My Insane LinkedIn Routine Part 2

My Six-Step LinkedIn Process

Yesterday , I shared how LinkedIn fits into our process and how I started using it to accelerate growth. Today, I will explain how this works.

Why would I share it if this process has been instrumental in our success? Crazy right?

The truth is that this is not rocket science. The key elements may be very familiar to you. The thing is that it is a lot of hard work. It takes discipline and commitment to keep improving. It means doing things daily, weekly, and monthly, and it means being continuously curious.

So here goes!

1. Setting Up Your LinkedIn Foundation

The keystone of your LinkedIn strategy is your profile. If you want to improve your LinkedIn strategy, start here. Why? A great profile will increase the chances that people will connect with you.

There is a lot that goes into creating a great profile. The best thing you can do is download Adam Franklin’s checklist or check out Richard Van Der Blom’ s. I used their guidance to create and optimize mine. I refresh my profile at least once per year and constantly tweak it.

Here is my current profile. I have changed the image and the headline at least 20 times and this seems to work well for sending connection requests.

Important Tip: Make sure you are set in Creator mode. I believe this is now automatic, but double-check it as it enables you to access more features.

The next thing to consider is getting Sales Navigator. I use Sales Navigator Core, which costs about $100 per month. ?I do this primarily as it allows me to create and manage lists. For example I have a target list of people I would like to add to my network that I use for step 2. I also have lists of Healthtech Marketing Network candidates and members.

2. ABC ?- Always Be Connecting

Every business day, I send connection requests from a list set up in Sales Navigator. My Sales Navigator subscription allows me to send 800 connection requests per month, so I send up to 40 requests per business day.

I use a simple welcome message mentioning our common interest in healthcare technology. If they prefer to follow rather than connect with me, I offer my newsletter as an alternative.

I typically get a 25% acceptance rate. It used to be as high as 40%, but over the last few years, the scourge of people who connect and immediately pitch something has hurt people’s trust in invitations to connect.

Important Tip: The best way to increase your network is to make it a daily habit. I have a personal Trello board with my tasks set up by day. I delete other tasks as I complete them, but this task is never deleted, so I never forget to do it.

I used to send a sequence of messages to new connections in the first few weeks after connecting. I never really got much value out of this, and I also think that the constant barrage of sales pitches has created a lot of distrust. I stopped a while back.

The only outreach I do is to invite a few select candidates to join the Healthtech Marketing Network. I am careful not to be spammy when doing this.

3. My Daily Content Posting Routine

The most significant time investment is posting to LinkedIn 4-5 times weekly. Most of my posts are designed to educate and share insight and ideas. This includes one-off posts about a specific topic, sharing something I have learned from somebody on my team or a partner. I also share new content we have created including our podcast or a blog post.

I have a detailed marketing calendar that maps our marketing plan daily. This includes a daily LinkedIn calendar. I find that when I plan 2-3 weeks ahead, write the posts ahead of time, and schedule the posts, the quality of the posts is better. Most importantly, these get higher viewership and engagement.

Quality matters more than quantity but you have to post at least 3 times a week.

Important Tip: Keep your audience on LinkedIn. LinkedIn wants people to stay on LinkedIn, so any time you send someone to another site, your posts get limited exposure. Sharing blog posts with a link in the body of the posts is a big No-No. If you share a link, put it in the comments.

I also mix up formatting types. All text posts that are 200-300 words long typically work best, and I have learned an effective format from Richard Van Der Blom: Grabber headline, short paragraphs, 4-5 tags, and close with a CTA.

Adding an image can make these posts work even harder. If I include a video, I always load it natively into LinkedIn. Sharing a YouTube video works against you.

In addition to educational posts, I create occasional posts promoting our services. I should probably do this more often than I do. I may be oversensitive about coming across as too salesy.

From time to time, I run surveys. They are little played out in my view.

I used to share documents and carousels, but they are a lot of work to create, and I have struggled to get high enough engagement from them to justify the time.

I share something personal very occasionally. These tend to get the highest engagement, but I recommend doing this sparingly. LinkedIn is a professional platform—it’s not Facebook.

4. LinkedIn Newsletter – A Differentiation Opportunity

The LinkedIn Newsletter is one of my favorite LinkedIn features. Every two weeks, I publish a long-form article like this. It allows me to go deep on a topic in a way I can’t do in a regular post.

Note: This is the first time I have done three in a week, but this would have been a 3,000-word article. The best practice is to keep articles just below 1,000 words.

My Healthtech Ideas newsletter has over 3,000 subscribers. While I have not analyzed this, I believe the LinkedIn newsletter reaches a different audience than my email newsletter. I am sure there is overlap, but there is no doubt that, in combination, it extends the reach of our content.

It is important to have a regular cadence. According to Richard Van Der Blom, the best is every two weeks. I publish mine every other Tuesday.

Important Tip: Not many people and forms use this feature. It’s a great way to differentiate yourself and reach a new audience.

Writing a long-form piece takes much effort, so I repurpose it across channels. The same content is published as a blog post and a LinkedIn newsletter. I then email it to my newsletter subscribers and create multiple short posts about it.

I also add podcasts and YouTube videos, which are often the basis of articles like this.

Here’s the video of the podcast episode that I used to create this article.

5. Next Level Engagement Tactics

There are many ways to leverage LinkedIn features to engage your audience. For example, when we run an event like a Webinar, I will publicize it both via our website using email to drive registrations and create a LinkedIn Event.

LinkedIn events make it easy to invite your LinkedIn network to sign up for your event. In addition, we use LinkedIn Live to stream an event via LinkedIn and run it over the web via Streamyard.

Important Tip:?Engage with others' content regularly. This is critical. According to Richard Van Der Blom, authentically engaging with others increases your reach and following. He recommends dedicating 30 minutes per day to this, especially before you publish your?own post.

We have run paid ads via LinkedIn a few times. They work incredibly well in building awareness and engagement for our clients, although they can be prohibitively expensive in lead generation. We don’t invest much ourselves, as our organic reach has been sufficient.

6. Monitor, Measure and Optimize

The final recommendation seems obvious, but many don’t do this – Monitor, Measure, and Optimize.

I have a monthly marketing dashboard that includes the following LinkedIn metrics:

• Connections
• Acceptance rate
• Followers
• Impressions
• Engagement
• Profile views
• Newsletter subscribers

I also analyze the source of new customers. While I can't exclusively tie these back to LinkedIn, I know that 50% of our customers come from our 4-corner inbound strategy, and LinkedIn is a critical element of this. LinkedIn also influences the other 50% of our sales from referral sources.

This allows me to track our growth rate and how well our content is performing. I study which posts perform best and use this information to optimize what I post continuously.

Important Tip: Follow Richard Van Der Blom and read his algorithm repor t. It’s brilliant and will help you stay on top of changes in the LinkedIn algorithm, and you can adapt.

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Tomorrow, I will share do's and don'ts and how to get started.

Let me know what you think. Did I miss anything? Tips and ideas are always welcome.