LinkedIn is a great tool for business owners to connect with other business owners and discuss potential business opportunities for both parties.
However the difference between just having a LinkedIn account and having an effective LinkedIn Marketing Strategy to generate leads and grow your business is miles apart. In this episode of the Marketing Strategy Show Kym is joined by Adam Houlahan (international social media strategist) to discuss common mistakes people make while using LinkedIn as well as how to effectively use LinkedIn to grow your business.
Adam Houlahan Background
- Adam Houlahan was working with a company a while ago on a retail program that was not going so well, and as part of that whole process, they were looking into why companies in that space were doing really well were succeeding. What they found was that these particular companies were just good early adopters of social media.
- It really opened Adam’s eyes to the power of social media and what an important part it was going to play in business in the years to come
- So Adam dived into learning everything he could, reached out to a lot of experts and collaborated with them
- He also partnered with some people in the US and they built their reputation as experts in this field rapidly together
- After the successful partnership with the team in the US, he thought it would be best to strike out on his own. Six years later here he is. As he puts it he’s been doing this for six years but counts the first three as his learning curve.
Basics of LinkedIn
- The real power of LinkedIn is the ability to have a one on one conversation
- This is the reason you need to focus 99% of your energy into your personal profile as this is where you will be contacted the most
- One of the good features of LinkedIn is the Sales Navigator platform. Sales Navigator is not free, it is a paid subscription service – but worth the money if you are going to use LinkedIn to build connections and generate new business.
- However remember, the only thing you have full control of is your email database and your website. So, everything should always be about getting people back to your website or ideally even subscribe to your updates and newsletters
Getting the LinkedIn Profile right
- Before you start anything spend your time on getting your profile right.
- The thing is if someone clicks through to your Linkedin Profile and in this case, there’s no profile image, or the content isn’t updated regularly it doesn’t represent you in a highly positive way
- The profile image is a very important part of making your profile look good, investing a few hundred dollars on having a professional headshot done is money well spent as you can use it on all your social channels
Content Distribution / Lead Generation
- Lead generation wise, LinkedIn tends to work best probably more for people in the B2B space.
- The best way to do this is through curating content. So, for example, you might read an article on a website and think it’s a good read, so you put a short description of why you think it’s a good read.
- If this is hard for you to do think about what content would be interesting to your ideal clients and customers instead of what interests you
- If you are writing a blog for your website, take the same blog and publish it to LinkedIn.
Connecting on LinkedIn
- There is no set formula for sending out messages, it could be as simple as saying “Hey, I’d like to connect because I’ve been reading some of your content and I’m interested in that.” It might be “hey we are in the same industry, I can see some great value in us collaborating on things”.
- Don’t start selling before you have built relationships!
- One strategy Adam recommends is detailed in his Linkedin Playbook . Adam recommends following peoples content and commenting and engaging in that way to start off building connections.
LinkedIn v other social media
- When trying to connect to your ideal clients on social media, don’t just join a platform for the sake of joining, be on it because the people you want to reach are on it.
- Publishing content on LinkedIn or any social channel – I’ve always had the belief you can’t be good all the time but you need to be taking people back to your own website, your own real estate not just have all content sitting on your social media page
Resources
Adam Houlahan’s Free 4 week LinkedIn course
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