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

Transform Your LinkedIn Profile with a Mini-Audit Featuring Dr. Sina Smith Ep 142

• Brenda Meller • Season 1 • Episode 142

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Are you a solopreneur, business professional, or solopreneur looking to get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn Pie? Listen to this LinkedIn profile mini-audit of Dr. Sina Smith - Medical doctor, speaker, author. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sinasmithmd/

TIPS we covered include:
▪️ Optimizing your ABOUT statement to speak to your ideal target audience

▪️ Setting up a company page.
Video + blog: https://www.mellermarketing.com/blog/how-to-create-a-company-page-on-linkedin-free

▪️ Adding in marketing messages in your LinkedIn Header

▪️ And more!

Want a LinkedIn profile mini-audit? If you're a coach / consultant / solopreneur, download these 15 LinkedIn Profile tips -- or my "LinkedIn for Speakers" checklist, and follow the instructions in the final email:

https://www.mellermarketing.com/list

https://www.mellermarketing.com/linkedin-for-speakers

**************************************
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, it's Brenda Meller. Back again for another LinkedIn Profile Mini Audit, and I'm joined today by Dr Sina Smith. Hey, Sina, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me, Brenda. I'm excited to do this with you.

Speaker 1:

Likewise and we know each other from Innovation Women I know a bit about you as I'm pulling your profile up on screen why don't you take a minute or two, sina, and tell us a bit about what you do, who you help and what you help them with?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I'm a medical doctor and a licensed acupuncturist, and I practice functional medicine, integrative medicine and culinary medicine. I'm based in Chicago, but I do see people telehealth from all over the place. I'm also an author. I wrote a book called Demystifying Acupuncture Modern Answers About Ancient Medicine and that's a bestseller on Amazon right now. And I also am a speaker. I've been teaching for over 25 years and have transitioned into speaking, which is how I got interested in innovation, women and how we ended up meeting.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful. And what's your signature talk as a speaker? I'm curious meeting Wonderful.

Speaker 2:

And what's your signature talk as a speaker? I'm curious. I love to talk about resilience. I transitioned from surgery into all of these kind of fringe forms of medicine because my right arm became paralyzed while I was a surgeon and I really had to kind of retool my entire life because that's what I wanted to be since I was a little kid and just kind of pick myself up and try to figure out what I wanted to be since I was a little kid and just kind of pick myself up and try to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up, when I was 39 years old.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, which is great. I mean, a lot of kids don't know what they want to be and a lot of grownups don't know what they want to be, so I'm sure there's people that can relate, as you're talking about that. So okay, so we're going to jump in. I'm going to offer you some tips on your profile here today, and I always like to ask the question are you looking for feedback on any?

Speaker 2:

specific areas or are you open to some general feedback? I'm open to some general feedback and I would also really love some specific feedback about my about section. I'm concerned that it's a little bit long and maybe a little too windy instead of being more pithy and specific.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good. Well, let's start there and then we'll come back up to the top of your profile. So as I go down to your about statement, the first thing I like to remind you is, in terms of like length, I don't think you can be too long. They give you 2,600 characters and I always tell people most people are only going to read the first four lines. So when you scroll down to your About section, I want you to look at it from the desktop view and then look at it on your phone from the mobile app view as well, and just pay attention to where it cuts off. Don't click on See More. Just look at what's in that previewable area.

Speaker 1:

And I want you to imagine that you are your ideal target audience or a future client reading this. Is it capturing your attention? In the first four sentences? And a lot of times when I'm doing this exercise with people, I say read it out loud.

Speaker 1:

Is this what you would say if you were meeting someone and you wouldn't say Dr Sina Leslie-Smith? You wouldn't say that. You would say I am a medical doctor. So right off the bat, I would say let's change this around to be more of an elevator pitch. And when I just asked you right now describe what do you do, who do you help and what do you help them with. I'd love that to be in the first few lines of your about statement so we're catching their attention right off the bat. Most people will not click on see more, but the right people will only if we've captured their attention. So you've really got to get to the point quickly, compel them to get on Seymour. I think what you have in here. You're a medical doctor or licensed acupuncturist. That's relevant. But what's the most important thing you know, for them to know about you as it relates to how can you help them? Does that make sense so far?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. What I have here is a long list of credentials Instead of talking about being a speaker, being an author, the kinds of people I want to connect on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and even above that, I would say, as a speaker, as an author, as a coach or somebody who's helping people, what are you helping them with? So, speaking to, what are the challenges that you solve for them? So, are you looking for someone who can help you with X, y and Z, or do you struggle with X, y and Z and, running out of answers, address their challenges or their pain points initially, and then you're kind of drawing them in. You found me and I can help you, type of thing.

Speaker 1:

So the credentials, the background, I think it's all relevant and it's important, but I would probably tuck those below the see more. Now, when you talk about length of the about statement, like I said earlier, you get 2,600 characters in total. What I would encourage you to do is try to break this out into small chunks and add paragraph breaks in here, but don't do it until see more, because we have very precious real estate. The first four lines we don't want to put any paragraph breaks in there. After see more, click on that. Then let's take this very large paragraph and break it down into smaller paragraphs and maybe even put a heading over top of it my medical background, for example, or my passion for helping others. So give the eye something that it can bounce around and follow and make it easy for us to digest what you have in there. Does that make sense? Absolutely? Thank you, very helpful? Yeah, very good.

Speaker 1:

And then, as I'm looking through your about statement, the other thing I'm looking for is how do I get a hold of you if I want to learn more, and usually I like to give people two paths. One is in like an active way If I want to reach out to you today, now I'm ready to go, give me an email address or a phone number or even a website link that I can go to where I can book to work with you or sign up for your services. And a passive way might be more like sending people to your website where they can kind of navigate around, read up more about your programs and services. Or, in the case of you being a speaker, people might be trying to figure out are you a good speaker for the organization, for the goals that they're looking for? So if you can send them to, either if you have a landing page on your website where they can learn more about you as a speaker, the types of organizations and talks that you've done, or if you don't have that on the website, I'm going to give a shout out to Bobby Carlton and our friends at Innovation Women.

Speaker 1:

As a member, you can create a speaker landing page in their public directory where people can look you up, and you can add things like even a speaker demo video, a sizzle reel. You can put signature, topics, challenges and even some testimonials in there as well, but let's make it easy for people to do business with us and provide them paths to be able to find it, find that information. Does that help you?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely very helpful. Thank you All right, wonderful, okay.

Speaker 1:

So, topping off the about statement, let's move at to the top of your profile right now and I wanna look at a couple of things that it caught my attention. And before I do these calls, you know, I always come on before and I kind of do a once over and I'm like, what am I noticing? And the most important part of the profile is the top, because that is what will keep people reading and looking down. And I just noticed a couple of things that I said. Oh, these are things I want to point out to her.

Speaker 1:

So first is and you mentioned this in the prep call your hair colors change and we as women, we change our hair color, our hair length, our hairstyle. Sometimes we wear glasses, sometimes we wear contacts. So my general guideline is when you know, when we think about your headshot photo, it should look like you today. So really I'm a proponent of getting an updated headshot photo at least every five years or when you have a significant change in your hair color or style or something like that, where, when I get you on camera, either in a Zoom, or I meet you in person in a networking meeting, I want to be able to recognize you right away on there, so no more than five years old. 2019 was five years ago, which it seems shocking. Like that feels like it was a year. It's really more time than that, but I would suggest maybe getting that updated. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2:

Well, that headshot is four months old. Oh, so you just change your hair color. Then I change it really all the time, all the time.

Speaker 1:

You might be my exception to the rule because if you're changing all the time, do you sometimes go back to red and then you go back to blonde again, so you're changing things around? I mean, your face looks like you today and I I was wondering about you know if it was a fairly current photo, but I know you. When you came on the call you said it was easier when it was red, so you could be the exception to the rule if you're changing it frequently. Alternatively, um, is that a professional headshot? Do you have access to get a photo taken of the different hair colors that when you do change them over?

Speaker 2:

I could go back and do that more frequently. Yeah, I do have the last set I had. I was blonde. The time before that I had kind of a red streak underneath with blonde on top. So I kind of feel like I need a page with just hair colors on top.

Speaker 1:

So it really I kind of feel like I need a page with just hair colors. So this is something to think about. And the thing I want you to think about is you're building relationships with people who are visitors to your profile. I like to call them readers, not stalkers or lurkers, but readers. They're reading your profile, they're reading more about you and we're creating trust with them. So when they see something that's different than what they see on here, they're like okay, she looks a little different, and usually the issue is more it's an older photo and they're kind of like is this even the right person? In your case, it's just a different hair color, so, if it's possible, I might suggest trying to get a blonde version of yourself in the headshot photo. If not, photo looks great on there.

Speaker 1:

The one thing I would suggest is maybe zooming in on the headshot photo just slightly. I usually say it should be mainly your face. Your face from the top of your forehead to the bottom of your chin should be about 50 to 60 percent, and then we're really just holding a bit of the shoulders inside there, and part of the reason for this, sina, is most of the time people are not looking at your headshot photo from this view. They're seeing you in the comment section of posts where your face is super, super tiny, or you're coming up in search results or you're replying back. And I look on the right-hand side of my screen. You see where Annette's Richmond's face is on there we can see her face pretty clearly. Ben's a little bit blurry and it's in the background. Mark's a little bit further set back. So it's further set back, so it's harder to see them. So it just creates a little bit more familiarity and makes you look more important and more impressive when you zoom that in. So that's a slight modification to what you have in there. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

Next up, I see that you have a header image in the background and it says Dr Sina, md. Lac. And I think there might be, or maybe that's the full thing. Lac, I was going to say, is it cut off on there? Lac, and I think there might be, or maybe that's the full thing. Lac, I was going to say, is it cut off on there? What I might suggest for you is let's use that header image in the background, similar to like a billboard on the side of a highway, and think about what's the key message that you want people to know about you or how can you help them. For example, sometimes I see people using like a tagline for your business, so leading you on the path to recovery through acupuncture, for example. I just made that up. But think about some words or phrases that might intrigue your ideal target audience, so using that space to actively promote your business or your expertise, instead of just putting the logo in the background. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2:

I, yeah, I have done that in the past and I have a different um logo that has speaker author edit um speaker author healer um underneath the tagline.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, so some variation of that. Okay, great, Uh, next thing I see on here is your company page. Uh, do you have? Have you created a company page for your business yet?

Speaker 2:

I would have to look um.

Speaker 1:

I think so, but Okay, so the reason I ask is next to where it says Klasina Leslie Smith, md SC, there's this gray avatar with the blue gray blue blocks next to it, and when I scroll down to your experience section, let me just see, so, for example. So next to some of these other organizations, we see their logo and if we were to click on the logo, it takes us to the company page, which is like a mini version of the website. When we see in the experience section, where it's just like the gray avatar with the blue buildings, it means a page doesn't exist or it hasn't properly been linked to the profile. So if you do have one created, you would be able to go to your me icon and it would exist under manage. So you'd see company and it would say the name of the company. If you don't have one yet, it's really easy to create and I'll go through this quickly in the video On the playback page on YouTube. I'll also include a blog and a video where you can look through this more slowly. But you'll go to the for business icon. You'll click on create a company page. It's absolutely free to set these up and it's really simple to do. You'll click on my company, you'll type in the name of your business and all you want to do here is fill in the fields that are required.

Speaker 1:

You can skip the website for now, unless you have one, or you can put your LinkedIn profile URL for yourself in there. Fill out, you know. Click in an industry, select organization size. Select the type. Don't overthink it, you know, just pick whatever feels right to you. Most important thing here is uploading a logo, and it should be 300 by 300 square. And then, once you have that done, then you click on I verify, I'm an authorized representative. Create page button will light up, you click on create page and then the page has been created. At that point. Then you can go back to your experience section, click on the gray pencil icon and when you edit this, you can then add it in and that way your logo will appear next to your company name on there.

Speaker 1:

Part of the reason I like that, sina, is because when I see next to your company name no logo, it's almost like if I were to visit a website and it says 404 page error, page not found. Or sometimes you see this website is under construction. The little guy with the hammer and the nails, you know. Be back soon for more updates on this. And what happens at a psychological level is people are thinking is this business well-established? Maybe she's still trying this out, she's working out of her basement. It's not like a fully-fledged thing, whereas if we see the logo next to it, we get that warm, happy feeling like yep, this is a real legitimate business. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the official E you know EIN linked thing is Closina Leslie Smith, mdsc. But Chicago Healing Center is the name of my clinical practice. Because that's not my personal name, would that be the better choice to put there?

Speaker 1:

Is the Chicago business. Is that your business or are you an employee of the organization?

Speaker 2:

No, it's my business. I would say yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I would say use this Chicago, because if that's the official name of the business, that's what people would be familiar with. If you're, if they're doing business with you, if you're invoicing them, that's the name that appears on the invoices and things like that. I would go with that because it creates some brand continuity. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's the clinical practice.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't go so much with the speaking and the authorship aspects which is called Social Media Pie, and a separate company page for my podcast, which is called Enthusiastically Self-Employed. So as I scroll down, here's Social Media Pie inside here and then here's my podcast. So you could create almost think about products and services for your business. If you create a company page for them, then you can also link those inside your experience section and you can move those lower inside your profile, so for your speaking business, and you can move those lower inside your profile. So for your speaking business it might be Sina Smith Speaks or something like that Sina Smith Speaker. Even in there it doesn't have to be an LLC for you to create a company page. It just needs to have a different name than the business itself. For this Chicago practice, does that help?

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful, okay, great. Well, I want to wrap this up for today and just say thank you again for the opportunity to give you some pointers to get you started here on your LinkedIn profile. I look forward to watching your progress. Was this helpful for you?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, brenda. It's so insightful. I really appreciate your time, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Good Well, likewise, I appreciate your time and getting to know more about you as well, and I want to thank our audience for watching or listening here on the podcast. If you're interested in connecting with Sina actually, I'm going to pull your profile back up for just a second Sina, are you open to people inviting you to connect on LinkedIn, to connect with them?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'd love that, Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Good. So you can go to linkedincom slash in slash Sina Smith MD. That's S-I-N-A-S-M-I-T-H-M-Dcom and just mentioned that you heard her here on the interview and she'd be happy to connect with you. And, with that said, if you're interested in a LinkedIn profile mini audit, you can go to Mellormarketingcom slash list to get a copy of my 15 LinkedIn profile tips for coaches and consultants. Or if you're a speaker, go to mellormarketingcom slash LinkedIn dash four dash speakers, where you can get a copy of my speakers checklist. And with either of those options, just pay attention to your email, the last email in the series you'll get. We'll have a link where you can book one of these free LinkedIn profile mini audits as well. With that said, thank you so much for watching and have a wonderful afternoon.

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