LinkedIn expert Naomi Everly lays out the path to mastering LinkedIn and becoming the ONLY person your prospects want to work with. Join Angela and learn how you can improve your LinkedIn presence and attract more clients.

Specifically, Naomi shares:

• How you can become the ONLY person your prospects want to work with
• The biggest LinkedIn mistakes business owners make (and how you can avoid them)
• The secret psychological tricks you can use to improve your credibility on LinkedIn

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Naomi's Book - Magnetise Your Expertise on LinkedIn
• Naomi's Podcast - Magnetise Your Expertise
• Connect with Naomi on LinkedIn
• Naomi's Website - Magnetise Your Expertise

About Naomi:

Naomi-Rose Everly is an Expert LinkedIn Profile Writer and Strategy Coach, who has spent the last 12 years helping people position themselves as the ‘go to’ expert within their industry and structuring their business so prospects come to them pre-sold and ready to buy. She is the founder of TheProfile.Company and author of Magnetise Your Expertise on LinkedIn, What to Put on Your LinkedIn Profile and Grassroots to Green Shoots.

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Work With Me: growthdirective.com

About Angela

Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.

Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.

Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.

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Welcome to The Growth Pod.

Today on the podcast we have Naomi Rose Everly who is an expert LinkedIn profile writer and strategy coach who has spent the last 12 years helping people position themselves as the go to expert within their industry and structuring their business so prospects come to them pre sold and ready to buy. She is the founder of the profile company and host of the Magnetize youe Expertise podcast.

She's also the author of Magnetize youe expertise on LinkedIn, what to put on your LinkedIn profile and grassroots to Green Shoots. Naomi, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

I am so excited for our chat today. You're going to teach us how to leverage LinkedIn to become the only person that your prospects want to work with.

But before we get started, can you share which type of business owner should care most about their LinkedIn profile?

It's definitely the service based people selling their expertise.

When you have a product, you have a product website, you probably we've got a sales team and so you have a lot of assets that are working for you and people are more interested in the product.

But when people are buying your expertise or your take on the world, the way you're approaching solving a problem, then it's you that they care about, it's you that they want to know. Other platforms don't have such a big profile, they don't give you such an ability to say so much about yourself.

And I think of LinkedIn as you know, it is networking, it is business, it's an environment where you're permitted to talk about business.

Whereas if you go over to Facebook, you're going to hit into people going, well, this is my private space, I'm just here to hang out, find out solutions. For myself personally, a lot of businesses won't go to Facebook in that respect. If you're picking up your clients from there, yes you are.

LinkedIn has a very much more business to business kind of stance about it. And you just have to get the environment right for what you're talking about.

And it's one of the most important places for service business people to say, look, this is my work history, this is where I've come from, this is why I'm an expert at what I do. And you're making an impression every single day because it's sitting there and it's what will come up.

When people Google you, your LinkedIn profile will come up.

Yeah, I love that. I think that there are so many things that you mentioned there that are so important. One that your LinkedIn profile shows up when you are Googled.

So it's one of the best ways to position yourself as an expert.

But you also said that it's great for surface based businesses and people, people to show their entire work history and prove why they are an expert in their field.

So now that we know that LinkedIn is really important for businesses, but especially service based businesses, can you share why people fail to make LinkedIn work for them?

Sometimes it's just a case of we are too close to our own subject to understand how a newbie, someone who doesn't know the topic, will actually perceive and understand what we've written. The other thing is, and this will be something people have picked up from other experts in this industry is they'll write the page as a sales page.

So they've nailed the problem and they're going for it what they want to say. And it's actually that content's better on a sales page when someone's opted to have a conversation with you.

What people have forgotten is that LinkedIn has an audience and of that only about 2% are actually going to be your ideal clients or people who resonate with what you're saying to want to find out more. But every single person that's connected with you is interested in you as a human being and they want to know, who are you? Why am I connected to you?

So they are going to come to the profile and they're going to read something on that profile and we can leave them going, don't get it. Like literally you just have a CV and literally you just said what you're doing.

Then no one's going to buy into that message, right, because it's done and it's boring. Or if you've really taken the time with it, they're going to go, oh, look, I see what you're selling, but that's not for me.

And that's a wasted eyeball on your profile because actually if you said something real there brought people to an awareness of the problem that you solve in a way they did, they just weren't aware of it before. They'll remember that fact and they'll tell somebody else.

They'll be able to recognize prospects for you and go, oh, I've heard something about this before. Isn't this. Or you should try this. I just heard about this thing.

So you can turn people into referrers all the time by the way that You've written the LinkedIn profile and the way that you've brought people to an awareness of the problem. And then the rapport that you build by speaking to people directly and saying, look, this is why I believe in this.

This is why I've come from where I've come from, because I've seen firsthand, I've witnessed it, and I want to see this, make this difference in the world. Now you're winning fans, now you're winning people behind you.

And that's 100%, you know, of everybody coming to look at it has the option to relate with you, to hear what you've got to say and go, do you know what? That's not for me. But I really love your passion.

Or I get what you do and for you to be memorable and then to tell other people about it and create, they will go and create the clients and referrals for you. And then for your actual clients, they'll go, oh, wow, that's exactly my problem. I didn't know I had that problem.

But now you've told me about it, that's actually, I need to do something about this. And so we can take people from having no awareness, they had a problem all the way through to investing right there on the profile.

And they want to invest with you because you're the one who told them about it. You're the authority on this subject. And then they go, well, I really like them. I like their mission, I like who they are, I want to know more.

And it's that point they come through to your website and the website continues the conversation and says that much more on it. Yeah.

So it sounds like one of the biggest pitfalls People make on LinkedIn is using it as a sales letter. But you're saying that you really shouldn't have your LinkedIn be optimized to try to make the sale right there on your profile.

Instead, you should fill it with information that speaks not only to pain points that your clients have, but shows your passion.

So if you're trying to connect with someone or you, you show up in someone's feed and they come to see your profile to maybe connect with you, you're still building your network.

And so maybe we're focusing less on using our LinkedIn profile to make the sale right there and more on building a network and those types of beneficial relationships.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's not that everyone's doing the sales letter. Everyone's picking up on that training per se.

I mean, I'm seeing a lot of it come through, but it's these often, like, bullet points. And this is what I do and this is who I am, if you think about it, going to a networking event, I look across the room and I see your face.

That's equivalent of me seeing your photo. I think that's a friendly person. I'll come and chat to you. I come over, I say, what's your name? You say, Angela. I say, naomi. What do you do, Angela?

You give me a one line, that's the headline. I say, I'm Naomi. I do this, that's my headline. And then we're locked in this conversation that you can't get out of, right?

Because it's just politeness. You just go stand there and listen just for a moment. And you only have people's attention for so long.

And the way that you communicate in the way that you relate to them, how you speak, that is how your about section should read.

If you were to read back your LinkedIn profile in that moment and it's jerky, it's bullet points, it's, yeah, yeah, I can sell you this thing, or blah, blah, blah, you know, it will really turn a person off. It doesn't create rapport. So we're looking for that kind of gentle flow of back and forth.

A little bit about how I solve it and why I solve it, and a bit more about you and the problem and this kind of conversational kind of piece.

And one of the key things that really highlights this is if you put a direct question to your audience in that about section, they'll go and answer it. They're not talking to you, they're reading. But they'll try and answer it just the same as if you were talking to someone.

They think that you've just handed over the talking stick and it's their time to speak. And it's exactly the same on LinkedIn. You want to think about, you've got 90 seconds of somebody's time. How are you relating to them?

And is this going to feel like a conversation? Because it's through conversations where rapport is built. So how am I leaving a person feeling?

And what are the key things that I need to convey to keep someone's attention?

Because the other thing is, before someone decides to get into rapport with you, they're going to scan, read the profile, they're going to read it, they're going to look at it from top to bottom. So they're going to come on and that background image sets context.

They're going to see your photo and decide whether you're energetic or reserved or, you know, poorly dressed or just, you know, like, are you someone who's got a professional photo and you're being a star, or are you someone who's taking a selfie in a car? You know, it all communicates something. They're going to look at the way the headline is formatted.

They're going to look at your about section, they're going to read the about section, they're going to look at it and they're going to say, is this a cv? I don't want to read because I'm not in hr, you know, I'm not a recruiter. Is this well formatted? Someone's thought it through.

Can our keywords jumping out at me and concepts, I'm like, oh, actually, I could read this. They're going to go through, they're going to scan down to your experience.

They're going to see the companies you worked at, just the logos, names, the type of jobs you did, and maybe some keywords that are jumping out. Then they'll go back to your about section and go, this is a good use of my time. I'll read this more thoroughly.

So anything that says to people, this isn't a good use of my time, it hasn't been well put together, is completely off topic for me. It's just that's, that's when people are going to leave.

So, you know, people who are completely not your industry will still read it, if it's done right and go, oh, that's interesting. I can see what they're saying there. And they'll retain that useful piece of information and tell other people, great.

So it sounds like when people come to your profile, they're not like reading everything in depth. What they're doing is they're doing a brief scan and you mentioned a few things, but I'm interested.

What are the fundamental components of a LinkedIn profile? And when we're implementing those, what are some tips we should keep in mind?

Yeah, so the experience entries are important. You don't want to have anything in there that's short term or doesn't add to your story. You want to think about your expertise. What is it that.

That you're selling as an expertise and what is your philosophy and what is it that brought you to this philosophy and this approach?

The problem that you are solving and the way you're solving it, what is it that you've seen throughout your work history that has brought you to this conclusion and what is it you want to leave people feeling? So then you would go through each entry of your experience and tell the story of what happened there that led you to believe what you now believe.

Like I experienced firsthand, you know, what it was to get burnt out and stressed at the workplace and not have the organization support. You always frame it positively.

You never say something negative, of course, about an employer or colleagues, but you want to tell that story chronologically through that's really important. And it's good to keep them the same sort of length, you know, like really nice and smartly put together. Don't want to wax liberal.

The people that will read that are the people that are either the 11th hour or the first hour in their buying journey with you. So they would have be, they're just about to make a decision, but they need more confidence in you.

So then they're like, well, let me just read some more. I want to get, make sure I've got the right person. It would also be the people that support the decision maker. Why have they made this decision?

Why do I want to work with this person? They will do a deep dive on you and it's them that are going to read it.

And then also those who've made a gut reaction decision to buy from you and are now starting to slip in buyer's remorse, either because they're trying to justify to someone in their life why they bought it, or that person is going, what did you buy? They're the ones that are going to deep dive. Read that thoroughly. So it's very valuable to have it there. But again, it's a smart, it looks smart.

And for that scan reading, I see someone who's taking care of their profile. So that's all really important. I mean, you've got all the obvious stuff and I've touched on some of the mechanisms that are obvious.

But you really want to be thinking about the psychology of how people buy. And that is that if they know that they have a problem, they're looking for a solution. They know plenty of people like you who do what you do.

And you will have to compete on price or features and benefits and stuff. And you've got to shout louder, be more energetic and be there at the right time and they'll buy from you. That is what we call a red ocean.

And it's a lot of thrashing about. And basically the red means a lot of fish cutting each other up. And you know, we're cutting each other, cutting prices with doing whatever.

What we really want to do is we want to swim right away from that red ocean and we want to go to what's called a blue ocean, which is to fly, go right away from all of that and actually find clients that don't know they have a problem and aren't looking for a solution. They're living with the status quo. They think this is just the way life is.

They just don't realize that there is a solution to the problem and life could be better. And it's these people that they can get set up and go, oh my gosh, I have no idea. That's why I'm tired all the time. I have no idea.

That's why I have stomachache. Or, you know, all the things that. Or it could be any subject really. That awareness piece of, oh my gosh, you mean this isn't normal?

You've got their attention now. And now they're going to come along and try and find out some more and diagnose and go, this is me. I identify with this.

This is what's going on for me. I think I've got this problem. At which point they'll go, I think I've got this problem, what do I do about it?

And they'll try and fix it for themselves. And if you don't tell them some rough things around how to fix it, they'll go and Google it and find your competitor.

But if you can just tell them enough that has them go, I can't fix this for myself, but I definitely need a solution. Now they're in an investment stage. You've taken them from not even looking to, I will put money into this and I'm going to put the money in with you.

And research has shown that those who. It's the people that bring us to an awareness of the problem that we have are the ones that we're going to buy from.

It's very unusual for us to Google and find someone else and buy from that person.

And that's why it's so important to do this job of really becoming the only person your prospects want to work with by following this journey of bringing them to an awareness, establishing that credibility, showing them how you're going to solve the problem for them and then being there, ready with your offer. But there's quite a few points there.

If the offer isn't strong enough, if you haven't led them to needing to invest soon enough with enough information that they go and Google your competitor and go, oh, I'll take that. There we go, that sounds good.

So there's quite a few things in that journey to get right, but that's what you really want to make sure is taken care of. On your profile and your profile, even in the small spaces available, it can do all of that.

Yeah, I love that. I love how you're talking about making sure you understand the psychology of somebody as they're making their buying decision.

And you called out a lot of really great information there. I'm wondering, you know, we listened to this episode, we have complete buy in and know how powerful LinkedIn can be for us.

What are the three most important elements that we should go and implement in our LinkedIn profiles today after listening to this episode?

Yeah. So there are some things that you, you'll need a sounding board for. You know, you need someone to thrash it out with you.

One of the big reasons why in the LinkedIn profile reviews I offer people is I put the word strategy in there is because fundamentally the foundations of the business have to be straight first you have to know why you, what is the problem you are uniquely here to solve, that you're passionate about, that you can keep going with no matter what happens. Why are you credible in that? What's your story? What's brought you to this point? And you know what? It doesn't have to be. I have 10 years experience.

Often it does, but often it doesn't as well. It's how you tell the story and you're driving passion for it.

When I started LinkedIn profiles, which was 10 years ago, no one was writing them and I'd not, I'd not got a history of writing them, but I convinced everyone I should write them. So you want to get that credibility piece, right. And that problem. Right.

And then you want to make sure that you're pitching it right to the audience and you get your packages right and you've got your sales process in place because for no matter how much you post on LinkedIn and put content out there and people come to a good profile, if you don't know what you're actually selling and you can't actually bring them into a diagnostic call to actually ask the buying question, do you want to buy this or not? What is it I'm buying? If you don't have all of those elements in place, the LinkedIn profile's not going to work anyway.

So there is a big point here of like really understanding the business you're in first and really having it structured.

My work, usually we're about 2/3 of the way through the process before I start writing the profile because we've got to fix all of this stuff in someone's business first. And then what will then happen is when you come to the LinkedIn profile, it will start to make a lot more sense.

I mean, we all know background image, photo, headline, about section, those kind of things. We all know that we've covered a little bit of that today, but it's really thinking it through of how it all connects together.

And you do want to have that call to action with that, you know, discovery call on it.

If you're someone who, you know, you actually just prefer people to come on your podcast and join your mailing list and then eventually opt in to have a one to one with you to see about buying, maybe because you've got a lot of followers, then that would be your call to action.

If you're in a position where you want a lot of one to one calls because that's how you sell your package and you need to sell your package, that would be your call to action as well. You can also use scorecards and other things to help people to diagnose themselves and actually see the extent of the problem that they have.

Because only by understanding the extent of the problem will we actually invest in the solution.

So scorecards, a really great way, so that's a really important thing is to have that call to action and then just overall is making sure that you show up authentically and just ripping out of the profile anything that's just not relevant the audience like how you did xyz, blah, blah, blah. Okay, if it doesn't link to why, what, what's in it for me as the reader, then let's not have it on there at all.

It's, everything's going to be relevant because when someone's looking at the profile, they are literally sitting there going, how is this relevant to me? Is this a good use of my time?

Amazing.

So it sounds like instead of rushing out and implementing, you know, things that we all know, like you said, headline, background image, what we need to do is take that step back and really understand who we are, what we're offering and what the call to action is.

Before we can go then and make sure that our headlines, our background image and our about sections and every other piece of our LinkedIn is really laddering up to who we are, what we do. And our call to action.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know that people want to get on with it and there is that, you know, tidy it up, put a professional picture on it.

If you, if you're in the industry of becoming an influencer or, you know, I don't know if that's quite the right, the word or an expert it that branding colors throughout is good to have and just pacing, just be really aware of what it looks like and then the rest can be fixed up later because, yeah, I know people want to get on with it.

Yeah, I feel that. Okay, great. Well, what's next for you, Naomi?

What's next for me? I'm going to be launching the Magnetize your expertise podcast coming up, actually.

So I've written a book called Magnetize your expertise on LinkedIn, which you can get on Amazon. I think it's in the US store. It's definitely in the UK store. And yeah, so that's a podcast really aimed at experts selling their expertise.

I'll be doing some solo episodes as well as interviewing people on what it really takes when we put ourselves out there in this way. So, yeah, that's my next big project.

That's very exciting.

And if listeners want help reworking their LinkedIn profile, want to keep up with you online or want to be first to know when your podcast launches, where can they find you online?

Yeah. So on LinkedIn, if you put Naomi Rose Everly into LinkedIn, I will come up and you will see there, you'll see my face.

I should be the brand simple enough. So yeah, do reach out and connect with me and let me know that you've come through this podcast because I'd love to know.

And also you can go to magnetiseyourexpertise.com and on there you'll be able to sign up for notifications of new episodes being launched and answer a quick little survey as well for me. So I know what you're after. And on there you'll also see work with Naomi down in the footer, which talks about my program and how I work with you.

I generally don't write LinkedIn profiles on their own. I always do it within insider coaching relationship because obviously I firm believer in getting those foundations right first.

So, yeah, magnetizeyourexpertise.com Excellent.

All of those links that you just mentioned will be in the show notes. So for any listeners who want to go to any of the links you just mentioned, it'll be there for you. Thank you, Naomi, so much for joining us today.

I really enjoyed our conversation and I know I learned a lot, so I know the audience did as well.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for having me.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode of the Growth Pod, please leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.