What 10 Years Of Using LinkedIn Has Taught Me

Let me answer the title of this article straight off; what 10 years of being on LinkedIn has taught me is that; there is no secret recipe to making it work, you’re going to need to be patient, you'll need a plan and consistently be implementing that plan and finally, as with any other aspect of sales & marketing, business development-call it what you will, you will need to understand that people are often downright weird!

Still glad you’re here?

However, since 2009, I have used LinkedIn as my primary means of connecting and building relationships. This approach has led to me working with some of the largest companies globally; FedEx, The British Red Cross, KPMG, Deloitte, Harley Davidson, Toyota, Investors in People, countless universities and business schools and many small to medium sized companies.  

Understand That People Are Weird

You may be brand new to LinkedIn or perhaps you’ve recently decided that (like many of the other 575 million LinkedIn members globally, who've occasionally had the same thought) you’re going to get serious and actually update that poor excuse for a profile, which currently reads like a hurriedly pulled together CV.

Understand though, that despite creating a first-class profile (LinkedIn term this ‘All-Star’) and then doing all the right things; including sending a nice, personalised invitation to connect to anyone who looks remotely of interest or thanking others for inviting you to connect, that you're going to need to set your expectations and appreciate that only around 40% of your invitations will be accepted and a similar percentage will respond to your ‘thanks for connecting’ message.

The single biggest conundrum, you’ll be scratching your head about, is why those who invite you to connect choose not engage with you any further, even when you ask them why.

You can certainly increase the percentages I’ve just mentioned - I regularly do but there’s no getting away from the fact that, more often than not, other LinkedIn users will simply not reply to your engagement with them.

You’re first LinkedIn lesson is this: spend time engaging with the 40 percenters and forget the other 60%.

 Your Profile – Simply Do This

This article is not going to provide a blow-by-blow description of how you create an ‘All-Star’ LinkedIn profile, suffice to say, you must create it with your ideal audience in mind-why would they want to read it?

If you have written your profile as if you’ve just left school and it opens with something along the lines of; ‘I’m a highly motivated, dedicated, hard-working individual with more than 25 years’ experience as a widget developer’, then I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news; no one gives a damn!

In the 5-7 seconds you have available to attract the attention of someone viewing your profile, you must make this first impression count and remember this; people are interested in the most important thing in the world to them, which is THEMSELVES!

When writing your profile, put yourself in the shoes of the reader and let them know the value you can add to their business or their lives and articulate this right away, especially in the headline that sits immediately beneath your name and then in more depth in the Summary section.

Your second LinkedIn lesson is this: Your LinkedIn profile must articulate the value you add to others.

What To Do Once Your Profile’s Complete

Your reason for being on LinkedIn might be different to mine. For me, I’m looking to attract more of the right clients to my business but what’s your goal? Perhaps you want to raise your company’s brand profile, share your expertise to help and educate others, network with more of the right professionals or seek out a new and fulfilling career? Whatever your reason, you need a clear goal and a plan to achieve it.

The plan starts with your audience – who do you need to engage with to achieve your goal? Here are 5 things you can do, for starters:

1. Use LinkedIn’s free search and filters platform to locate your ideal audience by; industry, company, job title, location and name and then invite them to connect.
2. Use LinkedIn’s search to find posts and content shared by your ideal audience that you can engage with and then do so.
3. Accept invitations to connect from complete strangers, particularly if they are your ideal audience or connected to similar people.
4. Invite those relevant contacts, you already know, to connect with you, they will lead you to others like them.
5. For Points 1-4, in each case consider what value you will add to their business or their life and articulate this value.

Have More Of The Right Conversations

Imagine attending a networking event, where everyone simply shook hands, said hello and then moved on to the next person in the room – how much business would ever get done and yet, such behaviour takes place on LinkedIn every day – you may even have been guilty of this faux pas yourself?

How do you have more of the right conversations on LinkedIn? It’s simple; each time you engage with another LinkedIn user, ask them a question.

• When someone invites you to connect, ask them (nicely) why?
• When you post an update, at the end of your post, ask the views of those who will see it in their newsfeed.
• When someone views your profile, invite them to connect and ask them if they found the information, on your profile, that they were looking for.
• Each time you communicate with someone of relevance on LinkedIn, engage them in conversation. The best way to achieve this is by asking a question.

Your third LinkedIn lesson is this: Have more of the right conversations.

Share Useful Content

When people ask me, which aspect of LinkedIn, in particular, has helped me attract more of the right clients, the answer is CONTENT.

More than 90% of the business I have won, through LinkedIn, has come to me either directly or indirectly because of a published article, like this one, a video or a short-form text or image post. Sharing, what I hope will be useful and engaging content works and is likely to be your most successful route to creating engagement on LinkedIn.

Good social content comes in many forms; it might be an interesting industry insight, a customer case study, an image or video of your team or the inside workings of your company, an inspiring quote or even an amusing anecdote.

Whatever your content strategy, it should provide your network with an insight into you, the person, first and your business second. People buy people and your LinkedIn profile is an extension of you. Remember this key point, as it will stop you copy and pasting your website page content into your Summary or adding your business logo instead of a head and shoulders profile photograph of yourself.

Your final LinkedIn lesson is this: Consistently post useful and engaging content, it will keep you top of mind with your LinkedIn network and most importantly, be yourself.

This article is a brief overview, from my 10 years’ experience using LinkedIn and what I believe it takes to generate a return from your time spent on this platform. There’s clearly more detail I’ve not been able to include in this short post and this is where my training and coaching comes in. I haven’t intended this to be a promotional pitch, so I’ll leave the next step up to you; if you would like to learn how I can help you get more from LinkedIn, please ask and I’d be happy to have a chat with you on the phone.  

Many thanks for viewing my post and would you please share it with anyone you feel would benefit from the advice provided. 

If you have any private questions on the subject matter you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message, or else you’ll find my contact details on my LinkedIn profile https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/stevephillipsalestrainer/

You can also follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Linked2Steve 

#socialnetworking #personalbranding #engagement #digitalmarketing #contentstrategy #socialmedia