Should You Be Interesting Or Interested on LinkedIn?

In case you’re interested...

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Let’s dive in….

Most of us have a tendency to do too much of this:

And not enough of this:

Remember that conference you attended in the past, where you walked into the room full professionals eager to get their point across to their follow professionals - and all you could make out was an incessant murmur?

Just like bleating sheep?

Well, the same applies on LinkedIn. If everyone’s talking, nobody gets heard.

Once you’ve done the hard work of growing your network by connecting with your target audience, you should have a huge pool of followers. It’s tempting to want to tell them all about you.

But guess what. They’re NOT waiting to learn the delights of your business. They are more likely to want to talk about their own business.

So you should let them…

A good starting point for engaging on LinkedIn is to be interested - NOT interesting.

Be 80% interested and 20% interesting

It can be a rude wake up call for business owners to get to grips with the basics of communicating with their followers on LinkedIn – especially at the beginning of the relationship.

We tell our clients to be 80% interested and 20% interesting. That’s a good rule of thumb for any professional just starting to connect and engage with followers.

People love to talk about themselves; if they’re doing that, they’re not really listening to you.

So we need to take a step back, quell our instincts to dive in and talk about ourselves, and listen, prompt, and encourage.

·        Allow them to ‘get it out of their system’

·        Elicit important information about their problems

·        Start to build the relational bonds that are key to the sales process

Remember, you cannot solve a problem that doesn’t exist. If you’re talking about yourself to your followers, you may be talking to a brick wall.

You need to understand what their specific problems are before you offer solutions. Prompting, eliciting, asking questions, and being curious helps to find this key information out.

Maybe crack a funny or two or even offer to help if you identify an area where you have some good advice to offer. 

You will be in a much stronger position to provide a solution a little further down the track because you have already spend time on building a relationship. People are wired to respond well to this; they appreciate your interest in them.

It’s worth bearing in mind that there is no faking this and no shortcuts. Phoneys on LinkedIn are spotted a mile off and quickly unfollowed.

How does this translate to status updates and other interactions?

With status updates, get active and do it daily. Don’t make it an automated, mechanical process – invest time and energy into it.

Most of your content should be based around what we outlined in this previous post.[M1]  That is:

·        Personal philosophy posts

·        Personal experiences

·        Personal lifestyle stories

·        Proof of results in your business

·        FAQs

·        Instructions on taking the next step

But amongst this daily activity, it’s possible to demonstrate genuine interest in your followers. Follow up any comments they make and ask questions.

Send messages that ask questions and you’ll find that people will open up. Most people love being able to talk about themselves, offer opinions, and answer your questions.

If you ask what they’re working on, they’ll ask what you’re working on. If you ask if you can help them out, they’ll ask if they can help you out. If people know, like and trust you, they’ll choose you over someone they don’t trust.

This is how it works both on social media and off it. Bear it in mind when creating content and interacting with your followers.

Curiosity didn’t really kill the cat…

Remember – be curious on LinkedIn.

Don’t connect with people to sell to them – or it will come back and bite you on the backside. While sales may be the end goal, you must be genuinely interested in people on LinkedIn or you will never invest enough time in building the relationships that matter.

Be in it for the long term or you will find that the short-term pain will be considerable: wasted time, lack of leads, no ROI, etc.

Being 80% interested and 20% interesting leaves you with:

·        A bigger and more relevant network

·        Meaningful relations with prospects

·        Warmed-up leads

Remember - if you just focus on your solutions, you may be trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

So, when you start to connect with the network you have worked so hard to build, don’t lose them at the first hurdle. Show interest in them and their business. This will help to build the strong foundation you need to succeed as an Influencer on LinkedIn.

P.s. Whenever you’re ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow your business with LinkedIn

1. Join the Influencer Boardroom and connect with other advisors and consultants who are scaling too: It’s our new Facebook community where smart advisors and consultants learn to generate more purpose, profit and power. - Click Here

2. Join us inside our pitch-free private training. We’ll show you how we built our business (from scratch) using 2 LinkedIn profiles to hit $84,000 a month within 4 months using a simple 3 step strategy. Click Here: https://theinfluencerproject.com/linkedin-advantage/   

3. Work with me and my team privately: If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures and level things up… just send me a message and put “Private” in the first line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.