LinkedIn Profile Mini-Audit with Valerie Mummert Ep 113

Are you a solopreneur, business professional, or solopreneur looking to get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn Pie? Watch this LinkedIn profile mini-audit of Valerie Mummert.

TIPS we covered include:

▪️  Being intentional with your marketing message in your LinkedIn Header Image and changing the message periodically

▪️ Having a refreshed Headshot Photo

▪️ Suggested LinkedIn Headline updates

▪️ And more!

Watch it on YouTube

Want a LinkedIn profile mini-audit? If you're a coach / consultant / solopreneur, download these 15 LinkedIn Profile tips, and follow the instructions in the final email: https://www.mellermarketing.com/list

LinkedIn "Power Hours" (Single Session, x4, x12)
Each package includes: 

• LinkedIn consulting / coaching, personalized to your needs and focusing on your questions.
• Review of LinkedIn profile / company page to provide guidance / advice / recommendations

https://www.mellermarketing.com/powerhour 

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hey, this is Brenda Meller, back again for another LinkedIn Profile Mini Audit, and I am joined today by Valerie Mummert. Hey, valerie, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm doing well, I should. I just realized when I said your last name, I probably should have asked you for the correct pronunciation.

Speaker 2: 1:06

You got it, you got it, perfect yes.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Well, I'm delighted to be on the call with you here today. Well, I'm delighted to be on the call with you here today. So, as we get started, valerie, why don't you tell us your name? What do you do and who do you help?

Speaker 2: 1:17

Okay, well, my name is Valerie Mummert, pronounced correctly Brenda, thank you, because most people mispronounce that. And I am a life coach for women and I predominantly work with women who have what I'd call a someday dream. Someday I'm going to do this, someday I'm going to do that when my kids are grown, when I retire, when you know I have more money, when you know whatever, and get that out of their heads and onto their priority list. So let's start working towards that was the first step you're going to take. Otherwise, someday is like the eighth day of the week. You just kind of keep putting it off and putting it off, and putting it off and you never get anywhere. And you're going to be doing the same thing next year that you're doing this year and talking about it the year after that and the year after that and the year after that.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Love it, I love it. It's such a great thing and I always one of my favorite expressions, that one of my favorite quotes is from Karen Lamb and she says a year from now, you wish you had started today.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Exactly Very similar concept.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Let's get it going here, Otherwise someday will never come. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share your profile up on screen and, as I'm doing that, I want to ask are you looking for any specific questions as it relates to your LinkedIn profile? Are you open to some general pointers? What would be most helpful for you?

Speaker 2: 2:31

I am very open to general pointers. One of my questions was I do change my banner every once in a while. I try to do it quarterly on all of my socials, but what's the best timing, is there a frequency that's better than others for changing your banner out?

Speaker 1: 2:50

That is a great question and I actually recommend that you do change it out periodically and I'm glad to hear you're changing it quarterly. Typically, I say you should be changing it at least once a year and a lot of people, Valerie, they don't even think about changing it once a year. They never think about changing it at all.

Speaker 1: 3:04

I want you to keep in mind that there are many people on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I like to call them readers, not stalkers or lurkers, because that kind of sounds kind of negative but they are readers and they may meet you at an in-person event and they may not look you up on Facebook or Instagram, because they're using that more on a personal level, but they look at LinkedIn almost as an online directory. So they're kind of shopping around and looking you up on here and you'll find people that will come to your profile and they'll come multiple times. They don't just come once, they come, you know, multiple times, maybe within the same week, the same month or over the course of a year. So when you're using a slightly different header image in there, you're actually able to provide them with some additional insights on you, your business, your areas of focus. So I think you can't go wrong with changing it out too frequently, and the average person's not gonna even notice how often you've changed it. There's no notification or anything that goes out. Now for me, I'm a LinkedIn coach. This is what I do for a living. I will change my banner image at least once a month, sometimes even more frequently, depending on if I'm working on a program, launch an upcoming webinar, something like that. But I think quarterly is a great starting point for you. I think quarterly is a great starting point for you. I think you certainly could change it more frequently. Does that help you? Oh yeah, absolutely Okay, wonderful, okay.

Speaker 1: 4:17

So let's get into here. And I noticed when we came into the call here today, I was not yet connected to Valerie, and if you're looking at this on YouTube right now, you're gonna notice, as I'm visiting her profile, next to her name it says second. So that means that we are currently not connected. Connections would be first level, so that was a first. Next to her name. But I see that we have some common connections and in the pre-show you mentioned to me that you've been a podcast listener and I know that you're on my VIP email list as well, so I'm definitely going to connect with you.

Speaker 1: 4:46

But I want you to keep in mind there's going to be a lot of people like me who are visiting your profile who are not connected with you, so who are not connected with you. So it's important to keep in mind. I'm gonna first click on contact info and sometimes we can see information in here and other times it's hidden. Right now, when I click on your contact info, I can see your websites, but I cannot see your email address, and it's quite possible the email address is only visible to your first level connections. Now the good thing is we have your website, so if I wanted to do business with you or learn more about your products and your services, I can certainly visit your website. So that's what I like to call Valerie like a passive way, like if I want to search around, I have a way of doing so.

Speaker 1: 5:25

An active way of getting ahold of you would be finding your email address. So if I'm looking throughout your profile, I'm just seeing is there any way that I can find an email address to get a hold of you? In here I'm looking at the about statement. That might be one place in your experience section. I'm not seeing it in there as well. So that might be one suggestion for you, either adding it into your about statement on LinkedIn or perhaps even in your experience section as well. An email address Okay, all right. Next thing is I notice at the top of your profile there's this gray avatar next to the name of your business, valerie Mummert Coaching LLC. And if I scroll down to your experience section. I noticed there's a couple other gray avatars in here as well, and sometimes, when we see the gray avatar next to the business name, it's because the organization doesn't have a company page on LinkedIn and we were talking earlier and I know that you are on Facebook, so you're familiar with the concept of a Facebook personal profile and a Facebook business page, right? Yeah, so very similar.

Speaker 1: 6:25

On LinkedIn, you can create a business page, and when you do so, it's a very simple process. What you'll need to do. I'm going to show this on screen right now. In the top menu bar, where it says home, my network, jobs, messaging, et cetera, go under the for business dropdown, it looks like a little waffle icon and at the bottom of that, if you scroll down, you're going to see this link that says create a company page. It's free to do so. Super simple. You click on company and it's not even as involved as a Facebook page.

Speaker 1: 6:54

There's not as many fields to fill out. You type in your business name and if I do that, if I just type in you know I'm going to type in think every day, because it came up in here LinkedIn will automatically populate the URL field, so you don't have to do anything with that. You put your website inside there, your industry, organization, size, organization type logo. You'll need to upload a version of your logo and it's 300 by 300 square, valerie. So if you have like an avatar version of your logo, that's what I would recommend for that field. You can add in a tagline or a description of your business in that field and then you click on. I verify that I'm an authorized representative and that's it. So it's a super easy process to do. I'll make sure in the YouTube video that I include in there for you, valerie, I've got a blog and a video about how to set up your company page, so if you want to proceed with that process, you can do so. Great.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Yes, I did wonder I was clicking on those like where do these go? What do I do with these little great things?

Speaker 1: 7:51

And it's. It's interesting too, because when you do have a LinkedIn company page set up and I'm going to pull my profile up on screen just to show you as an example here then next to your experience section and in the top of your profile will show the logo for your business as well. But when people go to your experience section, they're going to see the logo for your company. That appears there so right away. It creates some validity for your business.

Speaker 1: 8:18

And when I see profiles that have the gray avatar, it reminds me a bit of like a page 404 error, like this website not found, or this website is still under development, and I think, well, maybe she's not quite doing this full time yet, maybe she's dabbling or working out of her basement. Do I want to part my money with somebody who I'm not certain is 100% committed to this, whereas if you have that company page, it gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling this is a legitimate business. When they click on the logo and this is going to take me to my admin view, so I'm going to toggle into view as member so when they click on it, it will take them over to your company page and it's almost like a mini version of your website. So once you fill out all the fields and you can also post from your company page. So very similar to Facebook, where you can post on your page on Facebook, you can also post on your company page on LinkedIn. How does that sound?

Speaker 2: 9:09

for you Sounds good? Yeah, so all of this that you filled in was after you set up the company page. Once you go into the company page, you can add all the other stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Yeah, all the other stuff. And then, once you're in here, I'm going to click on view as admin. You just follow through. On the left side of the page there's an edit page button and then you kind of just go from top to bottom to fill out that other information in there. Great, all right, awesome, okay.

Speaker 1: 9:33

So other thing at the top of your profile we've got your banner image and then we've got your headshot photo. Now I'm looking at you on screen here. Versus the headshot photo, it looks like you had some, and I do this too. You know, sometimes my hair is a little bit blonder, sometimes it's a little bit more Brown. What I would suggest for you is make sure that your headshot photo on LinkedIn is a fairly recent photo and it looks like you. And what happens here is we're creating trust with people. You know we're trying to create that continuity because there's a good chance eventually you're going to be in a Zoom call or some type of video virtual session with them and they're going to go. Valerie, you know like we don't want them to bring the double take on here, but making sure there's some consistency.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Having said that, your face is at the exact proportion I recommend, which is 50 to 60% of your face is the circle. So from the top of your forehead to the bottom of your chin, I can look at that right now and say, yeah, that's about 50% of the circle, so the proportion is right. But I might just suggest getting an updated headshot photo, if you have the opportunity to do so in there. Okay, okay, yep, all right. And then one final thing I'll give you in here is in your headline I see that you have retreat design, slash host and certified life coach colon coaching women to move into their next season with a clear purpose and intentional plan. Very intriguing. So first, you lead with retreat design. Is that a primary goal or a primary service offering that you're doing?

Speaker 2: 10:59

That was actually. I just hosted a paid workshop called the art of the party, which was about, like we talked about a few minutes ago, designing and hosting and planning retreats and in-person events for people and I. That's what I had on my banner image and that's why I put that at the very beginning. So that was one of my questions for you what do you do when you do two different things?

Speaker 1: 11:22

Yeah, so you know your headline. The good thing is you can have up to 220 characters in on your headline, but I do want you to keep in mind that your headline follows you around on LinkedIn and really the first 40 to 60, 80 characters are the most important. And let me show you why. Because when you post, when you comment, when you reply back or even when you come up in search results, all we see is your headshot photo. We see your name and then we see you know around 40 to 60 characters in that headline. So I always like to think about what are the most important things and the most compelling for your ideal target audience, because what we're trying to do is get them to click on the headline to come back to your profile where they learn more about you.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes total sense. So if I were you, I might suggest, and if the retreat design was something that was, it was, it was a focal point at one point it's maybe not the top focal point anymore. What I might suggest for you is keep retreat design in there, but maybe move it to the end, and then I might even suggest doing the same with host and certified or retreat design. Slash host is probably all one phrase right.

Speaker 1: 12:31

And then certified life coach is the second phrase. One thing to keep in mind is that LinkedIn will not read words if they have a pipe symbol or a slash mark right up against them. So design and host won't appear in any search results.

Speaker 1: 12:45

So to correct that, you need to put a space after the word design before the pipe and then again after pipe but before the word host. So if I were you, if we were going to keep all the words in your headline as it is right now, I would start with coaching women to move into their next season with a clear purpose and intentional plan. I would do first cap to make it headline case, so we would capitalize the M in, or actually the W in women, the M in move, you know, et cetera, the N in next, the S in season, and that just makes it pop a little bit more on there. And then after that I'd probably do space, pipe space, certified life coach, space pipe space, retreat design, slash host in there. Okay, okay, does that help you.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Yeah, that's very helpful okay, wonderful, um any final questions before we wrap up for today? Valerie Um.

Speaker 2: 13:39

I think we already talked about a lot of them. Um, we were talking about, you know, what is the purpose of LinkedIn and you know I I'm thinking that I want to use it more for networking and, you know, obviously not not a job search. Um, so, what is there like a certain um, a certain balance of you know, posting your own posts and then commenting other other people's posts, sharing other people's posts? Is there, you know, a combination or a balance that you would recommend?

Speaker 1: 14:13

Yeah, Great question and first I want to address the fact that LinkedIn is not just a job search site. And I think what happened and we talked about this in our pre-show LinkedIn started by saying hey, we're like Monster and Hotjobs, but we're better. We're like an alternative to job search platforms, and that's the basis with which they launch. And even today, if you open up the LinkedIn app, it says job search is like the first thing, and then it says networking and some other things. But the reality is that more people are using LinkedIn for professional networking and personal branding purposes than are using it for job search, networking and personal branding purposes than are using it for job search. And also, the more that you use LinkedIn, the more relevant that you'll see posts from people that are interesting to you. So right now, it's kind of like when you go into your homepage feed, it's like LinkedIn's throwing spaghetti at a wall because it doesn't know who to engage with right. But the more content that you're sharing that is relevant to your ideal target audience, that serves as a magnet, bringing the right people back to your profile.

Speaker 1: 15:07

And then the flip side I always like to think of posting and network engagement are two sides of the same coin, so you shouldn't be posting once a week minimum is what I recommend.

Speaker 1: 15:16

You can certainly post more than that, but once a week minimum.

Speaker 1: 15:19

The other side is you should be spending, I would say, 10 to 15 minutes in the LinkedIn homepage feed every day.

Speaker 1: 15:25

And I would say 10 to 15 minutes in the LinkedIn homepage feed every day, and when you do so, I want you to spend some time interacting with other people and, of course, just focusing on the people whose content is interesting and relevant to you, ignoring the content or unfollowing people if it's not relevant to you, and then you're going to start to see more relevant content in your homepage feed. At the same time, I would also spend some time if I were you growing your LinkedIn network. Right now you've got 123 connections, so those are the posts you're going to see are from those 123 connections or when they interact with other people's posts, so you might start to see some other content that's up on there. But, yeah, you can certainly use LinkedIn to support your professional network, but I think you can also find leads on LinkedIn because coaching women to move into their next season I'm going to be honest with you, valerie there's a lot of disgruntled corporate executive women right now that are like.

Speaker 1: 16:12

I need to get out of this hamster wheel and figure out where I want to go next, and you want to be like right there on a silver platter waiting for them, and I think this is a great space for you.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Great, all right, wonderful. Well, I want to thank you again for joining me here today, valerie. I hope this was helpful and I look forward to watching your profile updates from here. All right, thank you, brenda, that's really helpful. Thanks, you're welcome. And for anyone who's watching this whether I'm watching on YouTube or if you're listening to this on the podcast, I'll remind you that if you're interested in joining me for a LinkedIn profile mini audit, go to mellormarketingcom slash list where you can download my tips, my checklist of 15 free LinkedIn profile tips for coaches and consultants. Pay attention to the emails you receive from me, because the last email in that series will have a link where you can book your free profile mini audit. Until then, take care and we'll see you all on LinkedIn. Bye-bye.