¶ Intro / Opening
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 ?
I'm great . Thank you so much for having me , Brenda . I'm excited to do this with you .
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
¶ LinkedIn Profile Mini Audit With Dr. Smith
and what you help them with ?
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 .
Wonderful . And what's your signature talk as a speaker ? I'm curious meeting Wonderful .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 . 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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 . 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 .
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 ?
Absolutely very helpful . Thank you All right , wonderful , okay .
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 .
¶ Professional LinkedIn Profile Feedback
And I just noticed a couple of things that I said . Oh , these are things I want to point out to her . 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 ?
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 . 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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 ?
I would have to look um .
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 . 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 .
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 ?
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 ?
Is the Chicago business . Is that your business or are you an employee of the organization ?
No , it's my business . I would say yeah .
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 ?
Yeah , it's the clinical practice .
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 ?
Yes , thank you so much .
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 ?
Absolutely , brenda . It's so insightful . I really appreciate your time , thank you .
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 ?
Yes , I'd love that , Thank you .
Good . So you can go to linkedincom slash in slash Sina Smith MD .
¶ LinkedIn Profile Connection and Audit
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 .