See part 2 of our Growth Secrets series here: Killer Customer Acquistion
Part 3: Social Media
In the year 2022, unless you have a network of old friends with money in their pockets, it is simply not an option to not have a digital profile on the web if you want to compete with other business. The tipping point has been crossed. Too many people consume so much digital content and technology is advancing so fast that, brick and mortar companies of all kinds are being forced to turn online to save time and customer convenience.
The social media trends are undeniable. Politicians have even garnered attention promoting UBI in order to ameliorate pressure from automation and technology making people’s jobs irrelevant. The World Economic Forum,with all its financial power, seems inclined to agree.
Look at this graph. You can see that if Social Media Use by Age was a stock, an “insurmountable buy wall” has already formed throughout the younger generations. Nearly 50% of those over the age of 65 are even using social media. This is not a market that you want to bet against. It can’t be beat. Barring civilizational collapse, you will get left behind and short squeezed like the redditors did to Melvin Captital last year (forcing them to close positions with catastrophic losses). In this scenario, you want to be the redditors, and not Melvin Capital.
You want to be betting on the all engulfing wave of technology while still doing your best to provide your human touch. This means some of YOU need to occupy the digital space.
For the purposes of this article, we are going to be going over how you should optimize your LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn is, as designed, the most professional of all the social media platforms. They are fair with the amount of connections and messages that can be sent to unknown parties, and these numbers reset every week. If you are starting a fresh account, you will hit a wall much faster trying to make connections on Facebook than you will on LinkedIn.
Up to 1/6 of the entire world is is on LinkedIn. Not just professionals. The entire world.
LinkedIn isn’t useful for every kind of client, but for Notaries and Loan Signing Agents, it is one of the the best networks there is. LinkedIn is packed with Paralegals, Title Company’s, Lawyer’s, Estate Companies, Realtors and more. You can add multiple people from your local title company to make sure that the right people are aware about your services.
First things first, you need to get your profile straightened out. Here’s a short list of things that need to be covered.
- You need a Professional Looking Picture. A good professionally done headshot is ideal, but these days most people’s phone cameras should suffice. Just dress nice and comb your hair before you have a friend snap a pic.
- Select a similarly impressive profile banner. A great tool for this is canva.com. Here you can create business logos and social media banners for free with professional tools and quality. You can showcase some of your own flair here.
- You need to make sure you have your professional e-mail linked to your profile. You don’t want a serious client sending an prospective email to the funny email you made in Junior High. It’s a little embarrassing. I speak from experience.😓
- Decide if you are going to be a “Creator”. Creator mode allows you to add 5 hashtags to your profile. Users are automatically promoted to “follow” you instead of “connect”. This is ideal for anybody who plans on creating lots of content.
- Write a strong ABOUT section. This is your opportunity to highlight some of your copywriting and personality.
- It’s a great idea to showcase any multimedia work if you have any videos of yourself or testimonials from clients. Testimonials are a great way to showcase that you’ve done the job before and that you do it well.
Photo from Linkedin-makeover.com
It’s important you have a clear picture in mind about who you are looking to connect with. You need to take note of what kind of people these are and you want to target your niche appropriately. You can even do things like export your LinkedIn contact list and use this info however you wish.
Once you identify your niche and optimize your profile you can consider using automation tools like Phantom in order to send messages automatically. It’s important to use caution with these tools as they can result in your LinkedIn accounts being suspended if they are overused. However, the possibilities for outreach are abundant.
You should operate your business from this perspective of abundance. More tools to contact more customers is a good thing, despite the inevitable learning curve and new challenges it presents.