Have you ever said: “LinkedIn doesn’t work for our industry!”?
We have run many 1-2-1 training consultations for Company Directors on LinkedIn. Attendees leave with sure-fire training on how to get the best from LinkedIn for their industry.
And here are our top 5 tips for the Fire & Security market:
1. Complete Your LinkedIn Headline
Your Headline is the most important part of your LinkedIn profile.
It’s the first thing that anyone sees about you in Google if they search for your name. And your headline is something that is easy to control so make it count!
Most of the profiles that we see say Fire Engineer or Security Director or Owner. And then the name of the Business. That’s a waste of some of your 150 characters.
Talk about your specialist areas. Fire & Security is a crowded marketplace so just adding words like Fire or Security isn’t going to make you stand out enough for LinkedIn to display your profile for searches around those keywords.
Think about the areas where you have had the most impact and mention those in your headline. Is that for the domestic market with home automation? Do your best skills lie with fire protection or access control in the commercial sector?
What problem can you solve for people? What are the benefits of working with you and your company?
Help LinkedIn and Google to understand what you do and who you can help. Then they can rank your profile in a search for that keyword on their platform.
2. Stop Competitors From Seeing Your Customers
This has come up several times in our training consultations on LinkedIn. How can you stop your competitors from accessing your customers by looking through your list of connections?
All your 1st level connections are able to see your other connections by default.
So, if you connect with competitors and with customers, your competitors will be able to view all your connections and pick out your customers.
However, there is a feature in LinkedIn that allows you to hide your connections so that Only You can see them. Find out how to Hide Your LinkedIn Connections here.
3. Add Your Keywords In Your Skills for Endorsements
This is one of our favourite LinkedIn tips. There are 5 sections of your LinkedIn profile that can be optimised to help your profile rank in Google and LinkedIn searches for specific keywords – Headline, Summary, Experience, Skills and Recommendations.
Most Directors have Sales as their top Skill. As a buyer, I am not interested in your sales prowess, only whether you have the skills to solve my particular problem. LinkedIn wants to know how you can help the people using the search bar. List the areas where you specialise and how.
Add any words or phrases that you want to be found for to the list of Skills in your Skills and Endorsements section. Find out more LinkedIn tips for using Skills and Endorsements here.
4. Don’t allow LinkedIn to access your email inbox
All the social media platforms will try to get you to give them access to your email inbox. This is our #1 Don’t Do tip on LinkedIn. The platforms say it is to help increase your number of connections and they are very persistent.
What happens if you give them the password to any of your personal email inboxes? You have given LinkedIn carte blanche to go through all your contacts. If they recognise the email as being in their own database of users, they will invite that person to connect with you on LinkedIn.
Anyone not on their database gets an invitation to join LinkedIn and is stored in their database so that, if they do join LinkedIn, they immediately receive a request to connect with you. It’s all very stalkerish.
And many people get very upset when individuals effectively pass on their personal email address to a third party like LinkedIn. Not to mention the potential GDPR implications. Do you work Business to Consumer or even if you work with Partnerships and Sole Traders B2B?
5. Use LinkedIn Groups effectively
Membership of the right LinkedIn Groups can help you to establish your authority and expertise in your field. These are not an opportunity to try to sell your stuff! Join Groups that are relevant to your customers’ interests or to any personal hobbies or interests you may have.
Word of warning. If you join LinkedIn Groups where all your competitors hang out, this may not be the best use of your time. Here’s how to leave a LinkedIn Group if you have made a mistake.
You can use LinkedIn Groups to meet other people who like the same hobbies and interests or, if you join a group used by potential customers, you could discover their frustrations or unmet needs by paying close attention to the questions they ask.
Groups also allow you to send other members a private message without being connected on the platform.
Need help using LinkedIn to grow your Fire and Security business?
I have been training Fire and Security directors on how to use LinkedIn for over a decade. Bite the bullet and take the plunge.
You’ll start to see success immediately.
Click here to find out more.
