#215: Social | LinkedIn Profile Best Practices for 2025 with Kanika Sharma, Founder of Copywriting Teardowns

In this episode, Matt Carnevale sits down with Kanika Sharma, a conversion page copywriter and Founder of Copywriting Teardowns. Kanika audited over 100 LinkedIn profiles in the Exit Five community and shares her biggest takeaways on how marketers can optimize their profiles to attract the right audience and drive conversions.Matt and Kanika cover:

• Why your LinkedIn profile should be treated like a landing page
• The biggest mistakes B2B marketers make with their LinkedIn presence
• How to structure your profile for visibility, engagement, and inbound opportunities

Timestamps

• (00:00) - - Intro to Kanika
  
• (03:27) - - Why optimizing your LinkedIn profile is so important
  
• (07:15) - - Your LinkedIn profile functions like a landing page
  
• (09:08) - - Optimizing your LinkedIn cover image
  
• (10:50) - - Common mistakes in LinkedIn profile branding and messaging
  
• (12:10) - - The role of social proof and credibility in your LinkedIn profile
  
• (13:54) - - How to craft a compelling LinkedIn headline
  
• (20:36) - - How to use personalized CTAs and custom LinkedIn buttons
  
• (32:35) - - Why business leaders should prioritize their LinkedIn presence
  
• (35:48) - - Balancing strong copy and good design for credibility
  
• (37:39) - - Optimizing the LinkedIn Featured section
  
• (44:36) - - How to turn The Experience section and About section into a conversion tool
  
• (50:08) - - How often should you update your LinkedIn profile?
  
• (52:46) - - Final takeaways

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Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership***Today's episode brought to you by Navattic.B2B websites are filled with too much story, too much narrative these days. You visit a website and you have no idea what the product does and how it works.This is why Navattic has become a popular product for B2B Marketers. They help you build interactive demos so you can give buyers a real look at the product before they ever talk to sales.
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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:

You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:17]:

Okay, awesome. I'm here with Kanika. Kanika, Why don't you tell us a bit more about what you're working on right now.

Kanika Sharma [00:00:23]:

Awesome. Yeah. I am a conversion copywriter and a LinkedIn ghostwriter for a lot of B2B SaaS. Founders and I recently just completed these live profile boost audits inside Exit Five. We started off, I think it was an idea that I kind of pitched to you and I was like, okay, let's do this. You know, this is just a random idea because I felt like a lot of landing page audits had already been done. I felt like this is my area, let's do it. And I saw a lot of other past events and I felt like, okay, the maximum participation we're going to get is like maybe, you know, 30, 40, that's going to be it.

Kanika Sharma [00:00:58]:

You know, I was already with my notepad and everything and then, oh my God, we crossed 100 plus profiles. Some people submitted multiple profiles from the companies and their executives and I feel like, and I feel like, yeah, this was a great, great event that we pulled off. So thanks to you for believing that idea. And yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing just going through all of that. It was like a ton of data and insights right there.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:23]:

Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. For context for everyone listening, once a month in the community we do these asynchronous type teardowns. So we've done like a website teardown in the past where people will submit the link to their website and then a website expert goes in and gives some pointers on how to improve it. For this one we did the LinkedIn one and it was, I think it was the most popular one we've done all time, which is amazing. You know, everyone's got a LinkedIn profile and myself included. Like I, I even know my profile probably could use some work. Even though my engagement on content is good, I'm sure there's a lot I could even do on my end. So everyone has areas they, they can improve and.

Matt Carnevale [00:02:03]:

Yeah, yeah. Today, you know, I think we'll just take some time going through some of your biggest learnings from the teardown. How does that sound?

Kanika Sharma [00:02:11]:

Awesome. Yeah. Okay, let's get to it. Thanks for handing the pod. Let's get started with this. I just want to mention like two quick insights. We kind of covered 34 hours of the total. The total audit time was 34 hours, including each one of these audits.

Kanika Sharma [00:02:28]:

And that was absolutely Crazy because my loom kept crashing all the time. It could just hand. It couldn't handle. It was not sure what I was up to, so it couldn't handle all of that. I feel like it was absolutely crazy because even if I, if I would have done a paid event somewhere else, I don't think think I would have kind of, you know, gone into this much depth that I did for this event because we just had these diversity of profiles that kind of gave me. I mean, every single profile I opened up was so different from each other. Of course, some of the mistakes they were making were like the same, but they were so different from each other that I felt like, oh, my God, I'm getting this new idea by just looking at that. Just wanted to mention that and get it off.

Kanika Sharma [00:03:10]:

Okay, so to start with, everyone who's listening here today, you could be literally anyone. You could be a fresher, just looking out for jobs. You could be a popular creator like Matt mentioned. I think Matt has some great engagement on LinkedIn. So you could be someone with like some crazy engagement on LinkedIn and you might feel like, you know, this is not something that would really help you, but just stay tuned and we'll discuss that. Or you could be a founder who doesn't post that actively, but you have like, you do think that according to you, you have this updated profile or you could be like a sales leader who's running Sales Navigator campaigns. All of you all need LinkedIn profile optimization. And why is that? So we'll talk about that later.

Kanika Sharma [00:03:52]:

Okay, so I'm going to start off with a super interesting story. So I have this landing page for my profile audit since the very beginning. I think I had it like even before we did this live event. But after the event, I kind of optimized that landing page and I kind of shared it across different communities. And I had this line in my message that said something around, you know how people are running Sales Navigator campaigns and they're posting around on LinkedIn with a profile that's not updated since 2002. And there was this particular comment that said, okay, how do you really think, you really think that people who are running sales navigate campaigns haven't updated their profile since 2002? I mean, like, okay, is that even true? And I was like, okay, that. I mean, something just clicked that I felt like the meaning of literally updating your LinkedIn profile is actually not really clear. I mean, people are following the textbook definition there.

Kanika Sharma [00:04:52]:

They are following the rules that are like, you know, okay, about section supposed to be about you. The headline is supposed to be, you know, what is it? What your profile says cover picture needs to be perfectly designed. So maybe this is what they think is the meaning of updating your profile. So I felt like, okay, this is something that there needs to be some education done around this particular topic. So I feel like we should start the episode by talking about what updating a LinkedIn profile really means. And I feel like this is very important for literally anyone who's just starting to post on LinkedIn or maybe starting to run some cold email campaigns, doing some paid campaigns, because literally every single person is going to check out your profile no Matter what. I mean, even if you're doing like, if you're running paid ads, these thought leader ads are very popular on LinkedIn right now. Even if you're doing that people and you're not directly taking them to your profile, your CTA is your landing page or something, people are still going to check out your profile.

Kanika Sharma [00:05:51]:

That's going to happen. If they see your name there. Yeah, they're going to search for it. They're going to make sure this is just like a website.

Matt Carnevale [00:05:56]:

The LinkedIn profile is almost like a landing page itself. The posts and content are what you're using to generate attention and, you know, generate interest and then drive that interest to your profile. And then the profile is where, you know, if it's designed properly, it's like a landing page where you ideally want someone to convert. It could be to your services, but it also could be to something like your DMs. Like, let's say you are a experienced marketer and you're trying to find a new job. Well, they're going to look at your profile and at that moment think, oh, like maybe I should hit this person up to work for me. They seem like they'd be a good option. So it's good framing for the profile.

Matt Carnevale [00:06:37]:

It's almost like a landing page.

Kanika Sharma [00:06:39]:

100%. That's spot on. I feel like that was my opening line for every single audit. I told them that I'm going to treat your profile like a landing page. It's spot on, 100%. Whatever you said. I feel like this is exactly the problem because people are even a lot of popular creators. I've checked some of the profiles and I feel like, because they are treating their profiles like these, you can say passive listings out there wherein it's just like nice to have thing where everything is like just shiny and updated and not exactly like a conversion landing page.

Kanika Sharma [00:07:10]:

Like they treat their website or something. Which is why the actual gaps begin. So here we go. Here's the actual meaning of updating your profile. It means updating every single section of your profile where you're talking such that you're talking directly to ICP and their pain points. So let's talk about the COVID picture. Is your cover picture just like you can see a plain picture with like a solid background color and then there's a logo or a tagline in front of it and there's a headline that says founder at so and so. And then there's like an about section and then there's like an experience section.

Kanika Sharma [00:07:44]:

Then you have posts and like featured section. Everything that you're doing according to the textbook definition is not really going to work versus something that's being done towards like a particular goal. And like you said, when you treat it like a conversion landing page, the goal could literally be anything. It doesn't necessarily need to be, you know, taking users to a particular link to a particular landing page. It could literally be just taking them to a dm, just like having them book a call with you. The conversion could literally be anything. But is your about section really talking to your icp? Is your cover picture talking to your. I think that is the most important thing.

Kanika Sharma [00:08:19]:

So this is something I do to quickly test how optimized a profile is. Just go out and remove every single link from your profile. I mean, yeah, it's a controversial thing to say, but just remove every single link. If you have like a landing page link, you have a book, a call link, just remove it. And if your profile is completely optimized, your cover picture sees what it needs to. Your headline sees what it it needs to. Users are actually going to reach out to you via DMs. They don't need a link, they are actually going to reach out to you.

Kanika Sharma [00:08:48]:

You don't really need like a link for them to go to a separate landing page and then ultimately convert. And this is exactly how it happens. So you start off with a cover picture and this is something I've seen. I feel like a lot of marketing leaders, especially in B2B SaaS as well, I've seen them having like these on point branded cover pictures. Everything looks like design wise super aesthetic. It goes with the brand. Everything is according to how it's supposed to be in terms of the design. But the moment you read the message on the COVID picture, it would just be something like a very cliche tagline that has nothing to do with the problem.

Kanika Sharma [00:09:26]:

That's solving nothing to do with the product. It just looks like it's like a nice to have thing that I look at and I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah, it's amazing. I'm under that illusion that it's working for me, but it's really not right. So I feel like when you look at a cover picture, look at it in a way that it's like the hero section. It's like the hero of a landing page. So just like the hero of a landing page answers the question, what is the biggest problem you're solving for users? Your cover picture needs to answer the question, what is the biggest problem that your product is solving for users? And trust me, there's enough space for that. Plus there's enough space to add some quick logos for some social proofs.

Kanika Sharma [00:10:06]:

It becomes like the complete hero experience. So I feel like you have just like, just like on a landing page, you have these first few seconds to convince a user to stay back. Otherwise they're just going to leave. They don't have the time. It's even trickier on a LinkedIn profile because, yes, you have a few seconds, but you also have a lot of distractions. You have notifications, then there's messaging, then there are notifications on the sales navigator bar, then there's my network, and then there's a feedback. So it's very tricky. You just have those few seconds when they're checking out your cover picture, your headline, your links, and everything in the upper fold.

Kanika Sharma [00:10:46]:

Does that make sense? Do you have something to add on here?

Matt Carnevale [00:10:49]:

No, no. I think that's great advice. I like the idea of what should be in the COVID image should be speaking to the pain points of the customer. I feel like you're right in the sense where it's typically just like a generic company tagline that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Or it'll just be the color of your brand and your logo. I think mine actually may be that. So maybe I need to go change it. But no, I think that's great advice.

Matt Carnevale [00:11:12]:

I think things like that too are really easy to create in Canva too. Like you can easily go create one of those yourself and just add that to your profile. It's not that difficult. I like the idea of adding some social proof in there too, because you know within the first couple of seconds somebody lands in your profile, it legitimizes you. Right. You don't really have a place to put to add logos like that. It's not like a landing page in the Sense where you could add image anywhere, there's only a couple different places. So to add a recognizable logo that somebody sees right out of the gate kind of legitimizes what you're doing.

Matt Carnevale [00:11:47]:

So I definitely like that tip. And, and even to add on that, like, if you're somebody who maybe doesn't want to, because not everyone wants to, like, push their company super hard, whether it's their own company, the company they work for, maybe they're more interested in their own personal brand and building that up, then maybe use that space to highlight some of the work you've done or who you are or your accomplishments. Now, obviously you don't want like a bullet list like in the about section, but is there a tagline that you have for yourself that could catch the interest of somebody who wants to hire you? So Maybe it's like B2B, marketing generalist with a passion for content, some kind of tagline or something that kind of highlights who you are. So that's my thoughts about that picture.

Kanika Sharma [00:12:30]:

Awesome. Amazing. And I feel like that's spot on. I mean, you don't necessarily need to promote like a product or like a brand on the COVID picture. You could just be answering the question that, for example, you're posting content even once a while, not consistently answer the question, what is the biggest problem that you're trying to solve for these users or the biggest value you want to provide them with your content? And you could just answer, you know, the most interesting kind of COVID picture. Cover pictures are the ones where people have just like added a newsletter. Like a newsletter link, like URL is just typed in on the COVID picture so that people can go out and search for it. There's no link added anywhere on the profile.

Kanika Sharma [00:13:10]:

And that just like gives them these organic hits that people are not aware about. So people come to your cover picture, they actually look at the URL, they actually go out and search for it. And a lot of people don't know that exactly. And I feel like that's where they've been linked. Every single section, right from the COVID picture to the experience section, talking about the same problem. Then there's a URL that's taking to the exact same thing. For example, it's a newsletter. Every single section is talking about, okay, this is how.

Kanika Sharma [00:13:37]:

These are the kind of users we are targeting. These are the problems we are solving for them. And then they use the about section to kind of establish more on the existing pain point. I have this very interesting analogy that I use for limited profiles. So a Lot of, I think a lot of users hearing this also might be running paid ads. And I don't think you can just like win on like paid campaigns if you just like optimize your ad copy alone. It's like the ad to landing page experience, it's like that complete experience that ultimately kind of converts the users. I feel like a lot of people are brands out there running these, you can say AI based campaigns where they're constantly changing copy on the landing page to target users according to like what they've heard about, what data they already have for these users.

Kanika Sharma [00:14:24]:

And that's how they make sure the ultimate conversion happens, even for like the shopping experiences. So nothing is just happening because of that ad copy, which kind of makes sense. So nothing is going to happen just by you posting content. It's going to be the content, then the person goes to your profile and then ultimately a landing page or maybe they send you a DM and that's going to be like the, you can see a full conversion funnel experience. Does that make sense?

Matt Carnevale [00:14:50]:

For sure? Yeah. I love it. I think that's the right way to think of it. It's, it's part of the funnel, it's part of the experience. There's no silver bullet in your posting. Everything across the funnel needs to be optimized for you to expect any meaningful impact from your, you know, LinkedIn game. So. Yeah, love that one.

Kanika Sharma [00:15:05]:

Awesome. Yeah. Okay, so now I just want to talk about, I think we've covered the COVID picture how it needs to answer the question, what is the biggest problem you're solving for users? You could add some logos that people find, you know, they find relatable. They see that, they instantly connect with that. Then you could embed, literally write down your website URL in the COVID picture so that people search for it and you get like, you get this SEO hit as well. Now let's talk about the headline, which I feel is the most. I feel like that's the place where I see most people dumping down keywords. Like they just pick on these keywords, right from digital marketing to like email marketing, and they just pick up these bulk keywords and they dump their.

Kanika Sharma [00:15:45]:

And I want to have everything in this headline. That's not how it works. Headline is that section of the profile that's supposed to generate curiosity for the user to check out the remaining part of your profile. It's that line, like that micro hero where the way the hero ends right under the social proof. If you didn't have anything interesting in like the Upper section in the hero, people are not going to check your benefits, features, so forth and so on. Similarly, if you're not leaving these curiosity nuggets in your headline, people are not going to check out your about section and then the featured and then the experience section, which is how they exactly lose you. So I feel like headline is the most important section. I came across this profile while I was auditing other profiles and I still remember what this person said.

Kanika Sharma [00:16:32]:

I'm going to say it out loud for you. It just said something like, you know, working, helping clients with SEO since like 2019 or something, making 20 million a year for them. So I felt like that was something. I spent the next 20 minutes searching for their website, their posts, literally everything that just kind of gave assurance to the claim that yes, they were making that kind of profits for their clients. And then it clicked me. Okay, this is exactly what they wanted. They wanted me to check out everything on their profile. They wanted me to check out their website, their sources, literally everything that they have because of that one thing they wrote here.

Kanika Sharma [00:17:10]:

But when people say they don't have a lot of interesting data points, a lot of like, you can say a lot of space on the LinkedIn profile to test just like a landing page, I just don't get it because I feel like this is just like this. And this is just one example. You could literally be saying something like I help X do Y through Z in your headline. For example. I would write something like, I help B2B SaaS founders convert 10 to 20 leads a week to thought leadership content. I mean, this is a cliche. This is a cliche, but this is just, this is an action focused headline that's at least going to make a user be curious enough to check out your about section or the links you have and the remaining sections of your profile. Otherwise if you're just adding like founder ad or like growth marketing ad, I don't think that's doing anything good for this particular user.

Kanika Sharma [00:17:59]:

I don't really think it's adding any value for them. Let me know if it makes sense.

Matt Carnevale [00:18:03]:

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think so. Mine or part of my headline is marketing manager at Exit Five. Right? But the difference with Exit Five and most companies is we have a really strong brand name, right? So the company name Exit Five carries a lot of weight in and of its own within LinkedIn. Right? It would be like if somebody said the VP of marketing at Salesforce, you'd be like, oh, this, this person must be pretty legit, right? They're a Senior marketing leader at Salesforce. So I think there's two parts to it. If you work for a company that has a really strong brand name and you should know definitively. Right.

Matt Carnevale [00:18:37]:

People know, then it's okay. Especially you know, if you've got a nice title. Sure. Because that alone is going to carry some weight. But if you don't, then I think it makes more sense to go the route you're saying, which is something that's a bit more action oriented. So if it's your business, like you said, it could be something related to how you help. But even if you're just an in house marketer, same thing. It's like, can you try and write something creative or catchy or action oriented in that little bit of space you have? I think that's going to catch the attention of somebody who's looking to hire you or people who even just want to follow you a lot, lot better, 100%.

Kanika Sharma [00:19:12]:

And I feel like it's not really just like you said, it's only going to work because it's Exit five. It's really not going to work for a lot of different brands. It's just going to work for this. You write Exit Five, you write like a lot more names that I'm familiar with out there. Yes. I'm going to get connected that idea. I get that. But for most people out there, that's really not going to work.

Kanika Sharma [00:19:32]:

It works for you and that's like, I feel like that's like a special case wherein you have created this community where the Exit Five social proof is strong enough to just like eradicate everything else.

Matt Carnevale [00:19:44]:

Exactly, exactly. It's rare. It's a 1% use case. Most people have to get more creative and go the route that you said.

Kanika Sharma [00:19:51]:

Exactly. Yes. There's a super interesting thing that's right below the headline and I don't think a lot of people are aware about that. I didn't see a lot of people actually also using it. So there's this customized link option that you have on LinkedIn now if you go on edit your profile, you can add a custom button and you can just literally also change the copy of that CTA and then add like a custom link where you want to do take users. It's super interesting because see this is the link. This is literally the primary CTA that you see on the hero section. This like, this is like that book a demo option.

Kanika Sharma [00:20:26]:

Okay. It's not book a demo, but it's literally the primary CD of your profile. It's going to be there and people are going to click on it. People who like clicking on links or like, who find that interesting are going to click on it. And now you have to remember that these people are actually leaving your profile to go to that link and they might not return. It's not how websites work. LinkedIn is very different. People have short attention span.

Kanika Sharma [00:20:50]:

They forget what they were doing like last second. If you don't have, if you haven't created that kind of very strong authority, they're not going to necessarily go back to your profile. But now I feel like the whole pressure is on this landing page to be super accurate. And I'll tell the number one mistake I saw most people making was that first of all, most people weren't aware that they can add a custom link. So they were just like adding a link there but not customizing the copy or something. It was just like a random link being dumped there. A B they were taking all these people to their website homepage, which is the worst, the worst place to take LinkedIn users if you haven't really optimized your landing page, your homepage, I mean, your homepage becomes your landing page in this case and it's not optimized. It's just, the journey just becomes worse from there.

Kanika Sharma [00:21:41]:

Because I'll tell you what, so I was opening all these links and I was on the homepage with a hero section that said nothing about the product. There were benefits, there was a feature section, there was a video, but nothing really told me what they solved until I actually read the case study or the testimonial. So I literally, I mean, for most, I think I audited 100 plus profiles. I think four or five of them, I still think, I'm just saying more number, like not more than 5 had their homepage optimized for like this average LinkedIn viewer. Viewer. Even for like general users or prospects, their homepage wasn't optimized. So I felt like now what, what happens is you just made the user leave your LinkedIn profile to go to this landing page that says nothing about your product, that has 100 different links on it. You're trying to take them.

Kanika Sharma [00:22:33]:

It's like, you know, it's like that brochure, like that carousel saying so many different things. Each section is so different from each other. And now the user, instead of being lost on the profile, they're lost on the landing page, which is worse. And you just like you had this opportunity to actually convert them by taking them to a super specific landing page and you lost that opportunity. So I felt like from whatever I saw, I had to go through almost one or two extra landing pages to figure out what was the problem they solved. And finally after I landed to their case study page or like some other page about the specific products, like the specific product pages, I got to know the problem they solved. It would be the best idea to actually connect the product page or that particular case study or like a demo page. The demo pages were actually great.

Kanika Sharma [00:23:24]:

I'll tell you why. So the demo pages I found were the perfect kind of links or CTAs to be connected to the profile because they didn't have any distractions. I mean, I know they didn't do it intentionally. Okay. They just like kind of added a form and some copy on the left hand side. Of course they could be optimized more, but they were much, much better as CTAs than like a homepage with like 10 different links. Very distracting. So I feel like most people would have converted more users by maybe just adding a book, a call link or demo link or a product page link.

Kanika Sharma [00:23:59]:

That would have made much more sense for these people. Yeah, you know, if that makes sense.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:03]:

Yeah, no, it makes sense. You're totally right in the sense where if you just go from somebody on your LinkedIn profile and just sending them to your homepage, it's. There's a big disconnect in between. I think often, like, marketers, including myself, just have a habit of like, oh, I just want to get them on the website and get them to do that main thing right away. So I'm going to include that link there and hope people click on it and magically go through the journey and become a customer. But it just rarely happens that way. People on LinkedIn and anyone on social media is there to lightly consume some information of interest. They're not really in buying mode at that moment.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:41]:

So off the LinkedIn profile, yeah, sure, you can, you can get customers. I'm not saying you can't, but a lot of people are also looking for some kind of middle ground. So they may find you on LinkedIn and really like what you're saying. And maybe they find out you have a podcast and they, they want to listen to that. Maybe they find out you have a newsletter and, and want to subscribe. So I think it's smart to off your LinkedIn profile, have the call to action that leads into the next most logical step. And it could be a link to your podcast, it could be a link to your newsletter where they sign up, could be A link to something more related to your product or a demo. But I think it's something that has to make sense for where they might be at next.

Matt Carnevale [00:25:21]:

And if someone really wants to buy your thing, they're going to find a way to buy your thing. You don't need to take them right to the water to drink. You can. They're going to find it. So it makes sense to optimize for a lot of the people that are probably not in buy Mode, which are 99% of people looking at your profile, 100%.

Kanika Sharma [00:25:39]:

I feel like that's the definition of how like a CTA is supposed to be. It's supposed to be the most logical action. And I feel like, just like I said, demo page would only and only make sense for people who are posting consistently about their product or the problem they solve once in a while, they are giving that kind of value and they're expecting that value back for them. I think that would make sense. But like you said, it has to be that action that you feel like your users are closest to considering the kind of content you've shared with them all along, if they are coming through the kind of content you've shared. Awesome. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of users that I saw didn't want using a UTM link to kind of, you know, also track these.

Kanika Sharma [00:26:21]:

These users, which I didn't understand because I feel like the whole purpose of having like a. Having the option to add a custom link on LinkedIn is to actually be able to track it. So I felt like that was also a gap, which is why I think that, you know, a lot of. I think even if we just limit it down to like B2B SaaS, even if we just limit it down to. For like founders, they are not looking at a LinkedIn profile in a way that they should because if they literally looked at it like a landing page, they would like, think of adding a link in the form of a UTM URL. They would think of a cover picture. Okay. Forget the colors.

Kanika Sharma [00:26:54]:

Forget like the brand aesthetics. Tell me, like the message. Focus on the message. I feel like then their mind is going to work towards that one goal. So it's going to make sense. Awesome. Okay, so I feel like next is something that's very, very interesting. So I talked about how a lot of people running these Sales Navigator campaigns need to optimize their profiles.

Kanika Sharma [00:27:14]:

And why I see that is because. And I have done a lot of Sales Navigator campaigns. I feel like.

Matt Carnevale [00:27:20]:

Sorry, when you say Sales Navigator campaign, can you Just refresh me on what that might look like.

Kanika Sharma [00:27:25]:

For example, if I were to run like a campaign there, I would just like bring out these, you can say my list of ICP on LinkedIn. Like maybe I have these 50 specific, 50 or 60 specific founders in my niche. These are people I want to target. I would create this message and then it would be like a cold email that's going to be sent to them. Ultimately that's going to. And the goal is, the goal could be anything. Getting them to my landing page, maybe getting them to book call with me. There could be multiple larger conversion points there.

Matt Carnevale [00:27:55]:

Cool.

Matt Carnevale [00:27:55]:

Okay.

Kanika Sharma [00:27:56]:

I feel like a lot of them focus 100% on the messaging and while they do that, even then the message is not perfectly optimized. There are gaps in that message. But I feel like it's an experimentation, especially on Sales Navigator, it's an experimentation. You are testing it out. But you need to leave at least 20% of that scope or that space for experimentation to your profile as well. Because, for example, when a prospect checks out your InMail, that's like a cold email. That's literally a cold email. They 100%, they don't know you.

Kanika Sharma [00:28:29]:

Okay. If you're not posting content, they don't know you. If you have been posting some content and they've come across your content, that might be true for like 1% of users out there, but most do not know you. So they're going to ultimately check out your profile. So it's going to be like, okay, there's the message. And even if you like optimize it from head to toe, from subject to cta, they're going to check out the profile. And the profile says absolutely nothing. It just says nothing.

Kanika Sharma [00:28:53]:

And they get like zero value, zero information from that. And sometimes, you know, sometimes, in fact, a lot of times a lot of these profiles don't look legit. They don't look legit in a way, because, I mean, I get it, a lot of sales leaders are like, surely busy. They are busy. They are running the campaigns. Their focus is entirely on this email. Their focus is on like the metrics of the campaign. So they are just very low key about their profiles, which is why they don't update it.

Kanika Sharma [00:29:20]:

But it kind of, you know, backfires because these people are actually checking out the profile. So for them, when we're talking about the profile being a landing page, it might not be true for a lot of different scenarios, but for Sales Navigator, oh my God, that is literally the only page they're going to Check. So it has to be. It really needs to talk to your icp. And the optimization in this case will be very different from versus when you're posting organic content. The kind of education you need to do there, the kind of convincing social proof there is going to be very. It's going to be super low if you've been posting great content versus when you're running a sales team media campaign. Oh my God.

Kanika Sharma [00:29:58]:

The education, the social proof, it has to, like, it needs to be 2x.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:02]:

Yeah.

Kanika Sharma [00:30:02]:

Otherwise there's like no scope of them, you know, reaching out or responding.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:06]:

Totally. Yeah. Because it's, you know, it's just a cold message. Right. It's. It's like you've organically built up this great brand and trust in the market. So it needs to really be optimized. Like you said, there needs to be a lot of social proof.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:19]:

You can't look sketchy. I get people messaging me all the time for stuff related to Exit Five just because, you know, we're a popular brand, people want to sell us stuff or get us involved in stuff. You know, a lot of time it gets ignored. But sometimes I'll just click to see who the person is and it's like some headshot of them from five years ago. Their title is account Executive, a company xyz. The last time they posted was a repost from three months ago of their company launching a new feature. And I'm like, okay, no shot. Like I know exactly what this person is trying to get me to do.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:50]:

And even if, like, maybe there's value there, like just the fact that I know very clearly they're trying to sell me something and there's no trust factor involved. I'm ignoring it right away. So. Completely agree. I think that's a great tip.

Kanika Sharma [00:31:04]:

Exactly. And that's really funny you mentioned about repost from like 3 months ago or something and that is so relatable because I feel like I, I straight away jump to the activity section and I'm like, okay, I must see, like, just show me like three or four posts they've done. I don't care about the engagement. I do not care about the likes or comments. Just show me the kind of thought process they have. Okay. Are they putting out great content? Like, doesn't Matter the engagement. And if I see that great content, I definitely respond and I engage with this person.

Kanika Sharma [00:31:35]:

It has always been my, you can say the one factor that I check along to see if things are legit. And that is so relatable. And I also feel like, for a lot of them, the reason it's not. It's the way it is is because they are just like, you know, they have this centralized focus around, for example, how you would run these cold email campaigns or like Gmail. That's like the old school way of doing it. You would just focus on, like, the cold email and then you'll have, like, scrappy landing page. It might work if the messaging is great. I mean, the design doesn't Matter.

Kanika Sharma [00:32:06]:

The design Matters, but the messaging is, like, super powerful and the social proof is, like, amazing. Then I feel like a scrappy landing page just works. And, you know, they have the response. So they feel like this is exactly how it would work on a sales navigator. We're just sending out cold emails. And if the messages. If the messaging is right, it's going to work. If the landing page is great, it's going to work.

Kanika Sharma [00:32:27]:

But they're forgetting there's like the mid part of this funnel, which is the profile, which is the most important thing out there.

Matt Carnevale [00:32:33]:

There's a great quote that I. Someone said in the PO on our podcast recently. It was Tass Bober, who think she's been on a million of our podcasts. We've talked. She's the Queen of England. Yeah. And she said this great thing, which is that maybe I'm butchering this. This is what I remember it being.

Matt Carnevale [00:32:51]:

Copy is king, but design is queen. So you could have a great outreach message, which may get somebody interested and that may take you the whole way. But there's some element of esthetics in the way your profile is designed and the way it looks to the eye that is going to help with the trust factor. It's going to help people want to do that thing.

Kanika Sharma [00:33:09]:

So I think that's a good 100% the advantage in terms of LinkedIn for us is that. So I'm not. I'm not really a designer. If I want to design something, I need external help. I know that. But I feel like advantage for me on LinkedIn has always been that every single section is already designed. Yeah. You have a profile picture, then there's like, okay, these are going to be like the metrics of the.

Kanika Sharma [00:33:31]:

And that really Matters, you know, that really does Matter. This is going to be the space that you have for the headline. Don't go beyond that. These are. This is the character length for the mouth section. Here you have the featured section. And because everything is just, like, designed for you, you just need to, like, kind of add the messaging and you can just make things go, which makes everything like 100x easier. And of course to get like attention, you would need to be on, on point with a brand aesthetics.

Kanika Sharma [00:33:56]:

But I feel like that's like still in advanced stage. You've kind of done like the first step from there on. Totally amazing. Okay, now I feel like there was this very, so this, this very super interesting section that kind of LinkedIn introduced, but a lot of users just said that, oh, we don't really need that. Okay, we are not doing anything about this section. Even if I saw some profiles using it, it was just like in the very conventional ways. It's the featured section. I saw people actually adding some of their posts in the featured section.

Kanika Sharma [00:34:24]:

Okay, this is my number one post. This is my number two, and this is my number three. You should always read it because you know this has the highest engagement and oh my God, no, that's not how it's done. Okay, so LinkedIn puts out these features and they just like leave out you to kind of experiment and see what really works for you. Now, the kind of profiles that I absolutely loved while doing these audits were the ones who were actually using the featured section for a diversity of content. So, for example, there's this one post that is top of the funnel, that's just kind of introducing you and telling more about your journey. Then there's this link to a case study that's like middle of the funnel, educating users more about the content category or something like that. And then there's this ultimate link to, maybe you can say, you can say a calendar link or like a link tree that has like all the action points that kind of acts like your bofu piece of content.

Kanika Sharma [00:35:25]:

So I feel like this TMB rule for the featured section, tofu, mofo and bofu, works the best because not everyone is going to be interested to read the posts. Okay, not everyone is going to be interested to click on a link. Not everyone wants to like, you know, read, log, case studies. Not everyone wants to check out testimonials or link trees. But I feel like if there's something for each kind of user, I think that makes complete sense because they're ultimately only going to click on one. Nobody's going to go like, okay, let me. I mean, unless you're like really popular and someone is just like off, they're just like on a scroll to stock you for that entire day. No one's going to go like, okay, let me check out this part and then this one, and then this one.

Kanika Sharma [00:36:08]:

That's. That's really not going to happen. And I also feel like it's a great, great section to kind of feature one of your best recommendations from your icp because you don't have any space otherwise on the profile for your testimonials. And if you're like, if you really do have a product that you're, like, just walking towards and you're pushing out great content out there, then I don't feel there's any harm in also actually adding a recommendation right there that just, like, talks about the best parts of your product. So that if they have. If someone is like 80% convinced that they really want your product, it just kind of gives them a push. They might not immediately go into that. Like you said, they're not in that buying mode, but that's not always true.

Kanika Sharma [00:36:52]:

There will be a point when they'll be in that zone. Okay, I'm just ready to, like, you know, buy from this person. They've been delivering amazing content. If they do have all, you can say, all the right resources in front of them to, like, kind of validate the idea of the kind of person you are, the kind of product you're selling, that's going to be the ultimate push for them.

Matt Carnevale [00:37:10]:

Yeah, totally. No, I love that. I think that's a really smart way to look at it. I mean, look, I'm guilty of using my most popular post, so I probably need to do some updates there. But I think that's a really great tip and I think it's something that I don't hear a lot of people talk about and recommend what to put there. So I think having something for everyone is the right way to do it. I know when I see someone posting about something that I really like and I get curious and I'm like, I wonder if this person, like, has a newsletter about this or sells a course or, like, does consulting about this. That's where I'm going to go and look.

Matt Carnevale [00:37:41]:

So. And some of them don't have that there, so it would be great if they did. And I would definitely, like, look at that section and engage. I also think that, like, if you're somebody who, you know, because there's people listening to this that have a product they want to sell, whether it's their own other companies or they have a newsletter, something to push, but in the event where you don't have that and you're like, I don't care about talking about my company, I think you can still apply that same logic. You can have one of your most popular posts to Maybe show people how you think. But you could also have a post that's about you and what you've accomplished. You could have a link to your personal website, right? Maybe I have a Matthew carnival.com and that's where I have some cool stuff in there about what I've accomplished. You could link to something like your resume, which may be your personal website, but maybe it's not.

Matt Carnevale [00:38:28]:

So I think you can treat that section the same, which is you have something in there that whoever you want landing on your profile may find some value from.100%.

Kanika Sharma [00:38:37]:

And I also, like you said, you have some of your best posts there. So I'm not completely against the idea of having posts, but I feel like the gap there is that if every single post is just like, this is what I saw from like most profiles. If every single post is promoting your product in one way or the other, even if it's doing the subtle way, I get that, okay? I get it's a promotional post. I can see it like when I read the fourth line. So I feel like that's the problem if there's a balance between, okay, this is my, this has been my journey. This is something about me as a person, plus a post that's actually educating users about that particular content category. And yes, I mean, a great point that I kind of just remembered. I checked out these profiles who have some great micro authority in some kind of some content categories, and they are posting consistent content.

Kanika Sharma [00:39:25]:

And I feel like the number one mistake they made was that they kind of have the posts, the best posts in the featured section that people have already mostly checked out. If you do have your most popular posts in the featured section, I mean, it defies the purpose of adding something to your featured section because most people have already seen those posts. I saw all of those three posts from that particular post and I felt like, okay, these were the three posts I actually saw from them. I read them, I loved them, but I don't want to kind of read them again. So if someone is really on your profile after reading your content, I mean, you can just take it for granted they have seen your most popular content. So I feel like that could be out of the way. You could focus on now, like placing something there that didn't get that much attention, but it was a really, really great post for that particular prospect. Always be like, that's a great category post.

Kanika Sharma [00:40:15]:

That's kind of, you know, moving them towards that journey of conversion or something like that.

Matt Carnevale [00:40:19]:

Yeah, love it. That's a great tip.

Kanika Sharma [00:40:21]:

Awesome. Okay, so I feel like now we have this almost the last section of the profile that most people ignore, but it is literally the most important section for different reasons, and I'll tell you why. So I think the moment someone lands on a profile, you see this logo, like the brand logo on the right hand side, the company they work at or something. So, for example, if you're a founder and you're trying to push a product, people see your company page on the right side, they click on that logo and LinkedIn immediately takes them to this experience section down below and there they click on the logo again, go on the company LinkedIn page and then go to the website and then they might convert or they might not. That's literally on them, but that's like a very long conversion journey. So I feel like this is why it becomes super important to think of an experience section in a way that only two kinds of people are going to check that ever. One, people who are like super motivated by your journey and your career and want to replicate it. They're checking out literally everything that you've done and they want to be like you.

Kanika Sharma [00:41:21]:

So someone checking out your post and okay, I'm going to be like, Matt, I really, he's working at Exit Five, he has my dream career. I want to do everything that he does. They're going to check out every single thing in your experience section. And number two are going to be your prospects who want to check out that company page, which is why they clicked on that logo, which is why they're down here now. You don't want for them to click on that logo again, go on a company page that is not most of the cases not optimized for that icp, and then get lost in that journey somewhere. You want to convert them right there in that experience section. So I see a lot of people actually thinking of Experience section as literally the experience section. Like, I'm going to talk about the about section as well after this in like, literal terms, their experience of like whatever they've done inside that company.

Kanika Sharma [00:42:11]:

And I feel like that's not really what your prospects want. They want an answer to the question, tell me what is the biggest problem you're solving for users? Tell me how you do it. Show me some quick roi, some bullet points, some social proof, and then maybe take me to your landing page. And LinkedIn actually gives you the option to add a link in your experience section as well. So this is. And most people don't use it. They have all sorts of attachments added to that section, but they don't really have a link. And I saw this profile, it was like a perfectly optimized profile and they had a very short link added to the Experience section.

Kanika Sharma [00:42:47]:

It was customized exactly for LinkedIn users. Like, every single section of that landing page was written for that LinkedIn prospect who's going to come there and going to click on that landing page. And that is, I mean, they just like won in terms of conversion because they decreased from like three irritating conversion steps to like one single step. Now all they have to do is convince them on this landing page and there they are. They've kind of converted them.

Matt Carnevale [00:43:15]:

Yep. Honestly, that's such good advice. Like, I mean I wasn't thinking about the experience section that way. Like, I, I ignore it. I'm just like, eh, like these are the companies I've worked at. I have a list of accomplishments there. But you know, maybe my goals may be different than others, but it doesn't Matter. I still think that section does need to be used to continue to achieve the goal that you want people to take on your profile.

Matt Carnevale [00:43:38]:

So I really like the idea of, you know, treating that experience section and the company like, oh, here's what the company actually does and who we solve problems for. Because, you know, nobody cares that you achieved 112% of your quota. It's great. I mean, maybe it's great if you're, if you're job seeking, but it depends what you're using your profile for. I think that's a really good tip.

Kanika Sharma [00:43:58]:

Yeah. And I'm just going to read out, I think this is, this is a profile that I saw as an example. And the Experience section just says like they have their brand logo right there. And then the Experience section says just two lines. It says the easiest way to grow with SEO. We help software companies get more dash qualified traffic sales and revenue through conversion focused SEO and content marketing. And they've answered all the objections right there. And then they have a quick book a call option and I feel like they've won.

Kanika Sharma [00:44:25]:

They've won in terms of conversion right there. On similar lines, I also think about the about section in like sort of an unconventional way where I don't think the job of the about section is to just be about you if you are ultimately like, if you want to optimize your profile and want to convert users from there, I feel like the about section is the best place to actually establish on the existing pain points of your icp. Now think about it like, for example, you have your prospect, they are Scrolling through your profile and then there's an about section that talks completely about you. It's like, okay, hey, I've done this and this and that and this is what I've done. And this is. I mean it would work if you have an amazing personal brand. It would really work if you have a humongous personal brand and people inspired by you. Even then it needs to be interesting.

Kanika Sharma [00:45:13]:

But otherwise I feel like it's going to. People are not going to even click on the See more option. They're just going to go off because it's like a very long section. They don't have the time, they don't have the time to invest in knowing someone else. You would kind of debate about it in a way that, okay, then what is the purpose of like it being the about section? But I feel like that's how it works. That's how conversion optimization works. You start with a very strong hook in your about section that asks a very straightforward question to your prospects. Okay, is this is the problem you're facing? Okay, does this sound familiar? They're going to say yes.

Kanika Sharma [00:45:48]:

Once you get that quick yes for them from them, then they're going to read further and then you can help them visualize their current life with all the problems that they have. And then you can slowly move them, shift them towards a life they'll have. After they offer your solution ending with the cta, some kind of ROI social proof. And from there you've kind of, you kind of established on their pain points and you brought them closer to this conversion join in the overall picture.

Matt Carnevale [00:46:14]:

Love that. That's smart.

Kanika Sharma [00:46:16]:

Awesome. Yeah, most people did like they had their cover picture optimized, but then the headline was not on point. Some people did have something. They had something in the experience section. They did have something. Then I checked out the activity, but then the about section was more optimized. So I felt like it was like that. You can say that half cooked meal where you do have the right ingredients but you're not putting them all together.

Kanika Sharma [00:46:39]:

So it's not really doing anything for you. If you just like, if you just have a shiny cover picture that's like super optimized and like design wise it's perfect. If you don't have an optimized about section, it's not ultimately really going to do anything or move the needle here.

Matt Carnevale [00:46:53]:

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's totally worth like, you know, I remember I did it once recently, maybe it was last year. So it's been a while since I've gone through and really optimized my profile. You know, even then at the time I did it, and it just totally changed my LinkedIn profile. And even just performance overall. So you may not be able to do it every single month, and you may not have an incentive to. But, like, I would say at least once a year to go in and be like, okay, how's my cover image looking? How's my profile image? Is my headline, right? Is my boat section right? Featured experience, like, do a cleanup once a year.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:31]:

I think this podcast is going to be a great evergreen piece of content to help people do that, but I think it's worth going through once a year. Things are winding down for a lot of people right now. December holidays. So it's a great time of year to spend maybe a couple of hours to go through it. And, yeah, just do some of the optimizations that you talked about.

Kanika Sharma [00:47:52]:

Yeah. And just like an insider tip, by the way, a lot of my clients are updating their profiles literally every three or four weeks. The moment they're getting all these, you can say data points after, like, a B test. So I felt like. So when you said, yeah, for a lot of people, it would make sense because they haven't updated it in, like, a long while. So it would make sense to check it at least twice or thrice a year or something. But if you're like, if you are posting out there and you have, you. You want LinkedIn to be your number one customer acquisition channel, in that case, you definitely need to update it, like, every three or four weeks.

Kanika Sharma [00:48:24]:

I mean, this is because the point is that just like a landing page, you get all these different testing points after, like, three or four weeks, you see what's working, what's really not. You ask people, you get their feedback, and LinkedIn has, like, the fastest conversion. You can say conversion loop or, like, the feedback loop. So I feel like it works really, really fast that way.

Matt Carnevale [00:48:45]:

Nice. Yeah, I know I'm not as good at it, but Dave is always tweaking his headline in his profile. He's always adding something new or changing it. So, yeah, depending on what your goals are, it never hurts to do it more often. So that's a good one.

Kanika Sharma [00:49:00]:

Yeah. I do check Dave's headline, and, yeah, he updates it, like, I think every month or something. It's just a new headline every month.

Matt Carnevale [00:49:07]:

Yeah.

Kanika Sharma [00:49:07]:

That is amazing.

Matt Carnevale [00:49:08]:

Exactly. Exactly. Well, great. How are we. How are we looking for tips? Are we. We at the end?

Kanika Sharma [00:49:13]:

Yeah, I feel like that was about it. I pretty much covered everything from the COVID to the section. And I feel like now it's more contextual. Like it would vary from like profile to profile, but I feel like these were like the overall tips for like if you just want to get started with your optimization process, I feel like this would be it.

Matt Carnevale [00:49:31]:

Yeah, totally agree. I think that the tips are amazing. I think the way you think through every section is awesome no Matter who you are. If you're a business owner trying to get clients, if you are an in house marketer trying to promote your company, if you are an in house marketer or whatever, you are trying to promote your personal brand, I think it still makes sense to go through those different sections and to apply the principles that you talked about today to make them better. This was awesome. I appreciate you, you know. Yeah, I appreciate you obviously going through what you learned in those audits. That was amazing.

Matt Carnevale [00:50:04]:

I know that took a lot of time and I want to give you the floor one last time. Do you have any last thing that you want to say? You want to plug in for us?

Kanika Sharma [00:50:10]:

If you are looking forward to get some data, quick insights and some like really detailed guide that kind of helps you optimize every single section and also works towards like the overall helps you create content strategy towards LinkedIn and it's like a complete full stack guide from head to toe. Literally everything you need. You can just like go to fixmylinkedin.com and there I have, I think towards the end of that landing page you'll see this coming soon option. You can just sign up and the moment I have opened a waitlist, the moment I have the guide, you're going to be the first few people are going to get that.

Matt Carnevale [00:50:46]:

Love it, love it. So fixmylinkedin.com. Awesome.

Kanika Sharma [00:50:48]:

Yeah.

Matt Carnevale [00:50:49]:

Okay, cool. Awesome. Kanika, this was so amazing. You killed it. Thanks again for all the audits in the community. Thanks for pulling these learnings together and we'll see you around the community.

Kanika Sharma [00:50:59]:

Thanks Matt. Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me. Goodbye.

Dave Gerhardt [00:51:07]:

Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exitfive.com our mission, mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five.

Dave Gerhardt [00:51:35]:

There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exitfive.com and I will see you over there in the community.

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