A LinkedIn Profile Mini-Audit with Consultant Dave Verduyn Ep111

Are you a solopreneur, business professional, or coach / consultant looking to unlock the power of LinkedIn to get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn Pie? Watch this LinkedIn profile mini-audit of David Verduyn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidverduyn/

TIPS we covered include:

▪️  Spending more time and increasing focus on network engagement to build your visibility

▪️ Having a refreshed Headshot Photo and intentional Header Image

▪️ Reviewing profile from top-to-bottom, to ensure info is accurate for your ideal target audience

▪️ And more!

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 Rhonda Meller, back again for another LinkedIn Profile Mini Audit, and I'm joined today by Dave Verdun. Hey, dave, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 0:58

Doing great.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Good, well, I'm delighted to have you here, dave, and, for people who aren't aware of who you are, if you could tell us your name. What do you do and who do you help?

Speaker 2: 1:10

Sure, my name is Dave Verdun. I actually am a consultant. I own my own business small business, but I consult in product development and I specialize in innovation and inventive thinking. So I run courses on how to come up with new ideas, how to find unique selling propositions, and I do it for lots of different companies. Last company I did it for a couple of days ago was Polaris out in Minneapolis.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Oh, very cool, Awesome. Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to share the screen so that we're looking at your profile together here, dave, and I'm going to be giving you some pointers on LinkedIn, and I always like to start with. Are there any specific questions you have that you'd like me to address?

Speaker 2: 1:54

Or me to address, or are you just open to some general feedback here? Well, what I'd like you to tell me is, as you're looking at this old profile, you know what are the things that boy do I need to really update, because I, you know, I really haven't touched it in probably three years, maybe more, and I, yeah, so I need some help on that. So general feedback, okay. So general feedback is great, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:11

I'll start with the top of the profile because I think it's such an important area and that keeps the right people on your profile and it pulls them through your profile a little bit longer. So we've got two visual images. We've got your headshot photo and then we've got your banner image in the background. I'm going to give you recommendations for both. First, your headshot photo. It does look like a clear photo, we can see your face, but it looks like it might be more of an amateurish photo. I'm wondering if you might have a professional headshot photo. Do you have a professional headshot, Dave?

Speaker 2: 2:39

That's as professional as I have but, I could get one.

Speaker 1: 2:43

I would highly recommend it if you have access to a professional headshot photographer. In Troy, michigan, my go-to guy is Scott Lawrence and he's got got a studio and you can go to his session or you could go to like a JC Penney or a family studio or something like that for some less expensive options. But I always feel like having a professional headshot photo. It sets the right tone and it gives people a quality impression of you. And you're a consultant, dave, so you know your services, I'm sure, are not inexpensive and you want to project a quality image to profile visitors, keeping in mind here that even if you're not on LinkedIn all that much regularly, people are using LinkedIn as a professional directory, so they might be looking you up before deciding whether or not to do business with you, before deciding whether or not to reach out to you. So we want to make that quality image inside that headshot photo session.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Okay, makes sense, and I'm not sure where that background image even came from.

Speaker 1: 3:35

That was going to be. The next one is what's the background image? So I want you to think about the background image, which is that rectangular block that sits behind your headshot photo is very similar to like a billboard on the side of the expressway, so it's a space that we can use to market and promote our business. At bare minimum, I would say, have some type of an image with your company logo. If you have a building with your logo on it, that's always a good thing, but it could even be if you're here in Metro Detroit. You could use a city skyline of Metro Detroit and have your logo superimposed over top just in the skyline area. Or if you have products and services that you're working with, you could showcase some of them in there.

Speaker 1: 4:16

You alluded earlier that there's some things that you're working on and some announcements that are coming in the future, and this would be a great space in that header image to showcase anything new and exciting. I will often use my header image, dave, to promote webinars, upcoming events, new service offerings, books that I've published, and sometimes I just do general evergreen type of messages in there, but I would encourage you to think about that space as really a place that you can do some marketing and promotion for your business, changing it out at least once a year, but you could certainly do a little bit more frequently than that as well. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 4:51

Yeah, it makes great sense, Yep.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Okay, All right. Next thing I see for you is at the top of your profile, on the right-hand side in this header area. It says the name of your business. Is that your business right now? Ctc Solutions.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Yes.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Okay, and then underneath that is the educational institution Lawrence Tech. On there, and next to your business name, I see it's got this gray building avatar with the blue blocks next to it, and I'm going to scroll down to your experience section because I want to illustrate the point here, and that is, if you do not yet have a company page on LinkedIn, linkedin is going to put this gray building block icon next to it and it's almost, dave, like the equivalent of if you visit a website and it says page not found or page under development, and it gives you like that immediate reaction like wait a minute. Do I want to give my money to this guy if I'm not sure if the business is legitimate? So what I would recommend for you is that you set up a company page on LinkedIn. It's free to do so and the process is actually super easy, dave. What you're going to do is, in your top menu bar, where it says home, my network, jobs, et cetera, you're going to go under this little waffle looking symbol called for business and then, when you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see a link that says create a company page, and all you need to do is select company and then just walk through step by step and fill in the blanks on here.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Now the important thing is that you do need to upload a logo for your company, and this is like a 300 by 300 square. Keeping in mind that this is an avatar version of your logo, it's going to be really tiny on your profile, so it might just be a symbol that's a part of your logo or just the initials. It doesn't need to be the full company name, and then, after you're done filling in that information, you click on I verify create page, and it is done. And then, after you've created the page, you'll need to go back into your experience section and edit your employer so that it's linked to the page, and that way, the logo will be pulled in there, and then, once that logo is reflected in the experience section, you'll click on save. It'll be inside here and then you'll also see your logo at the top of your profile. Now, that was a really quick little masterclass, but the good thing, dave, is you will get the playback. This will be on YouTube so you can watch it again, and I've also got a blog and a video for you on creating a company page.

Speaker 1: 7:10

How does that sound? That sounds good. Good, okay, moving along here. I know you said it's been a little while since you've updated and reviewed your profile, so I'll just give you some general feedback here. I want to go easy on you because I know it's been a little bit and you've also been really busy, so I'll just say, generally speaking, I want you to spend some time going through your profile from top to bottom and thinking about all the information you have on here and it's being read by your ideal target audience, someone who might want to do business with you. So is your headline still relevant, based on where your business is at today? Is your about statement still descriptive of what you do, who you help and where people can go to learn more about you? Are the items you have in featured still current items that you have inside there? And this looks like you're a speaker on stage. Is that right? You've been speaking at events.

Speaker 2: 8:00

Yeah, that was one in Dubai actually.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Yeah, yeah, that's impressive. So just thinking about you know, getting some of that information refreshed inside there and I think that can go a long way to serving your profile visitors. Dave, even if you're not super active on LinkedIn on a long time, how does that sound?

Speaker 2: 8:18

Yeah, no, that's good. Good, I got a question If you scroll down. If I'm allowed to ask a question here, Absolutely Yep. So my work experience down there I used to work for a company and they have the wrong logo in there and I didn't put any of these logos in there. Yeah, is that something that's easy to change? The one American Supplier Institute. The third one down the third one down.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Unfortunately you cannot change that. The logo is set by the organization. So is it possible that American Supplier Institute was bought out by no See, look at that, it's a different name. Yeah, it looks like you linked it. You could have perhaps linked it to the wrong page.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Yeah, I didn't do that at all, it just did it itself. I remember several years ago that it put the wrong logo in there and I didn't know how to fix it, so I never, so the logo is actually attached to the company page.

Speaker 1: 9:12

What I just did, dave, is I typed in American Supplier.

Speaker 2: 9:15

Institute, the president.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Yeah, and then is it based in Cairo.

Speaker 2: 9:19

No, no, that's probably a satellite office, but that's the right logo.

Speaker 1: 9:25

And you said there is, the president was listed. Is this right here?

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah, shin Taguchi is the president.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Okay, so let's see if he has it. So it doesn't look like he has the. It doesn't look like there's a company page for that organization.

Speaker 2: 9:37

Yeah, oh, there, probably isn't, probably yeah, so that's probably what it was.

Speaker 1: 9:42

So what I would do if I were you is go into your experience section and then, for that particular organization, just delete out the company name, and it'll take out the name, the logo that's linked in there, and then just type in American Supplier Institute again, but what you'll have is that gray avatar next to it instead of a logo in there. Okay, wonderful, all right, dave, I know this is a lot that I'm throwing on you and I know it's been a busy day for you already, so I just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity. Was this helpful for you?

Speaker 2: 10:12

Yes, it was. It's always helpful. I could take a lot more too.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Yeah, awesome. Well, it was a pleasure to be on the call with you and learn more about you here today and for our audience, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this on the podcast later. Actually, I should spell out the name of Dave's URL in case you want to look it up it's linkedincom, slash in slash, David B-U-R-D-U-Y-N. So if you want to check out his profile and see if he's made any changes on that, you're welcome to visit his profile and also invite him to connect. And if you're interested in getting a LinkedIn profile mini audit and you're a coach, consultant or solopreneur, I want to encourage you to go to mellermarketingcom slash list where you can download my 15 LinkedIn profile tips for coaches and consultants and watch the emails that you get from me, because in the final email you'll see a link where you can book a call like this. With that said, have a wonderful day and I'll see all of you on LinkedIn.