Main Ideas
- Capturing your audience on the web
- Consistency across your website and social networking platforms
- LinkedIn profile suggestions
- How Intero Advisory can help
Have you ever landed on a webpage when you have been searching for a particular service, only to find yourself slightly more unsure of who or what the company is providing?
We can all agree this isn’t the best user experience and it can leave a negative impression on someone who visited your website. The same can be said for someone who hears about your business, looks it up on LinkedIn only to find a company page that hasn’t been active in 5 years.
Why is this important?
Because creating trust is an imperative aspect of doing business! Our clients usually find us after experiencing a triggering event like when a prospect makes a joke about how bad their website is or they find out someone went with a competitor with an awesome-looking website.
In a time when human interaction has been limited, and the future of how we do business is becoming more digitized each day, we feel the need to make connections a bit more personal; so don’t let yourself and your company become victim to a lack of consistent branding across the web!
Your Website’s Impression
At this point, you may be thinking about your digital presence throughout the web. (And yes, this does include your personal AND business profiles!) Questions like, “How well does my website capture target audiences?”, “Does my website tell my company’s story completely?”, “Is there anything I am overlooking on my website?”, or “How does my personal profile portray my professional image?” may all come to mind.
Your website should be direct and clear to your audience. Lengthy text and no clear user journey are quick ways to deter organic traffic; remember, you want people to stay on your website as long as possible – so the experience should be easy to navigate and informative all at once.
On top of being informative and easy to navigate (the latter especially applies to mobile (phone/tablet) user experiences), your website should have:
- a consistent and professional global color and font scheme
- quick response time
- a clean and presentable look and feel
- appropriate media content (avoid overly animated graphics)
- properly working internal and external links
Your Social Media Presence ... Specifically LinkedIn
Now that you’ve addressed your website’s image and presentation, it is now time to make sure your company’s social networking pages are reflective of the image/brand you have developed on your website. You may be thinking, “Are all of the links from my website to my social media profiles (and vice versa) functioning properly?”, “What social platform works best for my business?”, or “When is the last time I updated my LinkedIn profile?”
As a web development company, we highly recommend linking all relevant social media pages using an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All-in-One SEO.
However, you want to make sure that these social pages are supporting the brand you have developed and will not deter potential clients from doing business with you.
Knowing which platform to promote your business can feel overwhelming, as there are a number of different options to showcase your company: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and more. Our advice: pick the ones where your customers will engage with you.
For B2B companies, in general, we recommend that you use LinkedIn as your primary social platform.
As Colleen McKenna of Intero Advisory states in the title of her book “It’s Business, Not Social”. Yes, it is technically a social media platform but it is not one to share funny cat videos or cute dog pictures (although heartfelt stories sometimes do pop up in your feed from time to time). This is a place to do business; to market, network, attract talent, gain insight into your industry, and most importantly, a platform to showcase who you are and what you do.
Think about your LinkedIn profile as an extension of your website; it is there to provide viewers with the ability to learn more about who you are as a professional – it is there to build trust. In order to build that trust, you need to show your potential clients that you are reliable, consistent, and ultimately the best person for the job. An incomplete profile tells a prospect you are lazy. A consistent and active profile tells prospects you are on top of your game.
Here are a few key things you can do to help refresh your LinkedIn profile…
- Use a current profile photo – headshots are best; cropped photos from your Facebook profile are low quality and awkward (remember you’re trying to showcase your professional side) – *pro-tip: use your phone’s Portrait mode to take an updated photo without breaking the bank on professional headshots
- Add a clean, professional photo to your profile banner
- Add your services to your profile – this is a new feature on LinkedIn, take advantage of it!
- Update all links in your profile
- Update your About summary to tell your story – this is a place to show your personality by telling your unique journey!
Still unsure of how to use your LinkedIn Profile for your business? Luckily, Intero Advisory specializes in helping companies develop their LinkedIn presence for recruiting, branding, and sales.
Intero Advisory provides services like Profile Development, Coaching & Development, Lead Generation, Recruiting, and more!
