Everyone knows LinkedIn – yet not everybody use it to its full power (and I totally include myself in this “everybody”).
Linkedin has a lot of potential and here are some interesting tips I would suggest you have a look at.
Some history & stats
Founded in Dec, 2002 (When Windows XP was still at the top of its hype)
Launched in May, 2003 (yes, you were a couple of years younger…)
Started as a place for people to upload their CV – with a slow growth rate of 20 users a day for a couple of month but eventually they reached a critical mass allowing them to rise enough money.
Pivotal to the the success of early LinkedIn was cofounder Reid Hoffman – who was on previously on the board of Google, Ebay and PayPal – he had the best CV for promising a good exit strategy for the young LinkedIn
Today LinkedIn is roughly 500 Millions users – with a reported 106M active user (around 20%).
In the latest historical milestones of the company – Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn in Dec, 2016
It gives some interesting perspective of integration.
Microsofts has a Cloud solution and a CRM solution as well as Skype and clearly own the world of corporate software, but so far nothing really has happen in terms of revolutions – so – we are waiting.
What to do on LinkedIn
People use Linked In to sell.
They either sell themselves (Job Market)
Or they sell their product, or service (Social Selling)
Or they sell their image (Branding).
It might change with time.
Maybe we will see more entertaining content, but for now, the general tendency is “Always be selling”.
LinkedIn and the Sales Cycle.
But before we go in there – we shall approach the sales cycle – to understand where LinkedIn can best help you.
- Prospecting
- You can use LinkedIn powerful search engine to harvest information about your market place – And are your potential clients
- Approaching
- Subtle approach : Simply go watch a profile – they will see you in their stats as people who saw their profile
- Send them InMail (cold email)
- Connect with them (better)
- Use Groups to get known in your industry
- Like the content they share
- Qualifying
- Use private messages
- Use InMail
- Call them
- Presenting
- Use Slideshare for pre-sales (Slideshare is now a part of Linkedin)
- Use insights you have collected before to build your sales presentation
- Handling Objections
- Use pulse articles on topics
- Closing
- Chat in linkedin
- Getting Referrals
- Ask for referrals – and give referrals first
Searching
If you don’t know where to start you can check this article by LinkedIn on Search.
But honestly, it’s quite intuitive.
Optimise your Profile
- Customise your public profile URL.
- Add a LinkedIn background photo to your personal profile.
- Double check your profile photo
- Create a Profile Badge for your personal website or blog.
- Optimise Links text for the blog/website links on your LinkedIn profile. (up to 3 – use them all)
- Optimise your LinkedIn profile with SEO in mind
- Write proper descriptions for your positions
- Show work samples
- Write articles
- Add, remove, and rearrange entire sections of your profile.
- Make use of “Saved Searches”
- Skills – you have them – list them
- Get testimonials
- Languages – if you are into international business contact – you want to add multiple languages to your profile.
- Public profile – double check how it looks
**Company profile **is following quite the same logic.
Publishing content
Use pulse and Slideshare
Pulse is like the internal article publish for LinkedIn.
Check this video if you don’t know how to do it.
But really, it is very similar to Medium or most content publishing platform.
The main issue is how to write content regularly
How to use groups
The title of this video is click-bait for sure, yet, it is a very good tutorial on how to use groups for marketing and sales on LinkedIn
So I suggest you find some time to watch it.
That’s it
I will probably update this blog post later.