Boost Your LinkedIn Profile with These Calls to Action

Let's say you spend all this time creating content, making connections, and expanding your reach online. From this, you get more people viewing your LinkedIn profile - Great!

But now what…

What do you want people to do once they visit your profile?

Ideally, you'll want them to take action that converts them into a sales opportunity. But to do that, you need to set up calls to action that invite them into a conversion event.

In this week's Sell with Social, we will talk about how you can add Calls to Action to your profile.

What are Calls to Action?

Let's start by answering a fundamental question - what is a call to action?

A call to action (CTA) is a clear and compelling prompt or instruction, typically presented in marketing content or sales copy, designed to encourage a specific action or response from your audience. This can include clicking a button, signing up through a form, or making a purchase.

It's crucial to your social selling strategy that you provide calls to action. You need to provide a next step in working with you.

As part of your digital sales funnel, your calls to action allow you to convert your wider audience into workable sales opportunities.

There are two types of calls to action you can use:

• Direct Calls to Action - These high-intent calls to action directly move the prospect into the sales pipeline. Examples are contact forms, estimate forms, or a booking a demo button.
• Transitional Calls to Action - These early-stage calls to action continue to nurture a prospect before they become an active deal. These are often called lead magnets. Examples are signing up for a newsletter, attending a webinar, or downloading a guide.

You need to include both direct and transitional calls to action in your strategy so that you can capture buyers at various stages of their buying journey. Not every prospect of yours is ready to purchase, so providing different calls to action is essential.

Why are Calls to Action Important?

It might seem like an obvious point, but let's quickly talk about why CTAs are an essential part of your strategy.

As you go about your social selling strategy, you are actively generating "reach." This is essentially the number of views you get on your content and comments.

But when they see you, what do they do?

Every time you have somebody's eyeballs on your profile, you have an opportunity to "convert" that person. This is when they engage with a call to action and become an identifiable lead.

However, your visitors will not know what to do without a clear call to action. They'll forget how they ended up on your profile, and go back to their newsfeed. This is a major missed opportunity for you to benefit from the hard work you've put in by earning their attention!

So, to prevent this, you should add multiple calls to action to your profile.

Adding Calls to Action to Your LinkedIn Profile

Thankfully, LinkedIn provides a number of highly effective ways that you can add calls to action directly to your profile.

Here are the ones you should utilize:

Premium Button

One of the most prominent CTAs you can include on your profile is the "Custom Button" at the top. This is a highly visible button that links to a URL you chose.

It's featured at the top of your profile in a button graphic. Additionally, this call to action is featured on the newsfeed and in your posts, directly under your profile picture and headline text.

Here's the catch though - it's only available to LinkedIn premium subscribers. So if you are already paying for premium, be sure you are leveraging this important CTA!

Featured Content

Your featured content can be an excellent location to place multiple CTAs.

This spot on your profile, typically shown above the experience section, allows you to feature custom content to your viewers. You can pin posts, share links, or highlight creator content in this location.

I suggest featuring 3+ pieces of content here, including a mix of posts and links. Ideally, you can feature at least one video post you've created.

When choosing your featured content, consider showcasing content that would make a great call to action. Do you have a post talking about your product? Can you link out to a valuable downloadable resource on your company website? Provide your audience with a path to something useful in their buying journey.

Contact Section

Your profile's contact section is essentially a direct call to action. While you have no control over the text of the call to action, listing the best way for people to contact you just makes it easier for prospects to reach out.

I would recommend updating this section with relevant contact information that you want to share publicly. I say publicly, as I've found that this section is often used to gather phone numbers and email addresses for cold outreach. So be aware that you will likely get calls/emails to any information you put in there.

Experience Section

If you have optimized your LinkedIn profile, your experience section is another excellent place for you to provide a call to action.

If somebody views your profile, and specifically reads about your current role and company, they are likely interested in what you are selling. This means a well-placed call to action can provide an easy next step for somebody to convert.

To do this, I recommend you add either a link, upload media, or both, to your experience section. This allows you to link to a website landing page, valuable resource, case study, or simply your company's product information.

Images

You can also place calls to action in the images that are on your profile. Specifically, your cover image is a highly visible and large enough to include a CTA.

But keep in mind that your images will not be clickable. So I recommend any CTAs that you add to your images be very simple and direct, instructing your visitors on the easy next step they need to take. Damon's cover photo in the image above is a great example of how to do this.

Prominent Text Spots

And finally, there are all of the prominent text areas that exist on your profile.

Like the image CTAs noted above, text calls to action can't be hyperlinked. So, you'll have to provide the instruction directly in the text itself.

For example, saying, "Send me a message to get started." Or, you can include a URL in the text, but know that people will need to copy and paste it into their web browser, like "Subscribe to my newsletter - https://www.sellwithsocial.email"

Some good spots to add CTAs to the text include:

• Headline
• About Section
• Experience (text of positions)

Just be sure the calls to action fit the overall narrative of the text that they are near. They should be contextual to ensure they are effective.

For this week's action items, I want you to think about how you are converting visitors with your LinkedIn profile. Are you providing them with clear next steps?

Here are some steps to take:

1. Review Your Profile - Go through your entire LinkedIn profile and look at the messages you are conveying and the actions you are encouraging. Do you have clear calls to action, both direct and transitional?
2. Add CTAs - Now go back and add calls to action in some of those spots listed above in the article. Make sure you don't miss any opportunities to convert!
3. Optimize Your Profile - If your overall profile isn't optimized, go back and update the rest of the content. This will help provide additional context and narrative to the calls to action that you are adding.

Remember, your customers want you to help them solve their problems. Make it clear how you can help and the steps you need them to take.