LinkedIn has long become one of the most powerful business tools for 21st-century brand building, professional networking, lead generation, and more. Yet, for many B2B and professional services companies, it’s often underutilized or misused.
With a hybrid business environment here to stay, mastering the “how” of using LinkedIn is instrumental for:
Before you can successfully conduct business on LinkedIn, make sure that yours and your company’s key employees’ profiles, as well as the company page, help rather than hinder your progress.
LinkedIn profiles have a higher first-page placement in search results than corporate websites, which means that your prospects may visit LinkedIn first. Do your client-facing employees – leadership, business development/sales, marketing, account/project managers and HR – make the best first impression? Do their profiles build credibility and trust?
The reputation of a company’s leadership is directly responsible for 44% of a company’s market value. – Forbes Magazine
Additionally, LinkedIn uses your profile information to make recommendations to you and about you so you want it to be current, focused and accurate.
Think of this section as your business card (or a name tag) and a virtual handshake.
This section should sound more like your professional story rather than your resume. What is your value proposition? What do you bring to the relationship? What is your passion, why do you do what you do (remember Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why”)?
All employees should include consistent, unified, on-brand language and keywords to describe your organization.
When making changes to the Experience section, make sure to switch off the “share with network” toggle – otherwise, it will look like you and everyone at your company is changing jobs.
List work history with detailed information for any past experience that adds value and delete any jobs that are no longer relevant.
Make sure that all employees have your company listed as their current place of employment. Although obvious, you’d be surprised how often this is not the case!
List your education, volunteer activities and add other sections that will help you identify common interests with others. Did you go to the same school? Are you supporting the same causes? These are valuable connection points!
Make sure your information is visible to the public by switching on “Your Profile’s Public Visibility” toggle and options underneath (see “Edit public profile & custom URL” in the right sidebar of your profile page).
Making connections on LinkedIn is a virtual equivalent of prospecting and networking. And just like you don’t go to every networking event – or join every professional organization – but select them strategically based on who your “ideal” clients are and where they congregate, you have to have a strategy for growing your network on LinkedIn.
The goal is not to have thousands of connections, but to build meaningful and personalized professional relationships with highly curated contacts.
LinkedIn offers a powerful search for targeting job titles, companies, industries, services, geographies and more. Narrow your searches using filters to zero in on the most qualified prospects and industry influencers.
Identify your connection gaps:
Based on your profile, LinkedIn will make connection recommendations. Each suggested connection has a “connect” button – don’t click on it as it will immediately send a generic connection request. Instead, connect by going to an individual’s profile and connecting from there, which will give you an option to personalize your request.
Adding a personal note is a must. If someone doesn’t know you and you don’t meet their “desired connection criteria,” most people will not connect unless you give them a compelling reason.
Anticipate their question, “What’s in it for me?” Could you have met before? Did you go to the same school? Do you do work in the same industry? Make your note compelling and personal enough that people will want to connect with you.
Being strategic also goes for accepting connections. You don’t have to connect with everyone who sends you a request. But when you do connect, send a personal note through LinkedIn messaging – start building the relationship.
The big question is: How do we engage with prospects and clients without it looking like we are in a sales mode?
The short answer is: be authentic, be empathetic, be genuinely caring. Help them! Even if it’s not a part of your scope or typical offerings. Focus on high touches vs. sales pitches.
Educate employees on the importance of making connections on LinkedIn and how to do so effectively. For example, encourage them to connect with people they just met or are about to meet, always personalize connection requests and, in general, approach making connections on LinkedIn with the same level of care they use to approach networking and building relationships in “real life.”
LinkedIn should be a part of your content strategy. Publish consistently through your company page and profile and use both your company’s content and carefully curated outside content and resources that are useful to your audiences.
Use hashtags and mentions in your posts to increase engagement.
But don’t just talk, be part of the conversation! In addition to posting content and responding to any questions and comments, look for ways to interact with content posted by others – especially prospects, clients and industry influencers.
Know what content is valuable to your prospects and clients right now for all forms of your internal or external communications.
Before posting anything, ask: Why this? Why Us? Why Now?
If you have something useful to say that helps your audiences, create original content, or repurpose your existing pieces if they are still relevant. Otherwise, find useful content and resources created by others and share it.
And it’s OK to wave in some lighthearted content. But remember this is not Facebook, so remain professional.
There are several ways you can share content as an Individual and Company:
Getting employees engaged with your company page and sharing its content on LinkedIn is essential for extending your reach beyond your company’s current network.
Your employee’s networks are often several times larger than your company’s network.
Encourage your employees to share your company’s content to amplify its reach and impact. Use the “notify employees” feature on your company page when you publish new content. It also marks those posts as “employee notified” to help you track engagement in analytics.
To help leverage key pieces of content and major news announcements, develop a series of scripts and share them, including any supporting graphics, with all employees in internal communications.
This not only simplifies sharing but also ensures that all messages are consistent and on-brand.
Research where your specific audiences congregate (different industries, job roles/titles and professional associations have groups on LinkedIn) and Identify groups that have your prospects and clients as members. Also, pay attention to where your competitors have a strong voice.
Before joining, vet groups for quality. Is a group self-promotional and vendor heavy? Or do people engage in meaningful conversations and discuss industry issues and trends? Monitor conversations and identify opportunities for your experts to contribute answers, advice and content.
Group discussions are also valuable for identifying issues that are top of mind for your audiences. Use this research for your content planning and to identify where your existing content might be helpful to share with the group.
These are immediate actions you should take:
And finally, make LinkedIn a part of your daily activity. Be strategic, intentional and disciplined about it and it will pay off – both short- and long-term.
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