which is essentially a general message to a very large audience. Clearly there is some targeting determined by the channel and the time the advert airs, but it's still a very broad-brush approach, not to mention very expensive.

What's more, does anyone actually take notice of the adverts on TV anymore? I usually go and make a drink, or if I’ve recorded something, I’ll just fast-forward.

This is OUTBOUND marketing at its best, but in reality, marketing in my opinion, at its worst.

With more and more sales messages bombarding us from every angle at every opportunity, as human beings for our own sanity, we’ve learnt to filter this excessive noise out.

Modern marketing has nothing to do with selling – it has instead everything to do with helping and educating.

As consumers, we use the Internet to research our purchases well in advance. We’re informed consumers who know what we want and where to get it, and what’s more, we have a choice where to get it.

Where we get it is influenced by individuals or organisations that have built a relationship with us along the way. Those that have helped us alleviate a problem or aspire to a solution. Those that have connected with us emotionally.

This is INBOUND marketing, which attracts customers to us when they’re ready to buy – not I should point out, when we’re ready to sell, and there’s a big difference.

People hate selling and we all hate being sold to, don’t we? So why do something we hate that is not that effective anyway? Wouldn’t it be much easier and far more effective to educate our potential customers instead?

Think about your last major purchase – what influenced you and what prompted you to take action – was it an outbound or inbound marketing message? 

Building a personal brand on LinkedIn – is all about inbound marketing.

On LinkedIn this is much more than having an optimised profile (what I call your Shop Window / ‘SW’), it’s about using the platform proactively to attract opportunities (what I call your Proactive Engagement Tool / ‘PET’).

This means being helpful, interesting and engaging, and being prepared to do this consistently.

Change to Slide 8

While many have a LinkedIn profile, very few use it proactively.

They fail to communicate their personal brand and to position themselves as a thought leader. 

While having an attractive 'SW' is important, it's like driving a Ferrari in first gear, that is unless you use the platform as a 'PET'.

There are three ways to climb up the gears to make your LinkedIn profile work harder for you:

Firstly: Updates are a great way to communicate a consistent message to your connections. 

What are the hot topics in your niche and what questions will your audience have? What advice can you offer in the way of help?

Curated content, which is essentially taking someone else’s content, adding your opinion and then sharing it with your connections, is a quick and easy way to do this.

What’s more, liking, commenting on or sharing the posts of decision makers you’re looking to get close to is a great way to get their attention and put you firmly on their radar. 

Also, don’t underestimate the power of video. LinkedIn now has the facility to upload video clips directly to your updates. Increasingly people are consuming more and more content as video. It might be scary, but now is the time to get comfortable behind the camera and use this important medium to communicate your personal brand and personality.

Putting my money where my mouth is – I recorded a quick video before speaking to you this afternoon.

Secondly: Articles – content you create from scratch yourself, which has even more attention-grabbing value, but of course takes longer to produce.

LinkedIn puts the opportunity to create articles right at the top of your profile, underneath your photo and professional headline, which is a great clue that you should be writing them.

When you post an article, your first-tier connections will find this in their feed, and if it resonates and they decide to share it, their second-tier connections may see it too.

By creating something of value that is not about selling, but instead helps your audience, can mean your message goes viral.

You can also position your articles in front of a specific target audience, which brings me nicely to the third way to climb up the gears: LinkedInGroups.

For me, LinkedIn groups are where the real power of LinkedIn lies. Groups are a collection of individuals united by a common interest, profession or cause. If you think of LinkedIn as the ocean, groups enable you to reach a specific type of fish. 

What’s more, as a member of a group LinkedIn gives you a special type of connection – called a group connection. This comes with many of the benefits of being directly connected to someone, including the ability to message them directly.

LinkedIn is currently making changes to groups that will make them more important, so now’s the time to get familiar with them and to start positioning yourself as a thought leader. 

The groups you pick could be a collection of your industry peers in order to share best practice, or a collection of people you have identified as your target audience.

As a recruiter I would engage in groups all the time. Groups enabled me to be much more targeted in finding the right candidate to get a quicker, faster and better result.

Change to Slide 9

We live in a world of instant gratification where fast results are what we’ve often come to expect. 

In the job market many have the expectation of ‘here’s my CV, hire me’ right now.

In the business world it’s a similar story – we can have the expectation of ‘here’s my proposal, hire me’ right now.

When things don’t happen in the timescales we expect, it’s easy to become despondent, disempowered and lose confidence.

Building a personal brand and establishing yourself as a thought leader takes time – it takes time to see the fruits of your labour, but when those fruits arrive, they’re often high-probability opportunities that others are not yet aware of. 

Instead of see me > hire me, a far better strategy is see me > like me > trust me > hire me.

LinkedIn is the perfect platform for doing this.

See me > 

This means having an optimised and complete profile. If LinkedIn gives you an option to do something, the best advice is to take it. For example, adding media items is a great way to make your profile more interesting and engaging. 

LinkedIn is a website in its own right and as such keywords are important. What are people likely to be searching on to find someone with your skills, experience and expertise?

Your headline is key along with your summary section, and the skills & endorsements section gives you the opportunity to select and rank specific skills you’d like to be known for and also endorsed for. It’s your way of telling LinkedIn who you are and what you do.

If you do only one thing as a result of my presentation today, please check that you’ve selected the skills you want to be found for.

Like me >

This is the curated content (updates) and created content (articles) I mentioned earlier. 

Not everyone will resonate with your personal brand or agree with your thought-leadership stance, but that’s the whole point. 

If you know your audience and what matters to them, you’ll attract the right people and repel those you wouldn’t want to do business with anyway. 

Good marketing has to polarise – and you have to stand for something to stand out.

Trust me >

I don’t know anyone that actively chooses to do business with someone they don’t trust. 

Trust is the magic key to that new contract or new job – without it the probability of anything happening is very small indeed. 

Social proof is key – essentially not what you say about yourself, but what others say for you.

On LinkedIn this means recommendations, contacts in common and endorsements from the right people – who are known to your target audience or regarded as highly skilled in a certain discipline. 

And finally: Hire me > 

When people are ready to transact make sure it’s easy for them to get in touch.

Your contact information should be complete, and I also recommend including your phone number and email address in your summary section.

Responsiveness is important too – when someone does get in touch, getting back to them quickly and moving the conversation forward is key. LinkedIn is often the starting point, but before a hiring decision is made a face-to-face meeting is usually required. 

Change to Slide 10

My talk has been less about the ‘how you do this’ or ‘how you do that’ on LinkedIn and focused more on the principles, because it’s the principles that are the most important, as they form the foundations of everything else you’ll do.

To pull everything together I thought I’d finish with a real-life example. 

I know who my target audience is, and I get ideas for my thought-leadership content by listening to this audience – to their questions and challenges.

I’ve worked hard to build a personal brand and establish myself as a thought leader and the power of doing this really hit home to me a little while back when I secured a new executive client based in the USA.

Jeff had searched online for a solution to his challenges in the executive job market, which led him to read a number of articles and watch some of my videos. 

This led him to my book and ultimately to him reaching out to me directly through LinkedIn to ask for my help.

He enrolled in my 'Executive Edge' Programme and I showed him how to create his personal brand and establish himself as a thought leader to engage his target audience to make the career move, he was looking for. 

What’s really interesting is that when I asked him if he’d considered hiring anyone else to help him (after all I’m based in the UK and he's in the States) his answer was ‘no’ – such was the strength of the relationship I’d built with him in advance of first knowing of his existence.

The power of personal branding and thought leadership led him to me and then helped him to find and secure his new executive position.

See me > like me > trust me > hire me. 

Change to Slide 11

A big thank you for attending my presentation today and I hope you’ve found it useful.

Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, through my website or via email (you'll find this on my LinkedIn profile).

As I think we have a bit of time, I’d also be very happy to take any questions anyone has now.