10 Crucial Steps for Success on LinkedIn

There are far too many people spending far too much time on LinkedIn and not getting results from their LinkedIn efforts.

Some of the reasons are to do with the wrong mindset. Other reasons are that they haven’t done their prep work. Fundamentals do matter. Whereas others don’t yet have the knowledge of what they should be doing. ?

Here are 10 things you can start working on today to make the time you spend on LinkedIn more fruitful.

1. Personal Brand

In order to be successful on LinkedIn you need to create a personal brand. People buy from people.

To create a personal brand, first of all, you need to identify your uniqueness, the thing you do better than anyone else - your unfair advantage. Once you have identified this, it's then about building a reputation for being the ‘go-to’ person for what you want to be known for. It’s about creating an overall positioning message that conveys who you are, whom you help, and how you can help them. You need to position yourself as the best person to deliver the thing that you do best.

Get personal branding right and you will elevate your profile. Your own activities will attract your target audience, your clients will give you glowing testimonials that will build your credibility and trustworthiness, others will talk about you, and others will refer people to you even if they haven’t even worked with you. You will be in high demand.

2. Provide Value and Insights

There are too many people who come on LinkedIn to get rather than give. They come on with a mindset of sell, sell, sell without considering how they come across to others. These users may get lucky with the odd person who is in trouble and is desperate for a solution to bail them out, but at the same time, they’re burning so many future potential clients without realising what they’re doing.

Buyers have changed and it’s up to salespeople to exceed their expectations. Fail to impress, and you won’t even gain their attention. Adopt the mindset of giving rather than getting. Provide value and insights. Those sellers that do this first, win 74% of the deals. Now there’s an incentive!

Become that knowledgeable consultant who will help them to find that solution that will solve their problem. Add value and insights throughout the whole sales process, from the content you post, all the way through to delivering the solution. Buyers want more. Start by serving and not selling.?

3. Be Human

I don’t know what it is about social media, it’s a bit like driving a car, some people get behind the wheel of a car and become crazy. On LinkedIn, the same happens. But you must remember that there are real people behind each profile and company.

Don’t spam people with untargeted messages that waste their time (and yours). Don’t abuse people in the comments because you’re safe behind your computer screen. Treat people with respect and look to build meaningful relationships. Before you type, think of how you would speak in a face-to-face situation with some. Connect with others on a human level and you will see much better returns for your time on LinkedIn.?

4. Personalise

Personalisation on a basic level is adding a note (sending a message) when you reach out to connect. It’s about starting warm conversations based on research. It’s about finding out or collecting insights so that when you reach out, you reach out with something relevant.?

Sending cold irrelevant messages does not work. Do your research, and gather insights to find ways to start warm conversations. Personalising your correspondence takes time, but will ensure you will get listened to rather than ignored, or blocked.

5. Strategies

Many people on LinkedIn do it their way. They pick up some tips and dive straight in. Some set up searches containing people they think will buy from them, start connecting and follow up their new connections with their 5-message sequence. Others do outbound, creating content that promotes their service so of course people will see it and buy. If only it was this easy!

The biggest mistake I see on LinkedIn is people not spending the time doing the foundational work before they start campaigns. Who are your ideal clients? Do you have multiple personas? Which one will you target? Many people target multiple personas at once and it means the messaging is not 100% relevant for at least some of those they target.

Once you have your ideal clients nailed down, what search filters do you need to find that exact group? How many of them are you currently connected to? How do you reach out to them? How many are there that are 2nd connections? How will you reach out to them? What content will they find relevant to gain their attention?

Most LinkedIn users make it up as they go along and find out for themselves what doesn’t work, and don’t start from a place of following strategies that actually work. This leads to frustration, despair and lots of wasted time.

There are many outbound and inbound strategies to start warm conversations with your ideal clients. Before you leap into these, do your foundational work before going near a search box and follow proven strategies that actually work to maximise your time and effort. Focus on mastering one strategy at a time, before moving on to the next. Another danger is being overwhelmed.?

6. Systemise

Knowing what strategies work is great, but without effective systems, you will not run efficient campaigns and maximise your output with minimal wasted effort or expense. Without effective systems, you will not reach your desired goals.

In order to generate repeatable results, you need to take the strategies that work and break them down and organise them into simple processes that can be followed and implemented quickly. Your goal is to get the most out of the time that you spend to generate the greatest returns.?

7. Habits

In order to implement all the necessary actions for running a campaign, you need to schedule all the tasks. You can organise these tasks into categories like initial set-up, daily, weekly and monthly schedules to ensure you implement all elements of the campaign in an organised and timely manner.

Put your LinkedIn activities into your online calendar or paper diary to give you the best chance of following the schedules. If you don’t schedule, it won’t get done.

Commitment is required to follow these habits to ensure you will build a robust sales pipeline that consistently delivers new clients. Plan your schedule and follow your plan.?

8. Measure

If you don’t measure, how do you know what is working? The more you measure the more information you have to make those necessary tweaks.

There are many metrics on LinkedIn you can measure, from profile views, to content impressions, and from search appearances to the number of connections. Another metric to keep an eye on is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI). This is a score out of 100 to show how you’re doing from a social selling perspective. It is made up of 4 sections with 25 points given for each section.

When running campaigns, measure your connection acceptance rate. If it is too low, you will need to make a tweak which is likely to be your connection message, your headline, or could be both. Keep track of your leads and exactly where they came from.

Know Your Numbers. Measure everything so you have the necessary information to identify when things are, and aren’t, working well. If they’re not, make the necessary adjustments.??

9. Sales Navigator

For those who are serious about building a robust sales pipeline, they need to take a look at the fantastic tool, Sales Navigator. It gives access to powerful features and insights that can make prospecting easier, more efficient and more effective, which helps you to save time and generate better results.

The thing that most people don’t appreciate when signing up for Sales Navigator is that it requires learning, and on its own, it will not generate leads. Like all tools, you need to learn how to use them properly.

This can be done on your own, or you can reach out for outside help. Many of those that do it alone struggle to learn how to use it properly, get frustrated and give up saying it didn’t work.

Whichever method you adopt, learn how to set it up properly and it will save you a significant amount of time and will help you to generate better results.?

10. Patience

Be patient. Results can happen quickly but on social media (LinkedIn included) they can take time. Enter with the mindset that you are building a medium to long-term sales pipeline, which takes time. You need to put the foundations in place, before building out your strategies, measuring and getting feedback.

Statistically, only 3% of your audience is ‘Ready to purchase’ at any one time and a further 7% are open to buying, but not looking. This means that at any one time, there is only 10% of your audience that you have a chance with.

When things get tough or you hit some bumps in the road, refer to your measurements to gain confidence that you’re going in the right direction. Celebrate all wins to keep your motivation up. Patience, hard work and perseverance are required.?

Conclusion

Generating new business on LinkedIn is not as straightforward as many people think.

To be successful on LinkedIn requires identifying the right people and providing them with value, insights, and building meaningful relationships with them. It requires adopting proven strategies, effective systems, and utilising Sales Navigator to make things easier. It requires implementing tasks consistently and measuring the results of these tasks. But it also requires patience, hard work, and persistence.

If you are currently spending lots of time on LinkedIn and not getting returns for your efforts, you need to make a change. You can either take stock of what you are doing and make changes yourself, or reach out to a specialist and get some help. Whatever you do, don’t keep doing what you’re currently doing. You need to get results for the effort you put in. ?

*********************************************************************

I'm Philip, thanks for reading my article. I hope you found it useful.

If you want more from me, here is what you can do ??

?? Connect with Me

?? Sign up for my newsletter (click subscribe)

?? Want to learn how to use LinkedIn & Sales Navigator effectively, send me a message.