How to Start Getting Results on LinkedIn

The next edition of?The Mango Effect is out! ?? If you're new, this is where we talk about all things related to growing our businesses and personal brands "the mango way" on LinkedIn -- from personal branding to growing our networks to attracting more ideal clients to optimizing our profiles... and everything in between!

Each week, I share ONE strategy that you can use to optimize your personal brand or grow your business on LinkedIn. Whether you're a subject matter expert at the top of your field, a business leader looking to get on more boards, or a gritty entrepreneur trying to craft an ideal sales & marketing machine -- you'll find one action item you can take away and implement each and every week to get you one step closer to your goal.

No topic is off-limits. We discuss the good, the bad, and the fugly. I do take topic recommendations, too!

My mission is to help more professionals learn how to use LinkedIn, so we can all "up our game" on the platform, build thought leadership, and grow as leaders in our careers and businesses. And, I like to keep things fun, practical, and inspiring.

Now, onto this week's topic!

How to Start Getting Results on LinkedIn

Isn't LinkedIn supposed to be a lead-generating machine? ?? You're putting in the time in your news feed, posting content on the regular, and trying to build your network.

But, instead of attracting leads eager to talk with you about your business and services...

...you're getting pitch-slapped by salespeople or consultants trying to sell you their "latest-and-greatest" automation tool or appointment setting service!

Sound familiar?

A lot of social selling experts try to make it sound EASY to grow your business with LinkedIn, but it's not just about knowing WHAT to do on LinkedIn.

You also need to understand the ORDER you need to follow to get your desired results.

In this Mondays with Mindi episode, we're talking about a step-by-step approach to help you start growing your business, so that you know exactly what to do next on LinkedIn by matching your LinkedIn activities to your business objectives.

Come prepared to take notes, because we're going to get strategic AND tactical!

Time Invested ≠ Leads Generated

A lot of experts looking to use LinkedIn to “generate leads” for their business often come to me to troubleshoot. Maybe you’ve felt this way too.

They spend a LOT of time posting content to their news feed.

They spend a good chunk each day poring over other people’s content to add insightful comments.

They send a lot of connection requests to people they’d like to network with.

But, they’re not getting the results they actually want.

Instead, they are getting bombarded with salespeople or other consultants trying to sell THEM something.

Then, they tend to get pretty discouraged and say that LinkedIn’s not working. It’s a myth that you can actually build real relationships that lead to business growth here.?

Why not go back to Instagram and start hustling in the DMs and aggressively following-unfollowing people?

Or maybe it’s still not too late for you on TikTok to get a corner on the market there with a “viral” dancing to the music video? (Or cute English Bulldoy puppy videos - my personal favorite!)

A lot of self-proclaimed social selling experts in my space like to promise that it’s really SIMPLE to grow your business on LinkedIn if they just use fill-in-the-blank-with-specific-tactic here.

BUT, what they don’t often explain very well is the ORDER in which you need to put together your tactics before they’re effective.

You’ve likely been doing a LOT of the right things, but there’s probably just a situation with the order in which you’re doing them to get the results you want.

So, first of all, I want to say CONGRATS for actually taking action on LinkedIn and trying some things.

That shows you’re willing to learn, to try, to fail, to troubleshoot, to figure out a better way to put together those skill sets you’ve already learned with a variation on your formula.

There, that’s not so bad, is it?

Let’s talk today about how to put together a winning formula that will get you the results you want efficiently, so that you can focus on the right ones for you NOW and pocket the other ones for later.

Still Trying to Do “All the Things” on LinkedIn?

Maybe 2022 was the year that you decided to go “all in” on LinkedIn and really get serious about growing your business.?

If you’re like many experts I talk with about using LinkedIn for business growth, it’s a mixed bag.

Category 1 - A small percentage of people are stoked because they hit upon a magic formula or just happen to guess what they should do and get it right out of the gate. They’re the ones we’re often hear about because they’re excited about their success.

But the problem is… they’re not exactly sure which part of their formula is working. So, they’re stuck “doing all the things” probably a lot more than they should be doing on LinkedIn out of fear that they’re going to stop seeing success.

If this is you, you’re going to find today’s session really helpful in figuring out what you can streamline this year because you don’t have to do it all, all the time, to get results.

Category 2 - The majority of people on LinkedIn are either just getting started and have no idea what to do next OR have tried a lot of social media activities across a range of platforms with little success.

It can feel very frustrating because you’ve taken all that time to learn a variety of techniques, platforms and strategies… but putting them together is just not working out like you expected.

Good news for you is that you already have all of these skill sets (or are open-minded to learn them) and can simply put together a better formula that will work for you long-term.

So there! You aren’t doing anything wrong per se, but you just need to find the right formula and figure out how to order the activities you are doing or know you should be doing.

Let’s talk about how to go about this strategically.

There’s No Magic Bullet on LinkedIn

Let’s talk about the different reasons you’re on LinkedIn to begin with, as this will help you figure out a good formula for the order of your activities.

If you’re here to find new leads for your business, you need to think about a few things before you start getting aggressive with your outreach.

A lot of people prematurely jump into lead generation or hire someone to do it for them without understanding the basics of what they need to know first.

It’s not just about trying to do a bunch of tactics that get you leads, rather it’s about approaching LinkedIn from the right mindset of doing business.

Nobody starts a business and starts immediately pitching everyone they know that’s friend or family or an acquaintance to buy their product or service.

There’s a process you go through to deeply think about which people this would be a good fit for, and then seeking them out, learning more about their needs in advance, and approaching each of them individually with a unique proposition based on what you learned.

You cannot take a shotgun approach to LinkedIn and expect to see long-term results.

If you do, you’ll immediately damage your reputation on LinkedIn and be labelled a spammer by your ideal prospects because they can see right through a sideways sales pitch.

And the people you do attract will be low-caliber, more desperate and not the ideal people you’d want to work with anyways.

You’ve got to play the long game on LinkedIn, and that requires patience and persistence with the right things and done in the right order.

There is no viable, quick win solution on LinkedIn! But if you can commit to a good 30 days to setting a foundation for success, you will win long-term.

If you’re thinking “Mindi, but I want to get it done NOW!” You should probably opt for paid advertising on Google, YouTube, Quora, Facebook and Instagram. This may not get you the level of leads that you’re looking for, but it will get you quick results.

LinkedIn works when you know exactly what to do in the right order. It’s a game. Learn how to play it instead of opting for a shortcut, and you’ll have a thriving business from your LinkedIn efforts 90 days from now and years down the road. I have clients I’m still working with several years since we started their program!

How to Get the Order Right on LinkedIn

If you want to succeed on LinkedIn and actually grow your business, get to that next rung in your career, attract your potential customers, get a book deal or land a spot on that interview show… you must learn how to prioritize and order the activities you need to take.

That starts in your LinkedIn headline, but it moves into your LinkedIn About section. Even if you can write a great headline, you must be able to craft a solid About section that speaks to your audience on a deeper level.

#1 - Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile?

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve heard me talk about the importance of your LinkedIn profile for everything you do on LinkedIn.

That’s exactly why I created my program called The LinkedIn Accelerator (currently open for enrollment) to help people dial in their LinkedIn profile for new opportunities.?

Nothing you do on LinkedIn will matter if your profile is not optimized for growing your business, getting new opportunities and building new professional relationships.

If you don’t know what a good LinkedIn profile looks like and would like some pointers, please add a comment below and I’ll shoot you links to three of my favorites!

Some people don’t want to “waste” time on their profile and just want to start lead generation, but this will prevent you from seeing success on LinkedIn.

I worked with one client who simply had a suboptimal profile picture (he was trying to look cool and was smoking a cigar) and couldn’t figure out why no one was responding to his messages or accepting connection invitations. As soon as we changed out that picture, his lead generation goals of getting 6-10 calls per month was back on track.

Sometimes, we have to admit when we don’t know what we don’t know. So take care of this first!

#2 - Build Your LinkedIn Network to 500+

Once your profile is optimized, it’s time to grow your network before you do outreach.

If you have a smaller network (less than 500 connections) then pay close attention here. You must get to that 500 number before you start actively prospecting.

This shows you have credibility and also that you’re not “barely here” on LinkedIn. LinkedIn users all look for that 500+ number on a profile before many of them will accept a connection invitation or a message.

So don’t start posting content if you’re not actively building your network AND you haven’t reached this 500+ number, yet.

Do your best to ask everyone you know professionally (and personally) to connect with you to get to this 500+ number. Then, once you’re pretty close, you can start growing your network with prospects.

I’ve had a few Accelerator members who were brand new to LinkedIn and managed to get calls with high-level prospects on LinkedIn below this number, BUT they spent a good amount of time optimizing their profile AND wrote really great outreach messages that were personalized.

Once you’re over 500, it’s a lot easier to send these messages and get them accepted.

#3 - Focus on Your Outbound Strategy

The big mistake for those trying to get new leads and grow their business is that they spend 80% of the time they do have writing or commenting on other people’s content on LinkedIn, rather than identifying and reaching out to their ideal prospects.

If you have a smaller network (less than 5,000 people) you’re going to get more results if you post less frequently on LinkedIn and instead do 1:1 messaging and sending connection invitations.

If you have the time to do both, then spend about 20% of your time engaging in the news feed and posting, while you spend the other 80% of your time finding new prospects and engaging in the back-and-forth conversations in your LinkedIn messages.

This is the #1 biggest mistake that people newer to LinkedIn make because they think that they can post enough good content to “attract” prospects to them. That strategy ONLY works well enough once you have built a network of thousands (ideally 10K+ people) and are well-known in your niche. Then you can do less 1:1 messaging and more of a focus on writing content that resonates.

Your biggest competitive advantage as a smaller business or consultant is that you can actually have one-to-one conversations with people! The big competitors that you’re so worried about cannot rival you there. So use this to your advantage, especially in the early days of your business.

Takeaway: Figure out your outbound LinkedIn strategy that is going to work for you and also fits into the time you can designate for prospecting and social selling on a weekly basis. This time is better spent than posting or engaging to “get noticed.”

Those three tips will get you started on the right path with growing your business on LinkedIn, and you’re going to notice a HUGE shift in the number of conversations you’ll have with your ideal clients or customers as a result.?

1. Optimize your profile for growing your business.
2. Grow your network to a respectable size (ideally 500+)
3. Spend more time on your messages, and less time in your news feed.

If you’re ready to get started with growing your business on LinkedIn and take the next step to optimize your profile once and for all, so you can start getting new leads or land your next opportunity in 2023, join me inside The LinkedIn Accelerator happening later this month! Inside the program, we address the first two steps that we talked about today… plus a bit more on the messaging strategy you need to start getting new leads.

What additional questions do you have about getting more prospects with your LinkedIn profile? Leave them below in the comments or shoot me a private message. I’m happy to answer them??!