Melanie Goodman: Small tips to help your LinkedIn profile

In my experience, LinkedIn is like marmite for financial advisers, you either love it or hate it. What is undeniable though is that for those providing financial advice, LinkedIn provides the best social media channel to find high value leads - with a high probability of conversion.

You will find many fellow professionals on LinkedIn, highly interested in engaging and building relationships with other professionals, advisers and businesses, so leveraging its benefits can be a game-changer. This, coupled with the diminution of in-person networking in this post Covid-19 era, renders a search engine-optimised profile a key business tool.

However, setting up a standard profile with minimum information about you and your business will be of little benefit - you need a profile that's aesthetically pleasing, ranks high in search results, offers a good deal of introductory information to your profile visitors and provides them with Calls to Action (CTAs) to make contact.

Trying to do so might seem overwhelming at first but with a few savvy tips, you can quickly learn to ace the game. Here are some essential steps for financial advisers to take create a LinkedIn profile that converts.

1. Customise your LinkedIn profile URL

One good way to look professional, legitimate to your visitors and rank higher in Google and LinkedIn search results, is by providing them with a clean profile to look at, and customising your LinkedIn profile URL is one method to achieving this.

Usually, LinkedIn profile URLs look something like this: www.linkedin.com/in/122sg112 

I strongly suggest that you customise your URL. For example, if your company's name is XYZ Consultancy, customise your URL to www.linkedin.com/in/XYZConsultancy. You can find the option to customise your LinkedIn profile URL on the top right-hand side of your profile. Click on ‘Edit public profile and URL'. My top tip is to include keywords, which your ideal client would be searching for and/or interested in.

2. Use the ‘Featured' section

For your leads to trust your advice, consultancy and services they need to find content from you that is of high quality. While posting articles and visual aids on LinkedIn is great, you need a way to showcase them in a more permanent manner on your profile. This way, whenever someone visits your profile, they trust you to be a thought leader and an expert in your field.

Sitting below the ‘About' section of your profile, the ‘Featured' section allows you to add posts and  articles that you might have shared on LinkedIn, links to web content (such as an engaging blog post) or your services page, and other media such as a video (talking about your financial services), photos, documents and presentations. In the top right-hand corner of a post, click the three dots to show the option ‘add to featured.'

3. Upload and optimise your profile and background photo

You don't want to be a faceless profile on LinkedIn with no way for others to recognise you or your brand voice. If you are working as an independent adviser, upload a clear and professional headshot of yourself on your LinkedIn profile.

Also, make a point to not to leave your background photo empty. Upload a banner that speaks about your company's products or services in your unique brand voice.

The golden tip here is to rename your image with a keyword e.g. financialplanning.jpeg; this boosts your search engine rankings.

4. Use SEO to boost visibility

If you are an independent adviser, use SEO-rich job titles on your profile. Instead of saying ‘Consultant', consider switching it to ‘Financial Adviser - {final salary} pensions and investment.' This highlights clearly your niche expertise.

What is more, you will also begin to show in people's searches when they look for this particular phrase. For other scenarios, consider boosting your SEO efforts by completely filling out all details on the profile e.g. adding skills (up to a maximum of 50), adding high-ranking keywords in the description section, adding recommendations and sharing your contact details.

Further, to help drive traffic to your business website, in your contact details, when adding a website URL, don't select ‘company' as 90% of other advisers will do. Select the ‘Other' option and use keywords in the description.

By implementing these tips, and by paying due care and attention to your chosen privacy settings, your LinkedIn profile should provide a magnetic showcase to attract new clients and referrals.

Melanie Goodman is founder and principal at Trevisan Social Media Marketing

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