 We’re often asked—and tasked—with helping business owners, and their companies, to bolster their presence on LinkedIn. And with good reason: it’s the go-to, must-have, no-brainer choice for any business; indeed, you can have a decent presence on LinkedIn, conceivably, without even having your own website. Not that we recommend that.
Anyway. The prospect of populating your LinkedIn page profile isn’t as straightforward as it seems. In fact, we’ve detected two different camps (“warring factions”?), with differing views, and sometimes heated opinions, on the best way to do it. In this article, we’ll review both camps. Both points of view. And then... well, we’ll let a little suspense build first. The original camp LinkedIn, first of all, isn’t that old. It launched in 2003. And it didn’t immediately catapult to the position it enjoys today. This is important to note, as backstory, because it underpins the reasoning of the first camp. And that goes something like this: Your LinkedIn page, at its heart, is a glorified resume. It’s where people can quickly learn about you and your accomplishments. They can see your track record, and even see recommendations you’ve received. If people like what they see, they can then click your contact info, on the LinkedIn page, to visit your website, and learn even more. Sounds straightforward, right? But the whole idea of LinkedIn “as a glorified resume” reveals its roots. Because that’s what LinkedIn is—or rather, was—at its founding. It’s still structured that way. Your LinkedIn page template asks you for a quick overview of your skills; then your various roles and responsibilities at the different places where you’ve worked throughout your career, including the dates. It asks you about your education. Volunteer work. Societies you belong to. Special skills and accreditations. In that regard, it’s exactly like a resume. In fact, even the last tidbit we’d mentioned above—about clicking to your website from the LinkedIn page—is a standard datum atop any resume today: Your contact info includes your email address, phone number, and website. Those are simply a given. But wait a minute. Did you ever notice, on LinkedIn, how hard it is to find someone’s website address? That’s no accident. And it tees up, nicely, our discussion of the newer camp. The breakaway camp This group’s adherents claim that LinkedIn should not be your resume. It should not direct people to your website. This all flies in the face of everything the first camp claims—and it certainly seems to run counter to the way that LinkedIn structures itself, and forces you to populate, its pages. So what gives? The phrase “walled garden” is apt here. You’ve likely heard it mentioned in regard to companies like Apple or Facebook, who want you—the visitor—to essentially live your entire life within their curated environment, “un-polluted” by any influence from competing sources. You can easily see their motivation; it’s financial. So ask yourself: Why would LinkedIn be any different? Answer: They’re not. This is why you need to find the link for someone’s “Contact Info” on their LinkedIn page, and then click it, and then dive inside the resulting pop-up, just to find their @#$#@$ website address. LinkedIn is doing this very much on purpose. All in all (with apologies to Pink Floyd), it’s just another brick in their garden wall. Which begs the question: Do you fight them? Or do you join them? Put another way: Do you bash your head against this barrier... or make it work for you? This, then, is the logic of the second camp, what you might call the LinkedIn 2.0 Upstarts. Their reasoning, in stark contrast to those in the original camp, goes something like this: Not only is LinkedIn not a resume, it’s not a gateway to the internet, where your piddly little website lives. LinkedIn is the 800-pound gorilla of B2B connecting, and they have a zillion times more traffic, of that sort, than your site will ever garner. So exploit that strength—and walk away from your own site’s weakness—and make your LinkedIn page like a mini website unto itself. Seen this way, the tasks before you, when it comes to populating that page, are vastly different. In fact, you can even borrow grabber copy from your own website’s home page, if it’s good. Because it will apply here: The enticing question. The teasing answer. Even the call-to-action or CTA. And in this case, that CTA is not to visit your site, but to contact you directly—you guessed it—through LinkedIn. Talk about a walled garden. Another argument advanced by this “2.0” camp is that visitors—in exact deference to LinkedIn’s desires--feel uncomfortable clicking away from LinkedIn to some unknown website, somewhere Out There. If that psychological argument holds true, then it’s all the more reason to get into the 2.0 camp. So which side do you choose? As we mentioned at the outset, there are two distinct camps here. In this article, we’ve tried to present both of their arguments, as simply and convincingly as we can. So which one is better? It’s for you to decide; your case might land you squarely in one camp or the other. For us, it’s a little of each. We like our website. It lets us control the narrative, the structure, the user experience. Staying entirely in LinkedIn robs our visitors of that richness. But we can’t fool ourselves. Our site doesn’t have the eight gazillion viewers that LinkedIn enjoys. So we endeavor to walk the tightrope, customizing the effort as we see fit. Need help with your LinkedIn profile, or any similar challenge? Contact us. We work on these types of projects all the time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |