What's the purpose of LinkedIn ?

In 2023 it is exceedingly rare to find someone in business who isn’t listed on LinkedIn (even Darth Vader) however not everyone is active, or even posts at all. To different users the LinkedIn platform is valuable for a variety of reasons.

Sales - LinkedIn is NOT a direct B2B sales platform. Regardless of what some people will tell you, there are not hundreds of prospects awaiting your message (Have you ever purchased something as a direct result of a cold message on LinkedIn ?). There is however a large audience who will absorb whatever value you can provide, either generally or in relation to something you may happen to be selling.

LinkedIn is a massively useful research tool for Sales professionals. If you know broadly who your target audience is, LinkedIn is without doubt the very best way to determine the details of the individuals in that space. Want to target senior execs within Retail, this platform is the best way to identify the Myriad of people in the “C Suite” within a large Supermarket chain for example - there are always far more people than you at first realised.?

The secret to Sales success using LinkedIn is - be a creator of value, and do it regularly. Write articles (It’s dead easy), re-post interesting content - and add your thoughts, even just liking and commenting on posts is a great way too enhance your profile. If one of your target audience is regularly seeing you add value, they are more likely to respond to the right communication later - the right communication, not just a cold irrelevant marketing message.?

Recruitment - Linkedin provides such a valuabe tool for recruiters that it actually offers unique licencing to people in “talent acquisition” so they can utilise the platform‘s insights and search capabillities to find the right pool of candidates.?

As a candidate what you can do to ensure you feature more rgeularly in some of those searches, is to spend time keeping your profile updated. A simple way to do that is seek referrals from people at the relevant time, when you deliver a good outcome for example. Clients and Business Partners are a great source of independantly minded referrals, just don’t wait until you’re actually looking for a job.?

Also ensure your role descriptions talk about YOU and what YOU achieved, numbers & details are valuable, generic wafffle isn’t. It’s also a good idea to review and rewrite occasionally as you see a different perspective, or perhaps you are seeking a different type of role and want to highlight certain capabilities from previous roles.

Learning - This particular function isn’t always as straight forward as the folks at LinkedIn might have us believe. There are literally hundreds of easy to digest courses you can do on Linkedin Learning. However simply committing some regular time to reveiwing posts, particularly reading articles your contacts have posted, is an invaluable way to improve your knowledge and keep up to date with advancements in Technology, Policy and Strategy.

The flipside of the selling paradigm on LinkedIn is however that a buyer has acccess to “The Market” for research & learning purposes. It’s astounding how many times sellers engage with buyers, often relatively late in the buying cycle - when a tender is about to be released for example - only to discover that not only does the buyer/stakeholder not understand the seller’s proposition, but they may not even understand the broader solution or service they are about to issue a tender for. Stakeholders & Influencers in the buying process, especially, have the opportunity to get a better understanding of a new technology for example, or gauge the market for types of?services available, long before they need to take their own capital to market.

Being a “Microsoft House” is a great example of this. When is the right time to understand what alternatives there are to those Legacy platforms your organisation has used “for years”…? The answer may vary slightly for different individuals and organisations - but it definitely isn’t just as Microsoft is about to offer you a renewal agreement. The next time you see someone online promoting an alternative solution to your current solution, take the advantage of getting to understand what that alternative is, it may help you renew your agreement with Microsoft a bit faster, or it may change your thinking altogether on their true value proposition.?

Summary

• LinkedIn is not a Direct Sales Platform - stop it or you will go blind
• LinkedIn is valuable as a research tool - for everyone
• A small amount of time invested in creating value will pay you dividends
• Recruiters want to see detail of your succcesses, not just dates
• LinkedIn is the world’s biggest free University - take advantage of that
• Dont allow time management challenges to stop you from learning??