LinkedIn is the black swan of the social media world, often outshined by Facebook and Twitter. While it has a reputation as the preppy cousin, reserved only for professionals and careerists, it provides plenty of untapped benefits that could literally launch your career and generate leads that will catapult your business.
Utilize all of the Features
LinkedIn isn’t just a glorified resume website, even if people use it this way. It can also serve as a platform to promote available properties. Optimize your company and/or personal page with all of the features relevant to your business. Embed videos, upload images and publish any form of multimedia that’ll attract leads and followers. Visuals are a big part of building an online presence.
The biggest mistake business people make on LinkedIn is not customizing their page. The default setting is bland, boring and disagreeable. Paying for a premium account is a worthwhile option if you want to visually enhance your profile, stand out over your competitors and create a brand.
Reach Out and Connect With Others
When you’ve signed up and built your profile, start connecting with people you know. Begin by importing your email contacts and adding business acquaintances and past clients. Use extra features such as InMail to make first contact, and endorse people who you’ve worked with in the past and try to build upon/create new relationships. Don’t add strangers. If you want to add someone specific, ask a mutual connection from your professional network to introduce you.
Don’t forget to send invitations and personalized messages when conducting outreach. And use your existing social networks to your advantage. If you don’t have any followers elsewhere, buy Instagram followers to get that initial influx. This will help you generate leads by makeing your operation look more legitimate.
Nurture Your Prospects and Gain Their Loyalty
People often overlook the all-important “social” aspect of social media. It can take a lot of time and nurturing to turn a casual follower into a lead. When people “Connect” with you or ask questions, give them valuable advice without asking for anything in return. During these early stages your goal should be to gain loyalty, not convert casual followers. If you gain their trust you’ll become their first port-of-call for all things [your niche] in the future.
Start or join a group focused around your industry in your local area. Answer questions, “Like” comments, read blog posts and openly say your piece. It takes time, but eventually your presence will get noticed and you’ll slowly start to build a reputation as an authority.
Use LinkClump to Generate Leads
Every week emails are sent to LinkedIn users informing them who has viewed their profile. If you’ve ever seen this email yourself it’s no doubt sparked your curiosity and prompted you to check out these “hidden followers.” Imagine if your face and profile link was sent directly to hundreds of leads in your area every day. Your prospects will soar. Don’t worry, you don’t have to visit hundreds of profiles to make this happen.
“LinkedIn Crawling” generates a “Connect” rate of two to four percent, which is quite significant considering you can use it to target specific “Groups.” To utilize the method download the LinkClump extension for Google Chrome and adjust the settings to open links in new tabs. Visit a relevant group on LinkedIn and highlight the member links while holding down the shift key. This will automatically open all of the profiles in new tabs. Afterwards, simply close Google Chrome, repeat the process and wait for those precious “Connection” requests.
Success will only occur when you start taking an active role in the community. Establishing your name or company as an authority is the only viable way to generate leads. And LinkedIn can provide the perfect platform to make it happen.