​Hello, my friend. Joshua Boswell here, founder of Copywriter Marketer, author of the number one bestselling program that helps writers take the writing skills and turn them into something profitable, into a magical lifestyle filled with things that matter most to them.

​It’s been my privilege to work with thousands of writers over the years, and when I talk to writers, they have the same desire that I always had, which is they want to make more money and spend less time and, with a great big parentheses or framework or by the way surrounding that, and that is how do you do that without groveling and selling yourself all the time and having to do a bunch of marketing, and coldemails, and cold calls, and big sales funnels, and all this kind of stuff? Isn’t there just a simple way to get people to come consistently to you, ready to hire you and eager to work with you?

​And my answer is, well, yeah, there is a simple way, and it lies in your ability to write. I love the fact that writers like you and me can write every single day, and in our writing we can create inbound funnels of people wanting to work with us.

​Today, I’m going to focus on LinkedIn, and we’re going to talk about how do you create a magnetic LinkedIn profile. And by magnetic, what I mean is that when people go and search for writers in your niche and your specialty, they find you and they’re like, “Whoa, I really need to reach out to this person. She looks like she’d be perfect for my writing needs. I would just love to hire this writer.”

And they have those kinds of feelings and those kinds of thoughts, because they see that you’re a professional, and that they can trust you, and that you can get the job done. You know what you’re talking about, and you clearly have experience and/or the right training, and they’re just… They come eager, with hat in hand.

​So, let’s talk about how to create a magnetic LinkedIn profile. And to do that, we’re going to focus on seven areas. There’s a lot of things that you could do with your actual LinkedIn profile, but today we’re just going to focus on seven specific areas that really move the needle and make a difference. And if we have time, I’m going to give you a pro tip as well, something that is kind of an extra boost. It’s not part of the top seven, but it’s pretty cool. It’s a pretty good thing. So, we’ll see if I can remember that and share that with you here at the end. In fact, I’m going to write down here, “Bonus.” There. Now I won’t forget. 

​Okay, so let’s look at what this is. What we’re going to do is we’re going to fill in some blanks here on my list and just walk through each one of these step-by-step and give you some insights on how, specifically, to do that.

So, number one. Number one is, you want to focus on a fun and profitable niche.

​So, a fun and profitable niche. Here’s the deal. If you’re not 100% clear on who you’re serving and how you’re blessing their life and… See, look. Money is a value exchange. They’re giving you money in exchange for you giving them the value of helping their business to grow: increasing their social media profile, connecting their sales people with more prospects, getting more people to travel on vacations or buying newsletters or whatever it is.

​We, as writers, we are hired to do the job of persuading. That’s our job. And the deal is, is that I find that a lot of people, writers, they come in and they struggle getting people to come to their profile, getting people to reach out to them and ask them to hire them. And really, the fundamental core problem here is they are not clear on who they serve, and what niche they’re really focusing on, and what solutions they bring to the table.

​So, we start off right here because, look, if you don’t know who you’re serving, and you don’t know how you’re blessing their lives and how you’re increasing their business and how you’re bringing value to the table, then the rest of this is just going to be “stuff”. It’ll just be mumbo jumbo.

​So, my first suggestion is spend some time, if you’re not already, and get 100% clear on what your fun and profitable niche is and really make a decision about who you’re going to serve and how you’re going to bring value to them. Once you have that clear, then you can do the other six steps. Until you are clear on that, yeah, it doesn’t help. And again, I have a lot of writers that come to me, and it’s their number one question, like, “Ah, what niche should I choose? Where should I focus my efforts?”

​And of course, there’s a very succinct linear process that helps work through that and understand how to do that. And a big part of it has to do with what are your likes, who you can serve, what’s your background, what are the needs of the market, and we take and frame out and look at all of those kinds of things, but however you do it, the most important thing is make a decision. Have some clarity. We cool on that?

This is where we start with any marketing, any business growth practice. You’ve got to know who you serve and how you bring value to the table. Have fun. Make sure it’s profitable. 

Let’s address this really quick right here, being profitable. I hear a lot of writers, and they want to go into different areas that don’t use a lot of writers.

​Let’s just say you’re passionate about underwater basket weaving. Is it a good idea to go into the industry of underwater basket weaving and write for them? No, it’s not, because they’re not going to pay a ton of money to hire writers, so it’s not going to be super profitable for you.

​By contrast, what if you went into a writing for an alternative health company that sold supplements or essential oils or something along those lines? Would that be profitable? Well, yeah, because those guys use a ton of copy to build out their stuff. What if you went into being a ghost writer or a freelance writer to help people write books and do some training on that? Also another lucrative industry, because lots of people are doing that, and they want education insights on how to do it more effectively. Make it a fun and profitable niche. Know who you’re serving and what value you’re bringing to the table for them.

​Number two. Number two is also really important. Once you know who you’re serving, your next job is to let them know that you’re serving them. 

So, you need to craft a clear, what I call a clear “Who and Why Headline.” So, it needs to be clear as to who you’re serving and why you’re serving them, what value you bring to the table. And you get that small little space underneath your picture there, that professional headline. So, you’ve got to craft a clear “Who and Why Headline.” ​So again, when somebody comes to your profile, they know who you’re serving. 

Look, your LinkedIn profile, it does want to be magnetic, but you also want to have equal or greater repelling power. You and I are in the minusing business. We’re not massmarketers. We don’t need thousands and thousands of clients to get the job done. We need three to ten really good clients every single year to make a nice, strong six figure or better income as writers, so we don’t need a gazillion different people.

​We need to filter out who the ideal prospect is for us and then focus on them. So, crafting a clear who and why headline does that job. When people come there and they’re like,”Oh, this person writes emails and specializes in the alternative health industry. I’m looking for someone who specializes in long copy sales letters for the financial industry.”

​Then, they’re going to minus you out. Or, they might transfer the credibility, but that’s a different story. But it’s okay if they minus you out, because that’s not your ideal prospect. It’s not who you’re serving and what your specialty is, and there are other people out there. You have to have trust that there’s… You have to have faith in the process, trust in the process, that there are tons and tons and tons of people in your chosen fun and profitable niche that want to hire you, and so you need to get to those people. You’ll have much more enjoyment and be more profitable if you craft a clear who and why headline.

Number three. Number three is you want to connect with relevant groups and people. You want to connect with relevant groups and people. 

The more relevant that you, the groups and the individuals you connect with, the more your network will grow inside of a targeted audience. Again, you might dream of having 10 or 20 or 50,000 connections on LinkedIn, but you don’t really need it. 

What you need is a targeted, maybe 500 to 2000 or 3000, group of people there that are targeted in your specific niche, and the more you target this and the more relevant it is to your industry, to who you serve and why you serve them, then the more it’s likely that people will see you as an expert and be drawn in and attracted into your profile and hopefully want to work with you. That’s why we do it. So, you want to connect with relevant groups and people and make sure that you stay focused.

​Again, a lot of us, we have passions about environment or animals or politics or dozens of other different things, which I am totally in favor of. I love the fact that there’s a big diversity among writers in terms of what end of the conversation they’re on the millions of different topics and that we can effectively and civilly communicate those differences with each other. I think that’s fabulous.

​However, it makes it less magnetic if somebody goes onto your profile and you proclaim to be a financial newsletter writer and all of your posts are about environmental stuff, or animals, or lollipops, or what you ate last night, or whatever. Again, not that those things are bad, but maybe best saved for your personal Facebook profile and stick to relevant groups, people, and posts inside of your LinkedIn profile. Very important.

​Okay, number four. Number four is you want to write a focused summary. So, you have an opportunity to put a Facebook or a LinkedIn summary together, and your summary should be focused, and by focus what I mean is just the facts. 

Just get to the brass tacks like who you serve, and I’ve got a beautiful template for this. It’s just: 

• Who do you serve? 
• What do you do for them? 
• What are some of the successes that you’ve had? 
• What are things that other people have said about you so that there’s some social proof there, and 
• How do they get in touch with you?

​That’s just super simple, and you can write that in story form, or you can just be succinct. Like, who do I serve? This person. What do I do for them? This person. What are past experiences I had? This. What are my qualifications? Here, and what have other people said about me? Here, and here’s how you get in touch with me if you want to have more information. Boom. Done. Simple. Whoom!

​You could just jot down what I just said. Back up the video, jot down what I just said with those five major points, and turn that into your summary. Clear, succinct, ideal. It’s like they know exactly who you serve, and they’ve got proof that you can actually deliver on that. That is what a focused summary is all about.

​And of course, if you want more on any of this stuff, you can obviously subscribe to this channel and jump onto my website. I’ve got a ton of free resources and content that I’m sharing all the time, and I’d be delighted to help you. 

My passion is to help writers like you achieve their lifestyle, their goals, and their dreams, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. So, more details on that can be found on my website.

​Okay, number five: you want to post a pro picture. You want to post pro picture. 

Now, what do I mean by this is I see a lot of LinkedIn profiles, and the picture, the profile picture and the pictures in the banner are like, yeah, either they’re not relevant or they’re not what… They just don’t connect. And what’s the purpose of having the picture on there?

​Well, here’s the purpose of having the picture. You and I, as human beings, we get pictures in our minds, and that creates emotions in our body, and that turns into action. We actually do something. We say something, we go somewhere, we spend money somewhere, and then that creates outcomes, and that’s what motivates people. So, pictures, we paint pictures with words, but sometimes we have to paint pictures with pictures, right?

​And so, I want you to have a beautiful professional profile picture done and a nice banner done, so that when people come there, here’s the most important thing. They can connect with you and have an emotional connection. So, very important. 

They want to focus in on the face. The eyes are the window to the soul, and they want to see your face. They want to see your smile. They want to see your teeth. They want to see your hair. They want to see the kind of clothes that you wear. They want to see you, because it tells them a ton of stuff.

​Look, human beings, you and I, we make snap decisions about people. In fact, when people see something, they get visual input. The brain, in less than 20 milliseconds, begins making assessments as to whether or not you’re safe, whether they can trust you, whether you’re believable, whether or not they think that you can handle the project. All of this happens in less than a second based on the way they see you and their experience, the feelings, the gut emotions that they have.

​And if you have a sloppy picture or I’ve seen profile pictures where it’s a picture of a book or it’s a picture of them on stage, far off in Disney, I can’t really see it. They want to connect with you on an emotional basis, so give them a nice pro picture where they can look into your eyes, look into your soul, and get a flavor for who you really are. 

That’ll be their first snap decision as to whether or not they’re going to keep reading and engage with you and feel like they can be comfortable using you. So, you want to post a pro picture.

​Next: you want to add backlinks to your solutions. So, when you post articles, when you post a post, when you comment on things, in a non-sales-y, over the top way, you do want to share with people how they can get back and connect with you so that they know what to do next. 

You see, we all need leadership. We need direction and insights, so adding backlinks so people can get to your solutions is really important.

​It can be just as simple as, “Hey, discover more at www whatever that website address is, and if you look around on my posts, you’ll see that there’s always, if you want to know more, there’s always a place you can click, and you can go get more information.” 

And that, again, helps with magnetizing. Professionals offer their services. That’s just  what a professional does. Imagine a doctor does that was like, “Oh, I’m a doctor but I don’t serve as anything, and I won’t tell you what I do.”

​That’s just crazy, right? We know that doctors do stuff. We can find them. They have websites. There’s information on them about who they are. There’s background stuff. We… In professional worlds, we tell people how to access our solutions and give them insights on what we do, and it should be the exact same thing on your LinkedIn profile. Don’t make it hard for people to connect with you. If you make comments, or you post articles, or you’re posting posts, or whatever it is, make sure they know how to get back in touch with you.

​Okay, now, my last tip, and you notice I put a red asterisk by this, and I wrote on here, “This is the big one.”

​This is the big one. I always want to share with you the highest leverage stuff and identify, oh, if you don’t have time for all this other stuff, you don’t have time for these six things, or you only do a partial job getting this stuff done, that’s okay. 

Be sure to focus on this one particular thing, because this is the game changer. This is what really turns your profile into this magnetic profile where people will come, they’ll look at your stuff, and they’ll be interested in communicating with you.

​This is the one that I’ve seen thousands of my students effectively and consistently do and have gotten amazing results from it, and I want you to have the exact same one. So, I’m pointing it out to you that this is really the Big Kahuna. This is the big deal. So, here it is: show… You probably already know what it’s going to say, right? Show, don’t tell.

​And I put over here in parentheses DCC, and this stands for Daily Compelling Content. Daily Compelling Content. I read a lot of summaries and headlines by writers, and they like to brag like, “Oh, I’m the best writer here, and I do all this kind of stuff there, and I’m amazing this.”

​And that’s telling all about it. And I guess that’s okay, but so much more powerful is to show them. Show them with your writing. Write incredibly compelling articles. Write incredibly compelling short little blogs. Make compelling comments that are filled with wisdom and insight every single day, so that people can see that you know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to brag about it. Tell stories,write articles, teach effective principles, and when you do that, you won’t have to stand up and go, “Oh, I’m the smartest writer.”

​You can say all day long that you know how to write amazing headlines, but that’s not going to tell anybody anything about you. Instead, write a handful of articles with headlines that blow people’s minds, and they’re going to be like, “That was an amazing article,” and they’re going to want to hire you.

​They’ll see you as an expert writer in your space, because you’ll show them, not tell them. And the deal is, if you get this right, all this other stuff is affected.

A win here is a win everywhere else on this, because in writing content, and in writing compelling content, it’ll help you understand who you’re serving, and they’ll understand what you do, and you’ll naturally attract relevant groups and people that’ll help you clean up and fine-tune and focus your summary. It just, everything solves, everything gets better, and all your problems get solved when you’re consistent at writing daily compelling content.

​So, my suggestion is figure out a schedule, put a content calendar together, figure out what your audience needs, and write to them every single day. And here’s my suggestion for you. You’re thinking like, “Well, what content would I write, anyway?”

​The content that you would write as if you said, “Okay, if somebody in my niche hired me to teach their people…”

​By the way, this has happened to me many, many times, but, “If somebody in my niche hired me to teach their people how to be more effective writers, how to be more persuasive, more compelling, more entertaining, more insightful, then what exactly would I actually teach them? What would I train them on?” And that’s what you should teach.

Give away your best stuff. Don’t worry about the fact that you’re doing it, because a lot of people will use it. That’s fine. You’re teaching them. You’re lifting them. You’re adding value. But a lot of people will be like, “Oh my goodness, this person totally knows what they’re talking about,” and they’re going to want to hire you.

​So, give away your best secrets. Give away your best training. Give away your best techniques, and show the world. Don’t tell them. Show them that you are an amazing, expert writer in your space, and you won’t be able to stop them from coming and wanting to hire you. They’ll be absolutely enthused and blown away with it.

​Now, what’s my bonus pro tip here? My bonus pro tip. My bonus pro tip here is this, and that is,simply, update your recommendations.

​What do I mean by update your recommendations? It’s simply this: one of the other areas that you can tweak up on your LinkedIn profile is to add more recommendations to it. So, when I get people who want to give me testimonials, I often refer them back and say, “Oh, I’d love a testimonial from you. Go to my LinkedIn profile, and give me a recommendation.”

​And that does two really powerful things. Number one is, in your recommendations, it shows that that person was willing to voluntarily go and make a recommendation about you, and their profile picture and a link to their page shows up in that recommendation. This is a great backlink. It tells LinkedIn’s algorithm and search engine these guys are connected, and they’re relevant, and it’ll help find other people. So, it’ll increase your sphere of influence and your network by having more and more people make recommendations about you and about yourservices.

​And conversely, you can give recommendations to top people in your industry, and then your name shows up on their profile and on their LinkedIn thing, and it helps to, again, backfills what your network is. When people, when LinkedIn’s doing their algorithm thingy and they’re like, “Well, what does this person do, and who are they connected with, and what’s relevant information for them?” ​It’s going to look at that recommendation set and weigh that in the balance. 

Now, I’m putting that as a pro tip, because it’s not one of the seven things you should focus on right now, but as time goes on, and you get more clients, and you get more recommendations and testimonials, this is a fabulous way to give just an extra edge and to push it over the top.

​So, here’s what my suggestion is for you in terms of what to do next: look at your LinkedIn profile. Look at the list of these seven top areas of focus and say, “Okay, I’m going to pick one of these, and I’m going to work on it. I’m going to become more efficient in that area.”

​And it might be show, don’t tell. If you just focused on this and got really good at content calendaring and putting content together that was relevant and compelling, and you produce that every single day, and you got into a rhythm and a groove of doing that, this is a major game changer. 

But if you just pick one of these,whichever one it is, pick one of them and make a decision. You’re going to focus on it for the next week to four weeks, week to a month, somewhere in there, and just think about a headline and beef it out, or who you’re going to serve, or think about your picture. Go get some nice…​If you can’t afford it right now, save up a few of your pennies and go get some nice pictures done so that people can see your eyes and have a nice banner. 

You can get it done on Fiverr pretty cheap, but get this stuff done, and put it into place, and I promise it will dramatically increase the magnetics, I’m not sure what, the attractability, the pull, whatever you want to call it, it’s going to increase people’s desire to come to your site and to be interested in your services and to reach back out to you and want to hire you, so you don’t have to run around groveling and begging for projects yourself.

​They come hat in hand, ready to hire you. See it happens all the time. So, I hope this helps, and I hope you enjoyed this session. Go out there, live life to the fullest, and fill your life, every single day, with joy and with things that matter most to you. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.