Why Your Business Bankers Need to Optimize Their LinkedIn Profiles (how’s that for a sexy title?)

I’ve been active on LinkedIn since sometime in 2008. When I received my first invite for their platform, I thought it was related to the town I live in (Lincoln, NE). This was despite the fact that LinkedIn was founded in 2003. Yes, it’s been around for a decade!

Here are some slides I created for a presentation in 2012 for J.D. Power & Associates about the history of the Internet and Financial Institutions:

Since my 2008 introduction, I’ve become very, very involved with LinkedIn because I knew it would provide a great platform to build my visibility, brand, and, eventually, influence within the Financial Services industry.  1,000+ connections later, I’ve landed several speaking opportunities thanks to this channel and have used it to research prospects as well as close a new client.

But, despite these wins, I only recently optimized my LinkedIn profile for better search results. Why? Because I was getting what I thought were decent search and profile visits. Also, I hadn’t even run across an article that offered a step-by-step process for upping your results.

The lack of articles is because there isn’t an exact science behind it or at least there’s not much public about the science behind it. I researched and read a few articles and posted a question to LinkedIn’s now defunct Q&A board to learn more. I took several pieces of advice to optimize my profile to be better found for several key terms, which I will keep secret from my competitors. 🙂

What difference has it made for me? Here’s a look at my search results since I made the change in late December:

The dip for the last week is because it’s a partial week of results. I expect this to climb back up to the new normal.

So what does this have to do with you and your business bankers and branch manager? Well, if someone is out in your market and searching for a new business banker, chances are good that they will use LinkedIn because of the higher penetration among professionals and small business owners. When they search LinkedIn, who will they find? Here’s a search for “business banking” in a local market:

I suppressed out 1st and 2nd connections as well as those in groups with me to show a more organic search result.

Out of more than 1,000 people who would show up in a search for “Business Banking” in the Kansas City area, what value would you place on being in the top 10? How many potential new business bankers will a person consider when thinking of making a switch?

Your number of connections certainly plays a role in your search appearance s as you’ll note that the top five profiles above all have more than 500 connections, but the list at the seven and eight spots drops down to around 120 connections. There are things that you (I’m assuming you’re a bank/CU marketer, retail/sales head, or branch manager) and your sales staff can do to help improve your rankings.

I’ll write more about specifics down the road. You can also shoot me an email or use the contact page above if you’d like to know more now or have questions.

Until then…you can find me online!