The desire to have an experience

I read a small paragraph from one of Farnam Street’s latest emails that I really enjoyed. It’s a quote from a “fireside” chat that Jeff Bezos participated in back in 2012. The question asked was, “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?”

What I really liked was how Bezos flips the question around and instead talks about what’s not going to change 10 years from now, and why it’s the more important question we should be asking ourselves.

In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, “Jeff, I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher.”

When I sit down to start working on a client’s LinkedIn profile, I want to know a few key things about the audience that’s going to be visiting the page.

Are we writing the page for recruiters? For a person’s established network? For members of a new industry or niche that we want to get in front of?

Then, keeping in mind my client’s overarching career goals, I think about the goals of the audience who’s going to be visiting the page.

Are they looking for something in particular on your page - a specific experience or accomplishment? Are they checking to make sure that you’re bringing the “right” professional presence online? Are they curious to learn more about you, and they want to see what you’re about?

No matter what the answers look like to any of these questions, there’s one thing about my process for building a LinkedIn profile that’s never going to change.

If I want my client to be memorable to their target audience, I need to make sure that the audience walks away having had an experience worth remembering.

I’m sure this is plain marketing 101 to anyone reading this, but this aspect of creating profiles - or creating resumes, or planning out interviews, or setting ourselves up for promotions - will always take the top spot in the work that I do.

I believe that 10 years from now, the one thing that won’t change for audiences is their desire to have an experience.

That means creating a profile banner and headline that immediately answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Using the spark of excitement that takes place when we find someone who could be a benefit to us, we read the profile’s summary to gather more evidence that we’ve found who we’re looking for.

Then, either at the very bottom of the summary or listed directly in the featured section, we plant the first seed in the audience’s mind by including a call-to-action.

After that, we pause - a call-to-action requires work, so we gather more evidence before taking the step. We review the next section in the profile, which contains the work history. We find even more evidence that we’ve found who we’re looking for.

And then, having enough evidence to take the step, we engage in the call-to-action: messaging about a job opportunity (if we’re a recruiter), sending a connection request, sending a friendly message to begin a new professional relationship, grabbing some time on the person’s calendar - whatever it needs to be for our audience to feel good about engaging.

What are your thoughts on the idea of creating experiences? What likely isn’t going to change for your audience 10 years from now?

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