So, think back to a time when you were in a bookshop, surrounded by 10,000’s of books covering many different subject areas.
You’ve found the section that you’re interested in but you’re still presented with a lot of options.
Which book do you pick up first?
I’d wager that it is the one that stands out – maybe the colour of the spine, a catchy title or maybe an image.
You’ve made your initial selection – now what do you do?
Probably, you’ll read the inside cover or the back cover to get a feel about whether the book is what you’re looking for.
Only at that point do you decide to buy it. Am I right?
Alternatively, you go into the bookshop or Amazon store and buy a book that you’ve been recommended. We will cover recommendations in a later session.
The process that I’ve outlined above is exactly the same process that people go through on Linkedin.
They use the filters in the search area to define down from the 660 million profiles to those within the niche area that they looking for and then they look for the catchy title (Your Headline), colourful spine (Your Banner) or imagery on the book (Your Image).
Then instead of turning to the back of the book to understand whether to purchase the book, they scroll down to Your “About” section.
This is your real opportunity to highlight specifically why the reader should take action and contact you. It’s your opportunity to talk directly to them (your perfect client/ employer) and highlight the value that you deliver in respect to the challenges that they are facing.
How do you do this, given that you don’t know what they are looking for in the first place?
So again, you put yourself in their shoes.
Once you are clear about the type of organisation that you want to work with, the type of projects that you are most interested in working on and can clearly outline the benefits that working with you can bring to them, your number one objective is to attract those organisations and projects that meet your ‘ideal’.
So, within your ‘About’ section, talk directly to the ‘recruiting manager’ from this ‘ideal’ client/ employer.
By doing so, you’ll immediately stand out as the person that they must speak to because you are ‘talking their language’.
You may find this counter intuitive and worry about closing down other opportunities and my response is that you need to close down these ‘distractions’ so that you can focus on those opportunities that you are most attracted to and best placed to win.
These opportunities exist and by applying the approach outlined within this course, you’ll attract them to you.
Let me try to explain how this works – think about a time when you’ve bought a car. Once you’ve made your final decision on the make, model and colour, don’t you see lots of the same make, model and colour on the way home and for the next few days? These cars were always there! However, until you’d focused your attention of the exact car, you simply hadn’t noticed them!
By focusing on a specific, and being clear about what that looks like, you will attract those opportunities that are aligned to your desired specific.
ACTIVITY
Take a look at your About section and check it against the approach outlined above.
Is there room for improvement?
The most effective way to write your “About” section is to adopt the A.I.D.A principle;
- Attention – grab the readers attention with a headline, question or statement that is relevant to your target audience
- Interest – build interest by expanding on the themes highlighted within your headline, question or statement. This demonstrates your knowledge and experience in a much more subtle way
- Desire – highlight the value that you have delivered throughout your career to date within a context that is aligned to your ideal client/ employer, project etc. I find that the S.T.A.R. approach works just fine here;
- The Situation – what happened, what position you were in at the time, and what were the impacts or potential implications?
- The Task – what needed to be done as a result?
- The Action – what did you do to ensure these tasks were fulfilled and the desired benefits/ value were delivered?
- The Result – what was the overall outcome and value that you delivered?
- Action – always include a Call to Action – this can simply be a statement like; “if you want to know more about {include your area of focus}, please call me on {insert telephone number} or drop me a quick email on {insert email address} and I’ll get back to you within {include timescales}”
One final element to include is a list of the services that you provide. Although these are covered elsewhere within the Linkedin platform these days, you should remember that your profile is indexed with the search engines so take advantage of this by listing those core areas where you can deliver value.