How To Be Engaging On LinkedIn And Attract More Business

Engagement is a word you'll hear quite a lot when it comes to using LinkedIn and other social media but what does engagement really mean and how do you know if you are being engaging online or not?

Among other definitions, the English Oxford Dictionary suggests that the verb 'To engage' means to occupy or attract (someone's interest or attention) or involve someone in (a conversation or discussion). When you examine your most recent LinkedIn posts do you feel they occupied or attracted anyone's attention and when was the last time you got involved in a conversation (N.B a conversation is not sending a thumbs up reply or a standard LinkedIn response message) with another LinkedIn user?

How Are You Going To Stand Out From The Crowd?

LinkedIn has half a billion members, admittedly they are not all active every single day or every week come to that. Nevertheless, many thousands are actively engaged, daily, in posting and sharing content and commenting on others' updates, so how can you have any hope of standing out from the crowd with your one post a week strategy? In short, you're not!

There are rules you need to abide by, if you want more people to recognise your brand and then take an interest in what you do. First you must be visible and visible more often to more people - visibility equals opportunity. Take a look at Kate Lister's LinkedIn profile and view the 'Articles & Activity' section of her profile, then select 'Posts'. Now take a look at the number of likes and comments her updates achieve. Go, on take a look now, I'll wait!

Welcome back. So were you impressed with the level of engagement Kate achieves from her regular and consistent levels of LinkedIn activity? You should be because what you need to know about Kate is that she's a florist from Grimsby and there are many 'professional' LinkedIn users who would scoff at such a business being given space on LinkedIn, surely florists should flourish on Facebook and certainly not on this suit and tie business networking platform?!

Be Yourself And Challenge The Status Quo

What you should also have noticed about Kate Lister's profile is....well, I'd say you should have noticed just about everything about it: the background and profile photos, the highly personable Summary section, with interesting media attached (including her celebrity connection with the likes of pop star Midge Ure) as well as her upbeat and engaging posts and updates, many of which usually feature her with her customers. You know who Kate is, you see her photo constantly but you also see her personality shining through everything she does. Kate is buyable and she just happens to sell flowers. My instinct is that Kate could be selling manure and she would do just as well!

You see Kate gets social, she understands that if people buy her then they will buy her flowers and they do so in spades (liking the occasional horticultural references?). It's also worth noting that the majority of her customers are those 'professional' LinkedIn members and many are of the male persuasion who purchase her glorious bouquets for their wives or for corporate events. Kate is technically a square peg in round LinkedIn hole but when you're prepared to challenge the status quo and understand that being yourself is good enough then it's at that moment that you'll succeed on LinkedIn too.

Your Social Selling Index Score

If you want some kind of measure of how engaging you are on LinkedIn then the platform actually provides members with access to their individual Social Selling Index (SSI) score, just follow this link to obtain yours.

Your SSI score measures 4 key areas of LinkedIn activity:

1. How well you establish your brand on LinkedIn - do you have a fully completed and relevant profile and are you posting rich and valuable content?
2. How often you use LinkedIn search to locate and reach out to relevant connections.
3. How you engage regularly by posting and sharing content, as well as your involvement in discussions within LinkedIn groups.
4. How effective you are at building relationships with other LinkedIn members.

LinkedIn's algorithms will identify your activity in each of these 4 areas and rate your social selling score out of 100.

It's Not Enough To Just Post Content Though

Where Kate strengthens her brand reputation is when she follows up the posts she has shared by replying to those who leave a comment, she engages them in conversation. If I could single out one aspect of LinkedIn that has won me more business than anything else these past 8 years and that has seen me secure contracts with Toyota GB, FedEx Supply Chain, the British Red Cross, Investors in People and other notable names, then it would have to be the conversations I had first before trying to sell. The client had to first buy me before they purchased my services.

How do you have more conversations? Here are my 3 tips:

1. Always ask people what inspired them to connect with you - many will reply and tell you.
2. Follow people of interest to you personally on LinkedIn and engage with their posts and updates. Ask them questions about their article but be authentic and show genuine interest.
3. Always ask people, who like your content or leave a brief 'great post' comment, what it was in particular they liked about your post.

As long as you can live with the fact that around 60% of people you ask these questions of will probably not reply, then the other 40% have engaged with you. These 40 percenters, could they be potential clients or maybe amplifiers (could refer you to their clients)?

Be less quick to sell and take time to understand why someone would want to engage with you on LinkedIn, take an interest in them also and in doing so you become engaging. More people will then buy-in to you first, which makes the act of selling your particular product or service much, much easier.

Many thanks for viewing my post and would you please share it with anyone you feel would benefit from the advice provided.

If you have any private questions on the subject matter you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message, or else you’ll find my contact details on my LinkedIn profile uk.linkedin.com/in/stevephillip.

You can also follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Linked2Steve