LinkedIn Tips: Tips To Make LinkedIn Work For You

These LinkedIn tips are actionable steps you can take to make your presence on LinkedIn even more successful. What I write here is based on my own experience. 

Why I love LinkedIn

LinkedIn is, in my experience, the most effective and efficient social network available. I know that every hour invested on LinkedIn gives me the best ROI for my time. Plus, I enjoy each single minute of it :-) So it does help to familiarize yourself with all the standard and premium tools available on LinkedIn. Upgrading may grow your outreach exponentially.

I use LinkedIn to reconnect with people I know, and people who are sharing outstanding comments and valuable information in the LinkedIn groups I follow. I do get to (re)connect with many amazing marketeers and I often get offers to grow affiliate programs and start performance marketing campaigns. Potential Clients come to me. That's everyone's dream!

 LinkedIn tips: the magic 5

These are tips which have been helping me on LinkedIn:

0) Identify your target audience: this comes before anything else. Understand with whom you want to interact. You may want to connect with professionals in the industry you work, or you may want to expand in other sectors and get fresh ideas, etc.

1) Identify what you have that your target audience wants: we all have many skills and a lot of experience in different aspects of business and life. Assess your strengths to see what is in demand for your target audience. Write what your target audience likes to read, among the business aspects you are knowledgeable about. Present your skills and experience in a manner which shows your target LinkedIn members what's in for them.

2) Identify what people want that you already know, or can refine in a reasonable amount of time [Optional]: analyze what is in demand and in line with your expressed or potential strengths. LinkedIn makes this very easy, just make big data work in your favor. How are you peers presenting themselves? Check their profiles. What are they sharing? Check groups and personal updates. Are there some skills that you have already partially developed? Or skills you can transfer from one industry to another? Check which Companies are searching for these skills you have, help them, and create a successful track-record for yourself.

3) Understand what you would like your target audience to do: do you want your connections to interact with you after you met them at a show? Do you want to stay ahead of the learning curve and see what the leaders in your industry are doing? Are you looking for ways to advance your career? These and much more is available on LinkedIn, mainly on a key-word basis. Often, your LinkedIn tagline is your most powerful tool.

4) Monitor, find patterns, and leverage them: LinkedIn is the success of big data, delivered in a human-friendly way. Check who is visiting your profile, to see if you are attracting your target audience. Update your profile regularly, share news, commentaries, etc. and see who is interacting with those. LinkedIn gives us the tools to create, update and benchmark virtually everything we want, business and career wise. 

Practical applications of these LinkedIn Tips

These are some examples of how I have been applying these LinkedIn tips. Please note that I use LinkedIn to get fresh ideas in the performance marketing industry and to grow the business of my Clients. I do not use LinkedIn with a focus on career, but I do get most of my Clients through LinkedIn (existing Clients referring other Clients through the network, endorsements from shared connections, etc.), so it does benefit me directly as well.

 LinkedIn Tip # 0 - Identifying my target audience

I am interested in reconnecting with performance marketeers (companies, networks, content affiliates, etc.) who can serve my Clients in a transparent, profitable, and mutually-successful way. That creates synergies among out-of-LinkedIn events I attend, interactions on LinkedIn groups, comments/messages/introductions from shared connections, etc.

 LinkedIn Tip # 1 - Identifying what I have that my target audience wants

Well, performance marketeers are always looking for exclusive deals. I can be useful to affiliates active in for International eGaming, forex, forex & trading tournaments. Plus US eCommerce and fantasy sports. The business models I use are revenue share, CPA, CPLs. If this sounds like Dothraki to you, no worries, it is not necessary to know this to benefit from these LinkedIn tips. If these industries and business models are your bread and butter (and likely are, if you are connected to me or we have shared connections) bingo! I reached my target audience, again. A valid example of walking the talk :-) by doing what I suggest other people to do on LinkedIn.

 LinkedIn Tip # 2 - Identifying what people want that I can develop [Optional]

Thanks to LinkedIn, I was able to understand Fantasy Sports and Fantasy Trading are the new big thing for my industry (eGaming and eCommerce), so I moved in quickly. I am using the skills I have been cultivating since 1995, to serve fast-growing verticals. It feels like the online poker fever in 2005, all over again.

 LinkedIn Tip # 3 - Understanding what I would like my target audience to do

I'd like qualified performance marketeers to join the affiliate programs I manage. And keep the communication channels open for future opportunities. I do this by checking my LinkedIn daily. Congratulating contacts who have work anniversaries, birthdays, new jobs, etc. Writing to them to see what's new in their professional and personal lives. LinkedIn is more than a technology, it is the fantastic interaction within the people who are here (each of us with her/his own business role, preferences, likes, hobbies, happy and rainy days, etc.) leveraged by such technology.

 LinkedIn Tip # 4 - Monitoring, finding patterns and leveraging them

I checked who visits my profile. When I add people from conferences etc. I see their response rate, quality of communication etc. That helps me to understand if I got everything from a given conference, and there isn't a reason to go back the next year, or if there is more to come. I see which Groups are a venue to share quality updates, news, etc. and which ones need to be pruned. That helps me to stay on track and keep the communication open with my target audience.