LinkedIn for Real People - conversations

I believe the key to successfully using LinkedIn is understanding the power of building relationships. People connect with people. And in order to build those business relationships, we need to have conversations.

Imagine we are treating how we approach LinkedIn, in the same way we would if we were attending an in-person event. It could be a conference, a networking breakfast or an awards evening.

When you get yourself all dolled up and out the door - do you think about what you might say when you get there?

Picture the scene:

you arrive at the convention centre

you walk in the door, pick up your pass and look at the running order. You make a plan for who you are going to hear speak. You might even have met someone in the line to pick up your pass. Do you say hello? Please do! You always get the most out of in-person events when you connect with the other people attending. LinkedIn is no different.

At your conference, when you get to the first talk, walk in, sit down and say hello to the person next to you.

In San Diego last week, I sat down beside people I didn't know, in a room to hear someone speaking about YouTube. We briefly said hello to each other. Then settled in to listen to the speaker.

After the 45 minute talk, I turned to my neighbour and asked them what they thought of the talk. We spoke for a few minutes about some of the exciting topics the speaker had shared. We swapped names (all of our name tags included QR codes, making this step easy) so that we could stay in touch and follow each other online.

Now let's translate that to LinkedIn.

How to connect on LinkedIn

In this scenario, the speaker on the stage is the person who just wrote the post you are commenting on. Or maybe hosting a LinkedIn live or audio session.

The person sitting next to you, is the person who is ALSO commenting on the post!

Have a look at their comment, their name and their profile. I encourage you to reach out and send them a connection request with a message commenting on the post you just found them under.

** to note here - LinkedIn are restricting the number of people you can connect with a message - so you could send a connection request first, and once they accept, then send them a message

Continue the conversation

The inbox on LinkedIn is one of the busiest areas of my LinkedIn activity. Once people start to connect with you in private messaging, you are letting them know that you are open to conversation.

The key here is to invite people to the next stage.

Let's go back to our conference - you meet someone, ask them about their business, then they ask you about yours. They seem interested. Why not offer to send them some further information? Or invite them to meet for coffee.

On LinkedIn, you might offer this new connection a free guide or a link to a webinar you have recorded. If they ask about how your business works, why not invite them onto a phonecall or Zoom meeting.

Invitation to a video call

Did you know you can invite someone to schedule (or have an instant meeting) video call?

You can use LinkedIn video meetings, MS Teams or Zoom. You will be able to login to your own MS Teams and Zoom accounts.

I recommend you move to this step only if the other person expresses interest in chatting more about your services.

Other options in messaging are to send audio or video messages. Top tip - do not send a video message to someone you don't know yet! When using audio, LinkedIn will only let you record 60 seconds of audio at a time. When someone sends you an audio recording it is hard to ignore!

Social Media for marketing and sales

The reason businesses use social media marketing, is to generage interest in their products or services. You can chat away to people, make connections, post comments as much as you like here on LinkedIn or at your conference, but don't forget you are here to win business! So the goal is to move your new connection from conversations to the next step. Whatever that may be.

One option that has worked very well for me in the past, is to share a free download or guide that gives someone the option of subscribing to my email newsletter. Moving the connection from the LinkedIn platform to your own owned media - your email list.

I'd love to hear how you are having conversation here on LinkedIn and how it is leading to business opportunities - please share below for others to learn from you.

Until next week,

Louise