Here’s a helpful checklist for optimizing your LinkedIn effectiveness. Seeing it all laid out makes the steps appear obvious, but then having a condition of workability usually does once everything is laid out and put in the proper order. Thanks to the folks at Simply Zesty for sharing the shortcuts.
Because of its focus, it’s been stated many times that LinkedIn is the perfect site for generating B2B & B2C leads. It was only at the beginning of the year when Hubspot found that when compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn was 277% more effective for lead generation (Facebook was .77% while Twitter was .69%).
While those stats sound great, most people tend to be unsure about what steps to take to generate leads. The thing is that lead generation isn’t limited to either your personal or your company page, it’s an amalgamation of both. One misconception about B2B lead generation is that it’s only about generating new leads, it’s also about maintaining the ones you already have and ensuring that you’re presenting yourself in the best possible light. So if you have a personal page or lucky enough to have both.
Have a Complete Profile & Company Page
Very obvious, but it’s surprising the number of people who don’t take the time to complete their profile. The more information you provide about yourself and your company, the more likely people are going to reach out to you when they view your profile. With the new profile update, LinkedIn has broken down these sections further and allows more customisation. Remember you can put in things like course scores, volunteer work, projects worked on and organisations you’re with so take some time out to complete these and give potential business leads something to work with.
There have been a number of changes made to LinkedIn company pages in recent times. Tips on how you can improve it and get the most out of them can be found here. Those wanting to fine-tune their profile can find a similar guide here.
Place Keywords In Your Descriptions
When you’re filling out your profile, personal or company, it’s a good idea to place a number of industry keywords into your description. While company profiles have specialities – keywords that describe your company – it’s a good idea to place some of these in your company description as well so LinkedIn search engine will have an easier time finding you.
Avoid jargon or high-end words and instead use terms that people would search for. It can be a little difficult to achieve this without compromising your description, but you can avoid that by writing out the description first and then adjusting it slightly to include these keywords.
Know Your Audience
While it’s clear that LinkedIn caters towards professionals, the real strength of the site is that you can find out more details about your connections and followers. Thanks to the new profile design, you can now get a breakdown of what industries your connections are based in. While it doesn’t provide you with a list of specific people, it’s a good way of finding out who going to see your posts if you have a large number of followers.
Company pages go into far greater detail, showing you an accurate breakdown of your audience by industry, location and profession.
Share Valuable Content
The same applies to Facebook and Twitter so why should it not apply to LinkedIn too. LinkedIn Today is becoming one of the most popular areas for news consumption (thanks to the company’s redesign) and as a result, the content posted by its users follows suit. Make sure the content you’re posting, either on your personal or business page, is useful and relevant to your audience.
Don’t Wait Until You Need Something
You know how annoying it is when someone only talks to you when they’re looking for something. Whatever you do, don’t be that person, it’s annoying and people will question why they’re even connected with you if you’re not offering something. Instead, offer assistance whenever the situation presents it, provide helpful answers and be useful to your connections and the wider community.
Use LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers tends to be a section that is often overlooked, yet provides a wealth of information for professionals. While you can ask your own questions, the real benefit is having the opportunity to answer questions on subjects you know, it gives you the chance to show off your expertise and knowledge. Browse through the questions in your area and even if it’s already been answered, contribute to the discussion. This will build up confidence and get you into the habit of answering.
Research Groups
There’s nothing worse than taking a scattergun approach to joining groups so before you request to be apart of a marketing or technology group, do a little bit of research first and see whether it fits your needs. What’s usually discussed? What sectors are its members from? Is there anyone you know that’s a member? What’s their opinion on it? The aim of joining any group is to give yourself a platform for you to showcase your knowledge so join groups that you can participate in and learn from.
Advanced Search
Another often overlooked feature of the site are the advanced search tools which delve deep into the site and finds the people you’re looking for. While there are a number of search features that are only available for premium users – seniority level and experience are just two – there is more than enough different criteria to carry out an extensive search. This is handy if you’re looking for 2nd or 3rd connections from a particular sector.
Use Targeted Updates
Both personal and company pages give you the option to let certain status updates be visible to a particular audience. While personal profiles give you a simplistic option (you can choose whether just your connections see an update or everyone), company profiles allow you to target more specific demographics. Different audiences respond to different things so if you can, send out two or more different updates to cater for them. It may require a little more thought from your end, but the results are worth it.
Make A Note Of Those Viewing Your Profile
LinkedIn now notifies you when somebody views your profile, similar to how Facebook updates you, and this can work in your favour. While it can be weird to see who has been looking at your profile, you should take a note of those that have. Who are they? What industry are they in? Where are they based? Do you share any mutual connections? It can sometimes be worth reaching out to these people if either of you share common interests.
Use Endorsements
For those who uses LinkedIn on a daily basis, you’ll know that endorsements have always been one of the key features on the platform. The idea is that if your peers and people that you have worked with in the past are saying you’re good at what you do then you must be worth hiring or doing business with. The old way of endorsing was pretty simple and didn’t do much except allow people to write nice things about you that would then appear on your profile.
You’ll see with the new LinkedIn profile design that endorsements are now a key part of the site and they have been given a number of new features that allow people to effectively score you across your skill sets. With endorsements starting to pop into the news feed, it’s an excellent way for people to find out about you and increase the amount of business that comes your way.
Place Follow Buttons On Your Site
When people first stumble across your LinkedIn profile, they may not be ready to do business with you so it is important that you stay relevant and have them follow your company. To follow a company means that you get all of their updates coming into your feed, and when you do go looking for a product or service, there is a very good chance they will have you in their mind.
You can pick up follows organically on the site (in the same way you would get Twitter followers or Facebook likes), but the fastest way to get followers is to add a simple follow button to your website.
Use LinkedIn InMail
Most of the connecting, finding new business or looking for jobs on LinkedIn happens through people within your network, but users often get frustrated when they want to contact somebody for business reasons that they are not connected to. The reason that LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to message any user you want to is to cut down on spam and the number of people who are constantly sending messages. However, it’s smart enough to realise that this is a massive money making opportunity, which is why it introduced inMail.
inMail comes in many different forms and you can choose your one here. You can buy credits (they cost about $80 for 10, but do get cheaper the more you buy) and those credits allow you to send messages to anyone you want. Once you have inMail, it means that you can get in touch with pretty much anybody you want to and can start to drive new business through the platform.
Opinions & Guides
– MathMarketing looks at how B2B firms can use LinkedIn to generate leads for their business.
– Marketing software service Marketo speak to Neal Schaffer about B2B lead generation on LinkedIn and the best ways for businesses to take advantage.
– Oktopost looks at the major differences between B2C and B2B lead generation and why taking a one-size-fits all approach is dangerous.
– MarketingSherpa gets seven experts to give their tips for B2B lead generation across social media.
– Social Media B2B shows how focusing on multimedia