If you have a business then you should be using LinkedIn.
Facebook and Twitter cater to your more social connections, LinkedIn means business. This is your online daily networking event.
With over 19 million people in the UK actively using LinkedIn, you can’t afford not to use this platform. As with all social media there are good and bad ways to run your campaign. In this post we’re going to tell you how best to get more business using LinkedIn.
1. Write An Awesome Personal Profile
You wouldn’t walk into a network meeting and mumble half-heartedly about what you do and expect to make connections and gain new business, nor would you leave a meeting without ensuring the attendees could easily get hold of you. So why do so many people fail to complete their online profile and not give even the very basic of contact information?
This is your sales pitch and online CV. Make sure it’s well written, grammatically correct and contains your contact details, products and services and a decent quality logo image.
2. Share Images and Videos
Following on ensure that you have pictures and where at all possible videos of what you do. People as a whole tend to be lazy so make a visual representation of what you do and make it easy for them to want to engage your services. Add a portfolio if you have one or visuals of previous jobs.
3. Show Your Professional Image
If you are going to use a picture of yourself on your profile – and we think you should then ensure it’s a good one! That picture of you in the naked chef apron might make you smile but it won’t make you look professional! Same goes for the distant shot of you kayaking/hill climbing/scoring “that” goal. A professionally taken picture shows you in the best light but try not to look to stilted or formal.
4. Optimise LinkedIn’s Reach With Keywords
Few people are aware that you can search on LinkedIn similar to Google, so do ensure that when you’re writing your profile you include the same keywords you would for your website, for instance: financial advice, pensions & investments. This will direct potential new connections and clients to your business.
5. Ask People To Get In Touch
Don’t just leave your profile as a source of information make it a call to action – “Call us today for a FREE quote” “Contact us now for a special online discount” “Visit our website for more information” It doesn’t need to be a full on sales pitch, but get used to telling people what to do – they like it!
6. Be Relevant, Post Regularly
We recommend you post at least once a day.
There’s nothing worse than an out of date magazine in a doctors’ waiting room and this is what your profile becomes if you don’t post regularly. Are you still in business? Have you ceased trading? If you’re not commenting regularly then no one knows you’re still looking for business.
Interesting feeds that are comments on what you’re doing, things you’re interested in or news items relevant to your field of expertise. Add tips when you share a piece of information or your own insight into the article.
7. Make Connections That Can Make Things Happen
It’s OK not to accept every request you receive. Think about who you’re connecting with and what value they can bring to your networking.
Are they likely to be competition? Do you want to see what they’re saying or can you actually work together sharing leads?
Don’t fill up your daily feed with comments from people that have no value, you could be missing important posts that do.
8. Use The Power Of LinkedIn Groups
Joining groups gives you access to people that are in your industry or are interested in your industry. By interacting and commenting on group posts you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, connect with interesting, similar minded people and create valuable SEO links back to your website to increase your traffic & rankings.
9. Create A Business Page
You should have a have a business page to accompany your personal profile.
If you haven’t already created a page you should do so now, as with Google it does take several weeks before you’ll see it generating traffic and new contacts. You can of course send a personal message to contacts that you know well or you think would be interested, inviting them to have a look and follow.
Your Company page allows you to further promote your business and give more details about the products you offer.
1o. Manners
If someone invited you to a party you would of course acknowledge the invitation and say thank you – LinkedIn should be treated no differently.
If someone accepts your connection request of takes the time to invite you, then spend the few moments it takes to send a personal message of thanks. This puts a person to the business and makes you stand out as a decent contact.
