Episode 005 Using LinkedIn

Hi this is John Lloyd-Hughes and welcome back to the Small Business Marketing Advice in 5 Minutes podcast. Thank you so much for joining me again today. 

Following on from the last episode about Social Media I thought it made sense to look at the most powerful online networking tool.

So in this episode we are going to talk about LinkedIn.

It would be impossible to cover LinkedIn in its entirety in 5 minutes but there are some really important basic elements that will help you generate engagement with a view to creating new relationships and new business opportunities.

Without question LinkedIn is the single most powerful online new business generation tool available today. Ignore LinkedIn and you are literally throwing money away.

Here’s an overview of the main sections.

LinkedIn Profiles

Your profile should describe you, your career history, education, interests and other related content you want to publish. You can also attach media files such as imagery and video. Having an engaging LinkedIn profile with imagery to attract is incredibly important. In essence this is your shop window so it needs to command attention and respect. Even adding screen grabs from your website will make you profile more interesting and appealing.

A very common fault with many profiles is that the description under your name simply states your current position. For example: Business Development Manager at ABC Marketing.

But that’s doesn’t say anything to the viewers of your profile.

So use this space as an opportunity to tell everyone what values and benefits you provide to your clients. This is what I use on my own LinkedIn profile:

Helping business owners attract new customers, increase sales and generate more income.

Can you see the difference?

LinkedIn Groups

This is where professionals in the same industry or with similar interests can debate, share content, find answers, make business contacts and establish themselves as industry experts.

This is the most important area of all. It’s where you contribute to discussions to gain traction with other group members to develop new relationships. Creating trust on LinkedIn is hugely rewarding and critical if you want to transform your connections into spending clients.

LinkedIn Posts

A brilliant publishing platform that allows you to publish more lengthy articles about your expertise and knowledge or professional interests. All your LinkedIn posts are automatically attached to your personal profile. This is an extremely valuable tool which allows you to demonstrate your worth and provides other LinkedIn users with an insight in to the value and benefit that connecting to you can bring.

LinkedIn Projects

This area gives you an opportunity to create a visible portfolio of work you have done for your clients including a hyperlink that can take viewers your website. Building a successful profile on LinkedIn is all about delivering credibility.

Giving others the confidence, reason and desire to take a closer look at you and your services. What better way than show-casing the work you have created for others. 

LinkedIn Recommendations 

These are comments written by other LinkedIn members that commend you and your services. Viewers of your profile can see what others have said about your work so the best recommendations your own clients. It’s a very simple process and all the testimonials you receive will be attached to your LinkedIn profile for others to view. So get recommended by your clients.

A question I am often asked is “So how should I use Linkedin?”

Well in terms of strategy, just like any other marketing strategy, before deciding what’s best it’s important to understand your end goal. From my point of view, as I keep saying, all marketing activity should focus on generating more income so from a LinkedIn perspective just increasing your connections is not enough and in isolation will not deliver meaningful results.

If you want to follow my strategy on LinkedIn which is to generate face to face meetings and generate new business opportunities here’s a great exercise you can try for yourself in 3 simple steps.

1. Choose 30 LinkedIn 1st connections you would like to meet in person.  2. Look at the LinkedIn Groups your 1st connections are members of and join those groups. Then start making regular contributions to some of the discussions to help create awareness of you as an individual.

3. The next step is to start contacting your 1st connections and suggest a face to face meeting at their convenience.

HOWEVER - AND THIS IS REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT

The reason for the meeting will simply be locality and synergy in the sense that you are members of the same LinkedIn Groups. At this stage there is no selling.

The great thing about this exercise is that you can easily measure the results.

Let’s imagine out of the 30 people you approach you get 3 face to face meetings.

That’s a 10% success rate which beats cold calling hands down.

But more than that. It tells you that you have to contact 30 people to generate 3 meetings.

Now that you have that knowledge you can start setting goals for yourself to deliver the number of meeting you want.

I will let you do the maths but guarantee that if you start using LinkedIn as described above to promote our business you will generate more customers, more sales and more income. 

It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking to you again.

You can subscribe to the Small Business Marketing Advice in 5 Minutes podcast on iTunes or by visiting our website at www.in5minutes.co.uk. For the 5 use the digit number 5.

So that’s www.in5minutes.co.uk.

Here’s to the journey ahead, increased incomes and thank you for listening.