5 Steps to Grab Attention of Your Target Audience on LinkedIn

Every person is using LinkedIn with a different objective.

Some of you are using LinkedIn to get jobs/internships. Some of you are using it to generate leads for your business while others are using to build their personal brands.

Each one of these 'some' are targeting specific people which means they all have a different target audience.

Target audience is a particular group of people whom you target with an intent to deliver your service/product/requirement effectively.

For job/internships seekers, HR people comes in their target audience.

For a startup looking for funds, its target audience is angel investors and venture capitalists.

For a health care professional who is building his personal brand, people in health care industry form his target audience.

Your target audience helps you to spread word of mouth.

That's why a target audience is MUST.

What matters more is the attention given by that target audience for your content.

If you grab that attention, then only you can achieve your goal of marketing a product or selling a service or getting a job effectively through word of mouth which results in none other than organic growth.

Before moving forward, make sure which is your target audience!

Only way to do it is by finding your purpose of using LinkedIn.

Give sufficient time to figure out your purpose. More clarity you have regarding your purpose, easier it'll be to find your target audience.

If you wanna know how to figure out your purpose, you can listen to episode 2 of "Demystifying LinkedIn" here, where I've shared 2 methods to find out purpose.

Now that you have your purpose ready and you are clear about your target audience, let's dive into 5 steps to gain attention of your target audience.

Step-1: Find Your Tribe

Once you know who is your target audience aka your tribe, it's time to find that tribe on LinkedIn.

Use the magic of LinkedIn search bar to find your tribe.

If used properly, LinkedIn search bar can give you outstanding insights. It helps you to segment your tribe from the diversified network of people on LinkedIn.

Suppose, your target audience is,

Marketing Professionals working in IT companies of Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi.

1. Go to the search bar, type Marketing Professionals and hit enter.

2. Select People tab.

3. Click on All Filters and choose Locations as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi; choose Industries as Information Technology & Services; and hit Apply.

4. Select Connections. From the drop down list, either you can select 1st or 2nd & 3rd.

• Segment-1: Select 1st to segment your tribe from your immediate network. In other words, the people who are directly connected with you as your 1st degree connections. There is a high probability that these people may already know you.
• Segment-2: Select combination of 2nd & 3rd to segment your tribe from your non-immediate network. These people are not directly connected with you. Though, it's possible that they may follow you.

5. You don't need to do anything with segment-1 as of now. Pick segment-2 and send personalized connection invites to people of this segment.

Congratulations!

After these 5 baby steps, you've successfully found your tribe aka your target audience :)

Step-2: Know Your Tribe

Now, it's time to dig deeper to find out about the interests of your tribe.

You can't serve burger to someone who LOVES pizza! :P

This step will help you to determine what does your tribe like.

1. Open the profiles of people (which you got after step-1)

2. Go to the activity section of those profiles. You can find this activity section after the summary section of a profile.

3. Click on See all activity. It'll take you to the activity feed of a person.

This is where you find GOLD aka KNOWLEDGE :D

4. Click on each tab Articles, Posts, All activity to research about the interests of your target audience.

5. Pay attention to three things majorly:

• frequency of posts and comments
• kind of topics on which they put content
• kind of others' content (topics) on which they engage

Make a list of those topics.

Now, before you get overwhelmed and say, "Ashi! this is too much. My target audience consists of at-least 1K+ people. Searching each one of them is insane!"

Lemme tell you, you don't need to go around each and every profile :)

Select 50 profiles (which you find appealing in search results because of headlines), open those 50 profiles and make your list. BINGO!

The list neither has to be complex nor it has to be accurate.

Keep it simple. If you find 5 topics, that's sufficient.

Do make sure that you find one topic in more than at-least 5 profiles. Then only you'll be able to conclude that it's more or less a common interest of your tribe.

To keep your motivation intact, keep reminding yourself that,

Knowing who your customers are is great, but knowing how they behave is even better! - Jon Miller

The list which you are making in this step will make you understand the psychology of your tribe.

Ultimately, this psychology will help you to gain attention of your tribe.

Step-3: Hang Out with Your Tribe

Whether you like it or not, research, in fact a good deep research will determine the effectiveness of your efforts to get desired results.

So, buckle up for another round of research to explore the LinkedIn groups :)

1. Once again open the profiles (which you got in step-1)

2. Scroll down till the end of a profile to find the Interests section.

3. Click on See all. A pop-up will appear with different tabs.

4. Click on Groups tab. This will give you a list of groups which have been joined by that particular person.

5. Make a list of common groups among 50 (or whatever the number you have chosen) profiles. Since, your target audience is specific as per marketing and IT domain, there is high possibility that you'll find so many common groups.

6. Join these groups mentioned in the list.

Voila! You have hit a jackpot!

These groups are the places where your tribe likes to hang out.

Now, it'll be much easier for you to share about your products/services/requirements at one place by reaching out to your tribe directly.

Wait, how will you share about your products and services? Do you need to create content? Which kind of content?

Let's move on to step-4 to find answers to all these questions.

Pro Tip: Groups allow you to communicate with a person with whom you are not directly connected. If you are unable to connect with a person due to any reason, then being members of the same group allows you to send a message to that person. That's the power of LinkedIn Groups ;)

Step-4: Serve Your Tribe

Remember the list of topics which you diligently prepared in step-2?

Time to use it!

Whether it's your tribe's feed or the groups, you need to knit your services, products and requirements in content.

The content which should be simple, interactive and interesting!

Pick a topic from the list. Use that topic to wrap your services which you wanna sell to your target audience.

Assume the chosen topic is,

Technical Marketing

For marketing professionals in IT domain, it's a very common topic.

Before anything, swallow this one rule:

You don't need to hard sell. Don't become salesy in your content!

Now, put on your research hat to frame content around Technical Marketing in such a way that you can also include your services in it effectively.

Your goal is to create the content which "sells without selling"

The content which grabs your tribe's attention.

Use every bit of information about your tribe's psychology which you have gathered till now through research to create that effective content. You can create,

• Text posts/articles/group posts
• Infographics/GIFs
• Videos
• PDFs/eBooks

Distribute this content in different LinkedIn groups (use the list of groups in step-3). Publish posts and articles consistently to build your visibility.

You should be regularly visible in your target audience's feeds through your content to grab their attention.

That's why build a content strategy because content with engagement rules organic growth. As Mari Smith says,

Content is the King but ENGAGEMENT is the Queen and the lady rules the house!

There is no use of putting content recklessly if it is not engaging. Because,

Engagement drives Attention.

That engagement depends on two factors:

• your content quality
• your visibility

Your content quality is determined by how simple, interactive and interesting your content is.

Your content visibility is determined by how consistently you are putting your content and interacting with your tribe's content.

If you are just putting content without engaging on your target audience's content, you won't be able to build visibility and hence your audience attention will be zero.

If you don't show up! You simply don't exist!

So, make sure you regularly engage with your tribe's content. Open the groups where your tribe hangs out. Begin group conversations there. Take part in other conversations.

If your tribe's content is not appearing in your feed, then go to LinkedIn search bar to search for your tribe. Open the profiles appearing in results, find their content and ENGAGE.

And don't engage just for the sake of engaging.

Engage for adding value!

Step-5: Talk with Your Tribe

Direct conversations always have a great impact. The same goes with you and your tribe.

It's good that you are engaging with your tribe through content and comments. But to strengthen that connection, to build a rapport, you have to communicate with your tribe by dropping messages.

Let's circle back to step-1 where we had 2 segments.

Segment-1 having 1st degree connections.

Segment-2 having 2nd & 3rd degree connections.

You can easily send messages to your 1st degree connections. Hence, start communicating with segment-1 through messages. Meanwhile, keep sending personalized invites to segment-2 so as to make them segment-1.

Question is, how to find the reason to begin a conversation?

Answer lies in your likes and comments section of your content.

If someone puts a like or comment on your post, initiate a conversation with that person. Since the person has been following your content so it'll be easy for both of you to take forward the conversation.

As your major focus is on your target audience in your every step, most probably the person will belong to your tribe.

If not, then also, I'd suggest you to message the person. Because,

A strong and effective network expands beyond a specified target audience.

You have to honor that network.

Avoid selling in a conversation. Use conversations to know people, their interests, the problems they are facing, the work they are doing.

In doing so, you may offer your services as a solution. Or you may also get a chance to take conversations off-LinkedIn.

And when it happens, when you start connecting with people from on-LinkedIn to off-LinkedIn, you begin to experience Real Networking.

If you're genuine, your prime intent is to add value before selling, you'll be able to gain attention of your tribe, you'll be able to build rapport with your tribe.

The rapport which will help you to know your tribe in a better way.

The rapport which will help you to grow your tribe.

Ultimately, that grown tribe will help you to grow organically through word of mouth :)

No doubt, these 5-steps take time.

That's why not everyone is doing it.

But those who are doing it, know the worth of every moment spend in building and nurturing a tribe.

Because they thrive in long run.

Question is,

How do you wanna thrive? Short term or long term?

Your answer to this question will guide you further!

Just make sure you give it a proper thought :)

#demystifyLI