Buddhist Marketer

Get A Headshot, You Hippie

Or, Why You Need To Get Your Butt Onto LinkedIn

Referrals are incredibly important to any business owner, but the number of referrals you can get is limited by:

• The size of your personal network (”Adam”)
• The size of “Adam”’s personal network (”Eve”)
• The ease with which “Adam” can refer you to “Eve”

It’s much easier to make referral-network-bunnies if you:

• Make sure your Facebook profile contains at least a smidgen of information regarding your professional life. A link to your company website will suffice, as will a link to your LinkedIn profile (where you’re allowed to be un-apologetically schmoozy). Your friends can’t refer you if they don’t know what it is that you do and/or what service you provide.
• Make sure that you have a LinkedIn profile. It’s the place where you (or the person who manages your profile) can be unabashedly self-promotional. Look at me! Look at my trophies! Look how deftly I utilize complex grammatical constructions!
• Put your mug on your LinkedIn profile. We are humans which means we have inner cave-people that mostly want to look at eyeballs. Get a good professional-looking headshot and put that thing up there. And make sure it’s brand-consistent; if your clients need someone trustworthy and serious, then leave the clown nose and thong-undies-on-your-head off the profile.

Collectively, these steps remind the friends — who know you as the guy who can shotgun a beer in record time — that you’re also a recommended and competent accountant. This way, when any of your friends gets asked the question, “Hey, do you know an accountant?”, you’ll be top-of-mind — and it’ll be easy for “Adam” to give “Eve” a link to your website and/or your LinkedIn profile.

Sure, maybe you’re not a social network nerd, but at least one your friends (*ahem*) is — and with your good-lookin’ mug smilin’ out from a well-considered LinkedIn profile, you’ve made the ability to drive referral traffic your way that much easier.