Shhh - Why Noone in Finance is Talking about Growth Hacking

Many of you won't even know what growth hacking is and it conjures up something illicit, dirty and ugly. Growth hacking, a recent brand growth concept, is the method of achieving accelerated growth through the application of different marketing techniques. Growth hacking is mainly used for start-ups and emerging companies. The need for huge marketing success using only limited budget propels such companies to employ growth hacking techniques.

The goal of growth hacking is to use innovative, low-cost marketing ideas to acquire and retain a maximum number of customers and users. It's not illegal and it can be highly effective.

Here, I take a look at 5 of the top growth-hacking techniques for LinkedIn.

Start Creating Content Consistently

Simply creating great content is one of the best ways to attract attention on LinkedIn. People are always in search of high-quality usable content. By sharing such information for free, you can create a lasting impact on people and build meaningful connections. Create content such as articles or videos on topics around your niche and upload them on both your personal and business pages. Every day. Yes, every day and even several times a day - your content won't always get shown to the same people.

Leverage the power of the single sentence eg.

Do you want to hear the most effective UK property investment strategies for 2020?

Then press return 3 times.

When you scroll through LinkedIn and find your post, you can’t actually see what’s inside before clicking on “read more”. It’s an amazing hack for improving your LinkedIn engagement.

1. Tell a story in your post.
2. Give value so people can improve their business right away
3. Don't post direct links in LinkedIn posts - they’re reducing your reach and engagement
4. Ask people to engage with your content - the more engagement you have, the better reach you can expect.
5. Divide posts with paragraphs - shorter paragraphs are easier to read, not to mention that they’re mobile-friendly

Pro-tip: If you’re searching for prospects, leads or influence inside large companies, start adding their employees into your network and build content upon that. It will definitely pay off after some time.

Use Keywords for Which You Want to be Discovered

Professionals use LinkedIn as a search tool to search for people they want to connect with. For example, if people are looking for freelance writers or graphic designers, then they use direct keywords such as “freelance writers”, “graphic designers” etc but they may also type specialisations such as analytic solutions, media solutions, testing solutions or other, to connect with people with expertise in specific domains.

If you are looking to grow your connections and visibility using LinkedIn, then pay attention to the type of keywords you are using.

Analyse what you want to be discovered for in the first place. For example, you may want to showcase specific personal skills such as software testing, cooking and baking, etc., or you may want to showcase your business solutions such as software consulting, property management solutions, etc.

It is therefore important to optimise your LinkedIn profile to apt keywords. Decide on such keywords and include them in the About page.

Provide an outstanding LinkedIn profile picture

The profile picture is crucial, key, the kingpin! and you need to consider before you start any work on LinkedIn.

Don’ts of LinkedIn profile pictures:

• Don’t put pictures of other people
• Don’t put cratonic or animated pictures
• Don’t put low-resolution photos
• Don’t share negative feelings.

Do’s of LinkedIn profile pictures:

• Let your picture be high-quality and professional - fortunately, with new phones, it’s easily achievable
• Smile and show emotions and empathy

Pro-tip: Change the name of your profile photo file to yournameandyourrole.jpg - this will increase your ranking on searches

Create Different Types of Content to Establish Credibility

In addition to informative posts, use LinkedIn tools including articles, videos and blogs to their full potential to generate credibility. You can add case studies to the Projects section of LinkedIn, or publish content in the LinkedIn Article section.

If you do not have your own content to publish or create, then share videos and articles related to your domain, specifying the source.

While creating content on LinkedIn, it is important to pursue the activity consistently. People are not interested in stale content. They are more interested in connecting with people that are regularly active and up-to-date on LinkedIn. Ideally, a new article or video every 2 weeks is a good way to maintain the content flow and keep interactions going.

Some tips to increase the chances of your articles getting greater visibility:

• Write an engaging title – one way to do this is to tell the readers what they can gain by reading the article. An example: “5 Simple Tips That Will Help You Get Up I Hour Earlier Every Morning”. Use this tool to help you.
• Use sub-headings to break down text and make it more readable.
• Edit your article.
• Provide the article link on your profile page to increase its visibility. You can do this by adding the link to individual jobs or at the bottom of the Summary section.

A few tips to make your LinkedIn videos stand out:

• Upload videos on your LinkedIn profile or Company page.
• Use the post description without fail to provide a call-to-action to your viewers.
• Specify your target audience.
• Invite viewers to share their feedback by enabling the Allow Comments feature. 
• Keep videos short, preferably less than 10 minutes. Use the first few seconds to create an impact on viewers.
• Consider learning some basic video editing techniques.
• Use microphones to keep background noise to a minimal. Excessive background noise can frustrate the viewers.
• Consider adding subtitles for greater value addition.

Prefer Connecting through LinkedIn

While it may be a good idea to provide a business card to everyone you meet, this approach does not ensure that you will be remembered by the other person. This approach does not ensure a foundation to create and establish connections in the long run.

Choose to connect through LinkedIn instead and invite others to do the same. With a search engine optimised content- rich profile, you stand a better chance to stand out in people’s minds than with business cards.

Use LinkedIn as a Base but Use Other Social Media Platforms Too

LinkedIn provides a foundation to connect with others but it takes time to connect with others and establish relationships. There is no faster way to damage a relationship than by pitching your product or service at the first instance you connect with someone on LinkedIn.

To build and establish powerful connections, use LinkedIn content tools extensively. But explore other social media networks to understand your audience better. When you understand them better, you can tailor your content and responses to their specific needs, which will accelerate the relationship-building process. verage LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook together.

Do not rush into forming connections and relationships. Put in your best and let the results be organic.

Make the best use of LinkedIn to form a powerful network. It takes time and patience to develop such a network.

Steady efforts, persistence and patience are inevitable to derive desired results.

Slow and steady wins the race.

For bespoke social media marketing advice to take full advantage of the opportunities available to you via #LinkedIn, schedule an initial phone consultation here:

#finances #financialservices #wealthmanagement #fintech #socialmediamarketing #LinkedInConsultant #LinkedIn #LinkedIntraining #Leadgeneration #TheLinkTank #Trevisan 

Sources:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/344588

https://www.growth-hackers.net/growth-hacking-examples-inspiration/

https://neilpatel.com/what-is-growth-hacking/

https://biteable.com/blog/tips/linkedin-video/

https://animoto.com/blog/business/how-to-post-a-video-on-linkedin/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/answer/47538/publish-articles-on-linkedin?lang=en

https://www.inc.com/amy-george/how-to-write-an-attention-grabbing-article-on-linkedin.html

https://www.inc.com/amy-george/how-to-write-an-attention-grabbing-article-on-linkedin.html

https://animoto.com/blog/business/how-to-post-a-video-on-linkedin

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2018/08/26/use-video-to-stand-out-on-linkedin/#289d0a20195a

https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/answer/34325/adding-editing-and-removing-media-samples-on-your-profile?lang=en

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-writing-linkedin-articles-important-personal-rob-driscoll

https://business.linkedin.com/en-uk/marketing-solutions/blog/posts/content-marketing/2017/13-Top-Tips-for-compelling-B2B-video-content-on-LinkedIn

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-add-video-to-your-linkedin-business-page/

https://business.linkedin.com/en-uk/marketing-solutions/blog/posts/content-marketing/2017/13-Top-Tips-for-compelling-B2B-video-content-on-LinkedIn