How to Use LinkedIn as a Vegan Hospitality Consultant
/This post was written by Hayley Cooper, COO of Vegan Hospitality and HR/Recruitment Expert
Are you a new or seasoned Vegan Hospitality Consultant looking to learn how to optimize your use of LinkedIn as a business tool? Read on to see my top tips for getting started.
LinkedIn is a great platform to use for networking and client outreach.
What I love the most about the platform is the fact you can see the exact names and job titles of people who are your ideal clients. That direct connection can make all the difference between your outreach getting ignored (because it goes to a generic email address to the wrong person!), and being replied to and hopefully getting a client!
You don't need the paid version of LinkedIn, although if you do have it, it will help speed communication up as you will be able to reach out via message immediately whereas if you are on the free version you need to wait for them to accept your connection request.
From my experience, most people do accept connections from people they don't know but it’s important that your profile is professional. Here are the sections you will need to update on your profile to set yourself up for success.
Photo
Have a professional head shot of yourself as your profile photo. I recently did a branding shoot and although I can’t say yet if it’s made a difference to how people view me and my company, I feel better about the images I am putting out which gives me confidence so its well worth investing in this.
LinkedIn also allows a banner image, and typically people use this to show them as a brand with their name/title and you can add your website or preferred contact method such as your email. You can use Canva for this.
Video
LinkedIn allows you to record a very short (about 30 second) video clip of yourself which goes with your profile photo, so as people click into your profile the video starts playing. I know many people aren't keen on being on camera but, in my experience, being friendly and authentic through a short intro video that tells everyone what you do with a smile can go a long way.
Heading
Right by your name is the heading. Many people put their exact place of employment but this is not actually what the ideal heading is. You should instead put in your title/what you do in general. So for example mine says ''Hospitality Entrepreneur'' which tells people the industry I am in but also that I am a business owner. I also have that I am a CEO (of my recruitment company Wild Dreams) & COO (of Vegan Hospitality) in my title, so you can add more than one thing which will be useful for you if you are just starting up your vegan hospitality business and you are also in full time employment elsewhere. For example, if you are a graphic designer, I would suggest stating Graphic designer | Vegan Hospitality Consultant (or the other way around depending on what you want to be at the forefront of what people see)
It is vital that you have a heading as when people view your profile with others when they are searching for connections apart from your photo & name this is all they see. If you leave it blank, people won’t connect with you as they may not bother to click through to your full profile.
About
Here is where you include 1-3 paragraphs about yourself, your experience, skills, etc. Consider it like writing a short motivational email to a potential employer - don't be shy, promote your achievements and share your passions.
Experience
This is where it is very CV like. You simply add in your places of employment - companies/job titles. If you want you can add in some information about your duties but keep it short & sweet because people don't want to read through too much information.
Education/certifications/volunteering/skills
Think back far here and list as much information as you can. With things like certifications they don't have to be limited to what is relevant to what you do as any qualifications/courses show people that you are a lifelong learner who cares about learning new skills.
Recommendations
This is very important. Like having a referral for a job. You can ask past/current employers as well as colleagues to recommend you and the more the better! If you work with a client doing vegan consulting work, definitely ask them to recommend you on LinkedIn and you can even send recommendation requests which go to their inbox.
It’s as simple as that in creating your perfect LinkedIn profile. Having this professional brand image of yourself/your company will set you up for getting positive responses from potential clients.
Using LinkedIn as an Outreach Tool
Once you have your LinkedIn profile set up, its time to get connecting. You should try to connect with as many people as possible. It’s going to be beneficial for you to connect with people who are your ideal clients but I wouldn’t spend hours trying to find them at this stage; instead, connect with people in the industry in general, which is hospitality and tourism. You can do a search using these key words to find people. LinkedIn typically will show you people in your country/location as the priority but you can also list a location in your search. For example I may type in ''Hospitality Manager South Africa''.
When you do this, it will bring up a mixture of people/your existing connections/posts etc. so you can just select ''people'' at the top.
You will find hundreds of people and you simply click the little person with a plus sign icon to add them as a connection.You will have the option to add a short note to your connection request. They will get the notification and hopefully agree to connect.
Once you have done this, you can start the search for your ideal clients. Create a list of places you would like to work with and type in the name of the business into the search bar. Again, you will see people. These will be people who work there so you can connect with them and take note of the job titles.
The sorts of job titles that you would want to take the time to reach out to are:
- Hospitality Manager
- Head Chef
- Executive Chef
- General Manager
- Food and Beverage Manager
- HR/Training Manager or Marketing Director
This doesn't mean to say you shouldn't be connecting with everyone who works for the company, you never know who may see your profile and think that your services are just what they need. It’s often the ''on the ground'' staff who really understand operations, so management typically will listen to their suggestions especially around training.
Once you have connected with people who have the job titles you feel would be relevant to be able to make decisions on what you are offering you can send them a direct message (just note you will need to wait until they accept your connection if using the free version of LinkedIn).
You will have probably already viewed their website and social media for you to have figured out that they may be your ideal client, maybe you have also experienced their food/staff directly.
In your message, I would suggest trying not to sound too sales-y or generic. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to make sure your message is relevant to them; for example, you could comment that you found their menu online and noted they have vegetarian options but not vegan or maybe you went there for a meal and noted the staff members weren't familiar with the term vegan. Make sure it’s clear you aren't complaining but that you had an observation and feel you could assist them. This is of course more time consuming but well worth putting in the extra effort. This is when you can say you are a trained/qualified vegan hospitality consultant and give them a brief and short overview of what you do and ask them if they would be interested in a call with you later in the week/month. You can also invite them to ask any questions they may have over chat, if they are not available for a call.
Sign off with your contact details in case they prefer to move communication to what's app/email.
Definitely do one follow up, but if you don't hear back after that I’d suggest moving on. You can also see when people have read the messages on LinkedIn so make sure you check that before sending out a follow up message.
I hope that these tips will help you in building your network and getting some clients. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and feel free to send me a message there to let me know how it’s going for you!