LinkedIn Profile Optimization and Weekly SOPs for Partner Programs

How Can Partner Programs Benefit from LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with 706+ million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. LinkedIn provides a platform for career recruiting, business networking, and sales + marketing outreach. By implementing the following recommended steps for LinkedIn profile optimization and weekly SOPs, partner programs can leverage LinkedIn's network to:

• Build brand visibility

• Demonstrate thought leadership in your field

• Find and engage with prospective partners

LinkedIn Profiles - 3 Do’s:

1. Headline - Write a "rockstar headline". This should include:

   1. What you do

   2. How you do it

   3. The benefits you can provide to those who visit your profile

   4. Keywords (these will help people find you)

2. About/Summary

   1. Repeat keywords

   2. Be conversational

   3. Tell a story/share your journey

3. Job Section - people want to know what you’ve done/what you do. Write it in a meaningful way to help visitors to your profile understand what you do.

LinkedIn Profiles - 3 Don’ts:

1. Don’t write in 3rd person

2. Don't treat it as if it is a resume

3. Don’t use a bad headshot

Posting to LinkedIn:

In spite of the large and focused user community of business professionals on LinkedIn, relatively few companies are making the most of the opportunities that platform offers for engaging. In that respect, LinkedIn is currently a largely untapped market offering a less crowded space, and more attention for your posts, articles, and now - stories. To optimize the reach and impact of your LinkedIn posting, we recommend:

• Post at least once a day

• Post in the morning relative to your target audience

• Follow the 80/20 Rule for content. I.e.: Your content should comprise 80% motivational/inspirational/educational topics and 20% industry and industry role-related content

About LinkedIn Stories

This feature lets LinkedIn members share images and short videos of everyday moments from their professional lives. The stories are made available for 24 hours and are best used to share experiences and insights with your professional community, build relationships, and enhance your personal brand. With Stories you should:

• This is a new feature -- experiment with it!

• Post a story 3x daily

• Share “behind the scenes” of your professional life

Sales outreach on LinkedIn

• Identify your TG

• Connect with a personal note (taking prompts from their profile, etc.)

• If your invite is accepted without a reply, send a thank you message with a further prompt such as, “I'm curious as to what convinced you to connect with me"

• Send a second message asking to set up a call

• Engage with the prospect by linking and commenting on their posts and messaging them

• Endorse them (LI notifies them about your endorsement - they may thank you, creating further opp for engagement)

Tips for LinkedIn Profiles:

• Make sure privacy settings are what you want them to be (enable anyone to see your headshot, for example)

• Use a cover picture

• Provide an email in the contact or about sections

• Use the featured posts section - create articles that demonstrate your work; share your calendly; etc.

• Don't use bullet points

• Don’t include outbound links in your post or in your about section

• When providing details about your work experience, include supportive data

• Use white space/make the text comfortably readable

• nIn your LinkedIn profile URL, you can customize it to include things like your brand name, your skills, other relevant keywords (your LinkedIn profile URL is searchable by Google)

• Ask for recommendations

Weekly LinkedIn To-Dos:

• Make at least 100 contact requests

• Post 1x daily M - F - always in the morning of your target readers

• Contribute 25 - 30 meaningful engagements (ie: likes/comments/direct messages) in response to other people's content

  • Include hashtags relevant to your industry

  • Comment on industry influencers’ posts

Growth Games:

What it is: Gamifying social post routines within your company or team to increase the overall brand engagement using incentive Spiffs like cash or trips or parking spots…

Example:

• A company is launching a new product and needs to produce a lot of social engagement

• They would spiff out $500 to the employee who contributes the most social posts about the product that month, or $500 for the person who shared the most co-workers posts about that product

Suggested adoption routine:

Try this within your team to start. If you can prove a lift and that people enjoyed it, then sell the company on trying to get one other department at a time involved.
Or… silo it - Engineers may only want to do this on Github or Reddit, while Marketing may only do this on Facebook/IG or Quora, while Sales/Partnerships focuses on Linkedin.

Growth games tracking sheet >>