LinkedIn is obviously an important tool for businesses with the growth in popularity of social media. But how do you effectively use the platform to generate leads and find new clients and customers?. In this episode of The Marketing Strategy Show Kym is joined by Jillian Bullock the LinkedIn Ninja Down Under to discuss the best Effective LinkedIn Lead Generation strategies.
Kym and Jillian met a few weeks ago at a meet up group that was designed with the goal of getting LinkedIn connections to meet in real life.
How to Select a LinkedIn Connection
When looking at potential LinkedIn connections think about a few things:
- Are they active on LinkedIn? (posting / commenting on other posts)
- Are they an ideal client or customer?
- Has this person ever posted something that violates the LinkedIn user principles?
- Does the person even know what the LinkedIn user principles are?
First Step
- “Visibility creates opportunity” – Koka Sexton (Snr Manager at Slack and Former head of Social Media, Member Marketing & Communications at LinkedIn – often thought of as the Godfather of Social Selling)
- To make connections on LinkedIn you need:
- to build rapport and to build rapport you need to be posting
- If the people you are trying to reach are inactive on LinkedIn look on their profile or their website and look for a contact email (If the person you are trying to connect with isn’t using LinkedIn there is no point trying to reach them there
- Keep your introductions personal, For example if you were looking at Kym’s LinkedIn profile a good introduction could be “Hey Kym,I have been checking out your work for a while and believe that there might be some mutual benefit to us working together, what countries did you run those businesses in?”
- By simply asking a question related to Kym’s profile it shows that you have actually read the info from his profile
- Asking someone to work with you over LinkedIn without any personalisation or customisation beyond the basic introduction is the real-life equivalent of walking into a coffee shop, throwing your business card down on the table in front of two people and then walking out.
- They know little to no information about you and you haven’t told them what makes you different from your competitors.
Post Format
- Short sentences work much better on mobile phones – tell a story in short spaced out sentences rather than the traditional method of long sentences and paragraphs
- Most people these days conduct a large portion of their business from their phones on the go so therefore you want to keep your posts concise and succinct as most people don’t want to spend 10 minutes continually scrolling through a single article with their thumb.
- Don’t put links in the post, if you really want to link your post to somewhere put a link in the top comment (the reason for this is LinkedIn will mark your post down if you link away from the website in your post as LinkedIn wants people to stay on their website as long as possible.
Leaving your mark on LinkedIn
- For example, think of your LinkedIn profile as a shop front, if you had a bare empty shop front no one would know what products or services you are selling the same goes for your LinkedIn profile.
- If you rarely post on your LinkedIn profile or don’t post at all people will be driven away from your profile.
- The reason for this is if you have an inactive profile, visitors or potential leads have nothing to make an impression of you with.
- When an inactive profile is compared to an active one, the active one is instantly more appealing as firstly it shows that they are using LinkedIn often and secondly, they can build an informed opinion of who the person is and whether they’d like to work with them.
- If you were to compare three different potential partners to work with and one of the three people didn’t post at all, another person barely posts and the third person posts frequently you would be able to build a much better impression of what this person is like so you would automatically be more inclined to work with them.
Post with a Purpose
- Whenever you are making a post for LinkedIn think about these two questions:
- What is the purpose of this post?
- What action do you want people who see the post to take? (Is it about pitching a product to someone or just about generating interest in your business)
- Identify your prospects on LinkedIn (if they are posting) and comment on a post of theirs with your views and expand on why you agree or disagree with what they are saying.
- Make sure it is a meaningful contribution and not just a simple “I agree” or “great point” ensure that you are giving your opinion but keep it down to a sentence or two as generally people don’t want to read an essay in their comments section.
Take it Offline
- Sadly, there is no tool that is going to automate this for you. Businesses are about making money and if are unable to take the next step in arranging a meeting with a prospect you stand to lose thousands in revenue if not more.
- This is all a numbers game, yes some people you meet in person might not want to do business with you but the more people you actually take the steps to meet with in person the more likely you are to find people to work with.
Connect with Us
If you need any help with your Brand strategy or helping you define what you do differently we can assist. Just call us on (02) 9125 0520 or visit themarketingstrategy.co and book in an obligation free consultation.
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