Are you on LinkedIn? If so, do you know how to use it?
In my opinion, LinkedIn is an excellent way to generate leads and clients around the world no matter where you are… from Bali to Bucharest.
If you haven’t figured out how to market successfully on LinkedIn yet… you’re missing a big opportunity to target more than 500 million professionals.
LinkedIn users also have TWICE the purchasing power of the average US consumer, and have an average household income of $83,000 per year.
My friend Pavan Bellagati is a marketer and growth hacker from Bangalore (featured on HuffPost, TheNextWeb, TechinAsia, Influencive and others) who has received some remarkable results growing businesses using LinkedIn.
I’ve invited Pavan to join us and contribute this post so you can make 2018 the year you leverage LinkedIn to grow your business!
#Enter Pavan
LinkedIn has come a long way, with 500 Million users, as mentioned in a LinkedIn’s blog on April 24, 2017. The LinkedIn stats and numbers are just huge, it just keeps growing every day, and this shows the popularity of LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become the #1 platform for B2B marketers today. It has become a necessity and an essential tool for marketers, no matter what industry they belong to.
You cannot ignore LinkedIn when it comes to marketing your product/service, and lead generation. LinkedIn has a tremendous potential to give your brand an absolute positioning when used appropriately. LinkedIn isn’t just for job seekers or the human resource people who seek the best candidates to hire; businesses and individuals can use LinkedIn more efficiently to build their credibility online.
Today, we will see some growth hacks that are proven to give maximum results.
1. Optimize your profile for personal branding
We all know that whenever someone searches for your name on Google, the top result is going to be your LinkedIn profile and the probability of people clicking the top 3 results on Google is more.
For the sake of your personal branding and professional look, you need to make your LinkedIn profile look legit and trustworthy. Your profile should act as a lead magnet for anyone who sees it.
How can you do it?
- Edit your odd-looking LinkedIn profile URL and set it as you like. You can do it by going to your profile and then selecting ‘Edit public profile & URL.’ from the right side tab.
- Add a clear professional picture if you can, or else a good headshot will be fine.
- Add a 1,584 x 396 px recommended cover image that represents and depicts what you do. If you are an author of a book, writer or a contributor to some famous publications, owner of a business, or passionate about any particular subject, you can add your cover image that can help people identify and relate you easily.
- Describe what you do in the headline; tell visitors how can you help them and why someone should trust you. Describe yourself and your achievements so far in the summary section.
2. Connect with targeted and potential customers/leads
LinkedIn is fun when you get connected to people who value your thoughts. If you connect with wrong people, they cannot relate to and understand your thoughts and hence it is a wasted opportunity. Instead, search for similar minded people and your potential customers/leads so they can benefit from you and engage themselves with your posts on LinkedIn.
How can you connect with your target audience?
- Go to the search tab and enter your keyword, a keyword you think is an excellent fit to your target market and select ‘People’ as the criteria. Apply filters regarding the location, current company, industry, etc. and start sending them the request. Adding a clear note of why you want to connect is a good idea and increases your chance of getting accepted.
- In addition to above mentioned easy trick, you can use this link ‘bit.ly/alumniskills3,’ and you will see everyone who has signed up to LinkedIn. Now, try to use filters and connect with your target audience.
- Join relevant groups on LinkedIn that you think your potential audience exists and engage in the conversations, this may not give you a lot of value since many people are already spamming LinkedIn groups. Instead, you can click on the members’ tab shown just below the name of the group, and here is the magic, you can message every member of that group but do it smartly. You can use this trick as a way to build your relationship.
One more method to connect with people who matter to you is with automation,
LinkedIn automation tools are beneficial once you know how they work. On LinkedIn, it takes time to make a vast number of connections, and you should know how to automate this process to save time. Using this chrome extension ‘Linkr‘ you can automatically send invites and personalized messages to the potential audience you want to connect with.
How to do it?
- Go to the chrome extension ‘Linkr‘ and add the extension to your chrome browser.
- Go to your LinkedIn profile and do a people search like you normally do.
- Once you click on the people search tab with all your desired filters applied, click on this extension, and you will see a tab to enter your personal message for the people with whom you are going to connect. (Adding a personal message is optional though, but it is recommended). Click on the start tab, and you will be on your way to making new connections.
3. Get email ids of your connections
Making many relevant relationships/connections are vital on LinkedIn. Why? Because you want to show your message/post to the right audience that matter to your business. Once you have made a good number of connections, you can export all your LinkedIn connections’ email addresses as a CSV file.
How to do it?
Go to “My Network” and click on the “See all” tab just below “My Network”. Now, click on the “Manage your synced and imported contacts” on the upper right corner, and click on the “Export contacts” in the advanced actions tab.
4. Use your connections’ email addresses to create targeted ads
Now, you have exported your connections’ email addresses. What’s next? Use it to create campaigns and show your ads to the right audience. With these email addresses, you can create a lookalike audience on Facebook and LinkedIn and make highly targeted campaigns.
How cool is it to market/promote your products/services to a highly targeted audience? It is like hitting the bull’s eye. Isn’t it? Below, we will see how can you create such campaigns on LinkedIn.
How can you do this?
- Sign-in to the ‘Campaign Manager‘
- Click on the account you want to create campaigns
- Go to ‘Account Assets’ tab and then to ‘Matched Audiences’ from the drop down
- On the Uploaded list audiences tab, select Upload a list.
- Enter a name for the audience in your account or contact list.
- Click on ‘Upload file.’
- Upload the CSV file of email ids you have already downloaded.
5. Write killer click-bait posts and make simple videos for more clicks
Some growth hackers now know the LinkedIn algorithm and how it works. With killer click-bait title and simple videos, you can do wonders on LinkedIn.
How to do it?
- Write your own story; your hustle, daily routine, etc. If you don’t have one, make it up. People want to read about the real YOU. Storytelling works on LinkedIn. Write about how you achieve something when you had nothing, how you were broke and how you won, how not to do something, etc.
- Write one sentence per line and go on. Don’t do paragraphs as that doesn’t show well on the LinkedIn app. To make people to see more and read more, be consistent with your writing while doing a post. Start with a click-bait title, ask them if they want to know more, some introduction and core story, and end it with a happy ending or a suggestion.
- One more easy trick is to take free images with quotes and make a simple video through YouTube in minutes by adding all these photos. Download the video from YouTube and upload it to LinkedIn. Videos are doing really well on LinkedIn since it is the new feature and everyone is testing it out.
6. Share your blog from the website with multiple groups.
You don’t have to go again and again to different groups to share your blog; what you can do is just click on share on the LinkedIn button among the other social sharing icons shown at the end or sidebar of an article, and you will be redirected to the LinkedIn. Select ‘Post to Groups,’ start adding group names along with the title and blog description.
These are some of the growth hacks that we think can be really very helpful to build your brand and get leads on LinkedIn.