LinkedIn is known as the professional social networking site – very much focused as a platform to make business connections and promote yourself amongst your colleagues, peers, partners and suppliers and also within your industry. Whilst the purpose of this site is for business, it’s still not often used to its full potential to generate the quality leads and sales you need.
Instead of using it as somewhere to publish your CV, remember that the aim of any network is to engage and connect with your contacts – building a rapport online and showing your credibility so you can do business offline. Here are some tips to boost your profile and use LinkedIn more strategically to take your business to the next level!
#1 Complete Your Profile
- Photography – Use a professional good quality professional photo on your profile. Keep this same look and feel consistent across all professional platforms.
- Biography – Ensure you describe exactly what you do or how you can help someone. If you’re stuck, speak to your ideal client!
- Keywords – Use keywords relevant to your market or industry that will help people find you more quickly and also find your services.
- Personalised URLs – You can create a specific URL for your personal page which you can use within your email signature, business cards and also helps you to get found in search engines.
- Make Content Relevant To Your Customer – Identify your client’s core problems and how you can help or perhaps solve this for them and also how you have helped others.
- Promote Other Platforms – Don’t forget to include links to your website, other social networks, blogs or promotions you’re offering.
- Skills and Services – Highlight the courses relevant to your skills or services so people can see the qualifications you’ve acquired to make you an expert. You can also write blogs on here to showcase your expertise.
- Recommendations and Endorsements – Profile your expertise and credibility through client testimonials and recommendations which can be posted on your profile. Also ensure that the skills you have listed are what you want to be endorsed for.
#2 Status Updates
- Regular Postings – By updating your status regularly, you can stay top of mind with your contacts plus it gives people an opportunity to like, comment or share your posts.
- Quality Content – Ensure the content you post is of relevance to your audience and is helpful and valuable.
- Sharing is Caring – By liking, sharing and commenting on other people’s posts, you help promote your contacts and build relationships as well as helping you to get you noticed. You can also tag someone in a post by using @name so they are notified of your activity.
- Timings – Studies have shown that LinkedIn users are more active in the afternoons and evenings or sometimes first thing in the morning – check the posts of your connections to see when they’re most active and ensure you’re active at the same time for better response.
#3 Join Groups
- Align Yourself With Your Peers – Connect with like-minded professionals related to your industry and ensure you display the group logo on your profile for other contacts to see.
- Research Your Group – Review the statistics of a group before joining, to ensure you are connecting with the right audience i.e. seniority, job description, location etc. Also check the level of the group activity – is there much engagement on the posts? Are people commenting or just posting with little interaction?
- Show Expertise – Join or start a discussion where you can show your insights, answer questions and post articles.
- Ask For Advice – We like to help people – it makes us feel good, so as well as providing advice, remember to ask for advice too and build better relationships with your colleagues.
It’s often said we do business with people we know like and trust so ensure that your professional ‘face’ is liked by those you meet online.
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