Enthusiastically Self-Employed: business tips, marketing tips, and LinkedIn tips for coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, solopreneurs & small business owners

LinkedIn Profile Mini-Audit for Executive Virtual Assistant Jessica Tinner Ep 119

Brenda Meller Season 1 Episode 119

Are you a virtual assistant looking to unlock the power of LinkedIn to grow your business? Watch this LinkedIn profile mini-audit of Jessica Tinner https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicatinner/

TIPS we covered include:
▪️  Uploading your headshot photo instead of your company logo in the "Headshot Photo" field

▪️ Refreshing your LinkedIn header to ensure ONE KEY MESSAGE is clear to your profile visitors

▪️ Reviewing contact, to ensure info is accurate for your ideal target audience

▪️ And more!

Want a LinkedIn profile mini-audit? If you're a coach / consultant / solopreneur, download these 15 LinkedIn Profile tips, and follow the instructions in the final email: https://www.mellermarketing.com/list

🥧 FREE LIVE WEBINAR by Brenda Meller 

Getting Clients for Your Coaching, Consulting, or Solopreneur Business Using LinkedIn

Without AI / Automation or a Heavy Sales Pitch!
Delivered LIVE by a Former Corporate Marketer Turned LinkedIn Coach.
PICK A DATE:

  • Tues, Oct 22 at Noon ET
  • OR Thurs, Oct 24 at 9 am ET

https://www.mellermarketing.com/gettingclients

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)

Speaker 1:

Hey, this is Brenda Meller, back today for another LinkedIn profile mini audit, and I'm joined today by Jessica Tinner. Hey, jessica, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing great. How about you?

Speaker 1:

Doing really well. Thank you. I'm going to pull your LinkedIn profile up on screen and, as we start to have our conversation here, jessica, I want if you could take a moment and tell us your name. What do you do and who do you help through your business? Tell us your name. What do you?

Speaker 2:

do and who do you help through your business? Well, I am Jessica Tenner and I am an executive virtual assistant for professional speakers and coaches.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful and I'm wondering did you come to me by way of Innovation Women by any chance?

Speaker 2:

Does that sound familiar? No, I just came across you on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good. Well, I'll refer you to check out Innovation Women. They have a Speaker Friend Fridays event and Innovation Women is all about helping women speakers. So right away when you gave me that introduction, I'm like there are people in that group that could use your services, because we always are looking for expertise, so wonderful. So, as we're getting started into the Profile Mini Audit today here, I want you to walk away with some actionable tips. Are there any specific questions you have about your LinkedIn profile that you want to make sure I incorporate into that feedback, or are you open just to some general comments, just some general comments.

Speaker 1:

All right, wonderful, okay. So first thing I noticed is in the space where it should be your headshot photo, you've got a logo for SheAssist, and I'll just let you know that LinkedIn's a bit different than some of the other networks Instagram and Twitter and TikTok and things like that because we expect on this professional networking site, we expect to see a headshot photo in that space. I would recommend that you set up a company page for SheAssist Office Solutions. It's free to do so and I'll include in the playback the instructions on how to set that up. But the place for your company logo is really on your company page, whereas at the top of your profile, we, the LinkedIn community, expects to see a headshot photo.

Speaker 1:

And part of the reason I share this with you, jessica, is if somebody is thinking about working with you and they don't see a headshot photo, they might immediately go in like a snap judgment decision. She's trying to hide something. Is she not located inside the US? Is she not a real person? Is this an agency, that type of thing? So it's all could be incorrect conclusions, but when we expect to see a headshot photo, when we don't, we think you're hiding something or maybe that you're not a real person. Does that make sense? It does, yes. Okay, and I see that you do have a really great photo in your header image, which is wonderful. But what I would do if I were you is use the headshot photo that you have in your header image in the headshot photo section, make sure it's focusing mainly on your face it really should be your face, just a little bit of your shoulders in there and then use that banner to really highlight the focal point that you want people to know about you and your business.

Speaker 1:

Right now, my eye is drawn to your photo and then your name, jessica Tinner, but what I would recommend you do instead is focus on your role executive virtual assistant for professional speakers. I think right away, that's gonna grab someone's attention who is a speaker, who is looking for some assistance. That's really what you want the focal point to be. And then, underneath that, I do like how you had the subhead Elevating Speakers, streamlining Success. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Okay, perfect, all right. Next thing on here, I love your headline and you have Rockstar Executive Virtual Assistant, which I like right away, because it shows me that you believe in what you bring to your customers. That Rockstar status, I think, really speaks well of that. And then you have Ann Coaches, director of Stellar Service and Queen of Details at Franchise Speakers. Franchise Speakers is that an organization? Is that a networking group? What is that?

Speaker 2:

So it's one of my clients that I work with, okay.

Speaker 1:

So that's like a role that you're holding more in a fuller capacity.

Speaker 1:

Yes, Right, Okay, Very good. Underneath that, I'm looking at where it says United States and again, this is one of these things when somebody who's a heavy user of LinkedIn sees the geographic area as the country instead of a city, we might jump to the wrong conclusion, which is she's not located inside the United States. So sometimes what people will do is they'll put a location as United States, even though they're in Ukraine or India or someplace you know, Philippines or things like that, overseas, if they're trying to hide where they're from. So they'll put United States. But it's actually better to put, if you are located inside the United States, to put the specific geographic area that you're in greater Philadelphia area, greater Miami area, et cetera so that we can see where in the United States that you're located. Even though your goal might be to say, well, I'm serving anybody throughout the United States, the incorrect conclusion that people will jump to is that you are not located inside the United States and you're trying to hide something Does that make sense.

Speaker 1:

No, it does. Yes, okay, and these are the things like people will not tell you. They will. Just when you send them an invitation to connect, they'll click on ignore. You know it's little cues that they're seeing that are on your profile there. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

Next, I see, let's see. I'm going to scroll back into let's see if I can jump anything in here. We did talk about your company page in here. So, similar to Franchise Speakers has a company page and I know that because there's a logo next to it. When I click on that logo, it will pop me over to the company page where now it looks like a legitimate business and this is almost like a mini version of your website. I don't have to leave LinkedIn to visit and to learn more about the business, and if I click on follow, you'll see that I'm now following your company page, which is essentially raising your hand, that I'm interested in learning more about you. I would highly recommend that you set one up for she Assists Office Solutions and to set up a company page. I'll include this link in the playback, but you go under the for business icon at the top, scroll down to the very bottom of the list and you'll see a link that says create a company page, and then you're going to choose the company page option, fill out the required fields, the most important field being the logo, because we want to make sure that when we get that uploaded, it's going to sit on the company page and then, once you've set up that company page, you'll have to go back in your experience section and then link it to your experience, because LinkedIn won't connect the dots for you. You have to do that kind of at the onset of the setup for that, okay, okay Now, the great thing about this, jessica, is I see that your start date was July of 2021.

Speaker 1:

A tip related to this is, if you go into your experience section I'm going to pull mine up for a second so I can show you what I'm referring to here there's a way that you can indicate that you want to notify network about changes that you're making to your profile, and back when LinkedIn first launched, the changes were pretty much anything you did on your profile Brenda updated her photo, brenda updated her headline, they flooded us with updates and people got annoyed, and I think LinkedIn realized people don't really need to see every single time you make a change to your profile. So now what they do is they only notify network about important changes, and one of those being if you start a new job or if you're celebrating a work anniversary and that's where I'm getting to I see July 2021. So if I were you, I would get your company page set up in the next few days and then, once you add it to your profile and you can see here Mellor Marketing is linked on my profile make sure that you have Notify Network turned on and that way, probably July 1st sometimes it might be like even June 30th because LinkedIn's in the Pacific time zone. So try to get this done before June 30th. Linkedin will push out a notification to people in your network and it will say congratulate, jessica, on celebrating four years at SheAssists Office Solutions. Now that notification will go into that bell icon, the notifications icon, and I don't know if you've noticed this.

Speaker 1:

Lately they're starting to change the way that they're showing notifications in here. But you might see it in the list in here. Alternatively, you might see it under my network. It's under the catch up now. Let me show you. So it's showing some job changes and work anniversaries and things like that in here. So now you can either message people a direct message to congratulate them, or you can click on the comment section and it will take you to the public post and people can congratulate you from here. So this, for what I see, this is a great opportunity for you, for the people that are messaging you or commenting publicly If you see that they are a speaker, you can message them back and say thanks, brenda. By the way, if you're ever thinking about hiring a VA for your business, I'd love to chat so you can use that as a almost as a prospecting opportunity for you.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay, go back to your profile here. Is this helpful for you so far, jessica? It is very helpful. Yes, awesome, I want to give you some good things to kind of walk away with from here. Let me look on one last thing, which is contact info. So if I want to do business with you or learn more about the services that you offer as a VA and we're first level connections I click on contact info. I want to make sure that there are a couple of ways that I can get ahold of you inside here. Now you and I are first level connections, so I'm seeing everything that you've chosen to make public in here.

Speaker 1:

One thing I'm noticing it's not visible is your email address.

Speaker 1:

Did you shut that off so that it wasn't showing publicly inside this section?

Speaker 1:

Does that sound familiar? Yes, correct, okay, and that was intentional. You're trying to make people go to your website as opposed to contacting you direct, correct, yes, okay. And the other reason I ask is if, if someone is thinking about working with you as a VA, um, they may be fine with going to a website filling out a form learning more about you. There are other people who are just busy and they're like no, I just want to, I just want to email you, I just want to get ahold of you directly. So if you're choosing not to make your email, just be aware, you might be losing out on some of those opportunities. If you're trying to protect your main email, what you might want to consider doing is adding, like a secondary email, like an info at where it goes to a different folder, and that way you can either prevent unwanted email or spam or junk email from getting to you, but you also provide your VIP clients a way of getting ahold of you directly if email's the preferred method.

Speaker 2:

Does that make sense? No, it does yes, and I do have a secondary, so I can just use that Okay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then under your contact info, you can actually add up to three web pages. So what I want you to think about, jessica, is where are the three places on your website where you'd want to send people next if they are interested in learning more about you and doing business with you? Now, the homepage is a good one, but I would think services might be another good page. Contact might be another one. If you have any sort of like a testimonials page or something like that, that could be an alternative. Third one as well. Okay, all right, so I'll pause there and just see. I just want to see was this helpful for you so far here today?

Speaker 2:

it has been very helpful yes good, and any final questions before we wrap up uh, no, you just brought to my attention a lot of things I didn't think about, like putting an actual location instead of the United States, because I didn't think anybody would, you know, think I was hiding anything. So good advice.

Speaker 1:

And for you. It's not that I personally feel like you are hiding anything. I'm just saying this is a technique that a lot of people that are outside of the US are using to try to break into the US market, and there are many people that they're like I'll do business overseas with others and you know VAs in the Philippines and things like that but other people have had experiences that maybe aren't positive with working with international VAs and they want to have somebody who works inside the US. So if they were to see and I don't know what your city is, but if they were to see and I don't know what your city is, but if they were to see Philadelphia or greater Detroit or something they were like, oh good, she's in the US to somebody that I might be interested in working with, okay, wonderful.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to thank you again, jessica, and I'll just remind everyone, if you were interested in connecting with Jessica on LinkedIn, her name is Jessica Tinner, j-e-s-s-i-c-a-t-i-n-n-e-r. And, in the meantime, if you're interested in getting your own LinkedIn profile mini audit, I wanna invite you to go to mellormarketingcom slash list and you can download my 15 free LinkedIn profile tips for coaches and consultants. You'll get a couple emails from me. The very last email will include instructions on how you can book your own call. With that said, I hope you found this helpful and have a wonderful.

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