One of the goals in any legal marketing endeavor is to differentiate yourself, demonstrate your expertise and show clients, potential clients and referral sources why you’re the right lawyer for the job. Why should they choose you over other lawyers in your field?
LinkedIn’s ‘Professional Portfolio,” released earlier this year, provides options that help your Profile stand out. In addition to text, you can now add documents, images, infographcis (in the form of links or images), videos, and presentations to your Profile in the Summary, Experience, and Education sections.
Adding Portfolio Elements to Your Profile
In the Edit Profile screen for any of those three sections, next to the pencil icon you’ll see an icon that looks like a square with a plus sign in the lower right corner (see below). The down arrow next to that icon offers options to either upload a file directly from your computer to LinkedIn or to add a link to content that might reside on another site such as your firm's website or blog, for example.
Once you’ve uploaded a file, you should add a title and description. The title will show directly on your Profile, and the description will pop up when users click on the file you've uploaded. For example, below is a screen capture of part of my LinkedIn Profile which includes some presentations and some images. You can see the title listed below each item.
Not only will uploading these additional content types enhance your LinkedIn profile visually, it will also serve as a way to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, rather than just talking about it. When your profile includes presentations, not only are you providing additional content that might be valuable to your audience(s), but you are also demonstrating that you have knowledge in the area (and that others think so, too – otherwise, why would they have asked you to present in the first place?).
Other LinkedIn users can “like” or comment on the work you have uploaded or linked, which can be another way to engage with your audience and connections on LinkedIn.
More Reasons to Include Multi-Media Elements on Your Profile
Infographics are popular, but infographics posted on LinkedIn get especially high click-through rates. In addition, LinkedIn owns Slidehsare, one of the most popular platforms for presentation sharing. When you include Slideshare presentations or videos on your Profile, clicking on them allows you to see the entire presentation directly in LinkedIn, with no need to go elsewhere. The same is true for video.
Even if you don’t give presentations or don’t have any you want to post, you could create a presentation that showcases your practice areas, demonstrates a client’s problem, etc. You could do the same for infographics, creating illustrations that convey information or statistics that might be important to your clients.
The truth is that visuals are becoming more and more important for marketing, particularly online marketing, where many would prefer to skim or look at visuals than read lots of text. If a picture is worth 1000 words, why not include some on your LinkedIn Profile?
Comments