Overcoming LinkedIn Fear?? Uncovering The Secrets To Meaningful Connections

Are you ‘busy’ on LinkedIn? Working really hard, writing content, spending ages to get the right words only to find when you put your posts out nothing happens?

It could be that your dream clients don't actually understand what it is you do and what makes you different!

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How do you feel about marketing?

We all know as business owners how important it is.

Yet, at the same time it can be overwhelming, confusing and when it comes to LinkedIn no one wants to come across as sales, spammy or pushy.

In this month’s LinkedIn LoveIn, I was delighted to be joined by Kaye King, Marketing Mentor and founder of The Marketing Sanctury to talk about how we can promote our business on LinkedIn in a way that feels right for us.

You can watch the replay here or read on for a summery of the key points.

Connect with your audience by finding your voice on LinkedIn.

We've all been in a situation where our marketing just doesn’t feel right.

You're working really hard every day, every week to write content, to get the right words together BUT when you put your content out there . . . it's tumbleweed. Nothing happens, so conversations and no connection.

What we need to do is find our voice on LinkedIn

Finding your voice on LinkedIn simply means “saying the right things to the right people.” It’s about creating an emotional connection with your audience.

Simple but of course never easy! And the place to start is to sit down and really think about these three questions:

?? Who do you help?

??How do you help?

??Why are you different?

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Marketing is just a conversation.

It's understanding why you are different which creates the ‘connection point’.

It's about connecting with individuals and starting a conversation with your audience, ONE person at a time.

So, Kaye recommends having a picture of your dream client, the person you are talking to. By having a really good understanding of that ‘person’ that individual, it's then much easier to articulate why you're different and why you're the right fit for them.

Kaye describes it as a combination of a deep understanding of who you're talking to AND what they want to hear AND being true to yourself, just being you on LinkedIn.

Connecting with individuals and starting a conversation with your audience, 1 person at a time.

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What if you have more than one audience?

We all know that if you try to talk to everyone you end up talking to know one so being clear on who it is you’re talking to is key. And on LinkedIn it underpins everything. What you write on your profile, who you connect with and what content you will post.

But many businesses will have more than just one target audience – it could be different products or service offerings that will appeal to different groups of people.

In which case it’s important to get a really good understanding of the dream client for each service or product. However, Kaye recommends no more than 3 different audiences otherwise it just gets too difficult. As an IFA client of Kaye’s found out! She had 9 different target audiences and had tied herself up in knots!

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Is LinkedIn becoming more Facebook and less valuable as a B2B (business to business) tool?

When we talk about just being ourselves on LinkedIn, it always raises the common question about LinkedIn becoming more like Facebook. A question that was posed to Kaye and I on the LoveIn.

For me, LinkedIn has definitely mellowed from when I first started out on the platform.

Kaye’s view (and mine) is that we do need to share a little bit of who we are because it helps people to get to know you and connect with you.

But I do think there is a difference between personal and personality. You don’t have to be overly sharing personal stuff, but there is nothing wrong with showing a bit of personality.

I always liken LinkedIn to being the closest thing to face to face networking you can get online. And if we think about networking, we are having conversations with the people we network with and we will share a bit of personality. We will have conversations that aren’t just work related.

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So how personal should you get?

Well that does comes down to each of us as an individual AND who our audience is. What do they want to know about you that will help you and them create that connection.

Essentially, it’s about balance. Just sharing personal stuff that has no relevance either to your business or to the people that you help will not help you connect with people in the way that you want to.

So, it’s a balance. Having different types of content all based on those three very important questions: Who you help; How you help; and Why you’re different.

And of course, it’s not just about sharing content. It's about building relationships through engaging with other and having those conversations in direct messaging, so you can get the conversation off LinkedIn and either onto a phone call, or zoom call.

Afterall, the aim of marketing on LinkedIn is to help the right people find us so we can help them!

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In summary, overcoming fear of marketing and fear of LinkedIn is to think of it as just a conversation with one person.

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? Balance your content creation: Strike a balance in what you share. Showcase your personality and stay relatable, but remember to also talk about how you help people, why you’re different, and the problems you solve.

? Understand your target audience: Getting clear on who your audience is, their challenges and desires, can help you craft messaging that resonates with them and ultimately creates a connection

? Embrace direct messaging: Building genuine connections on LinkedIn goes beyond posting content. Use direct messaging for more personalised conversations and show genuine interest

So next time you're creating content for LinkedIn or writing a direct message, think of LinkedIn as a networking event - start a conversation and see where it leads. ??

Join the LinkedIn LoveIn group

Join the LinkedIn LoveIn Group?and keep up to date with the latest LinkedIn tips and tricks!

?? If LinkedIn isn’t working hard for you or you’re not sure where to start with using LinkedIn, email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn to chat about how I can help.

Or book a?virtual brew here?and let’s make LinkedIn work for you . . . ?

JUDY Parsons,?Celebrating 10 Years As?#TheLinkedinLady

#LinkedInMarketing?#LinkedInTraining #LinkedInStrategy??#LinkedInTips #LinkedIn