. How would you like to sit down with 36 of the top LinkedIn Influencers, Experts, and Entrepreneurs in the world as they share their candid ideas and recommendations on how to leverage LinkedIn for Business Growth? That’s pretty much what happened in the recent LinkedIn Success Summit (#LinkedInSuccess) put together by @Liam Austin a few weeks ago. Five solid days of interviews was enough to leave my head spinning with tips and possibilities.
While each presenter had their own angle, I found some powerful common threads. Here are three strategies that can unleash the power of LinkedIn to fill that sales funnel and create new business value in 2016!
1. Be Focused like a laser on your Unique Selling Proposition. This is the foundation of an effective LinkedIn Strategy. You won’t get anywhere on LinkedIn by random efforts with a general focus. Know the desired outcome and use every aspect of your LinkedIn strategy to bring your “Connections” to that outcome! Every communication should support your value proposition and include your call to action.
Summit presenters were unanimous in their insistence on optimizing your LinkedIn Profile. Think of your Profile as your primary sales piece! It has to be on target. It’s your brochure that presents your brand. Instill confidence by highlighting completed projects, successes, recommendations.
As you work on your Profile ask yourself what pain points you are trying to solve for the potential clients? What is the bait, the call to action? Offer a free consultation, a white paper, an online book. Offer something! Make it easy for them to contact you with your email address and phone number prominently displayed. Your goal is to take the conversation off of linked in and into your sales funnel.
2. Be Active, Generous and Relevant! LinkedIn is Social Selling, and in Social Selling your goal is to connect and create trust! Develop relationships. Become an industry resource. This takes time and effort, but the results can be dramatic. People buy from people! When qualified, knowledgeable buyers start seeking you out, you’ll know the LinkedIn magic is starting to work!
The key to qualified prospects on LinkedIn are the right Contacts, and the keys to the right Contacts are the right Groups and Targeted Searches. “Learn how to use Groups and Searches,” said the presenters. There are a zillion groups on LinkedIn, and some of them contain your potential clients. Target those groups. LinkedIn has great search filters. Save searches that find the decision makers in your industry, and then use them to connect. Who cares if you have a Network of 10,000 people if only 1% of them are people who have the potential of becoming clients?
Once you have your groups and contacts sighted in, it’s time to become active, to become a knowledge expert in your field. Post regularly, several times a week. Provide real value. Respond faithfully to comments on your posts, repost the articles of others (with additional comments). Be there. Be strategic. Be generous with your knowledge. Show your expertise. Remember you are building relationships.
3. Be Strategic! Everything you do on LinkedIn needs to drive toward your goal—your profile, your contacts, your posts, your call to action. Everything feeds into your sales progression. @Perry van Beek put his LinkedIn Strategy this way: Collect, Connect, Convert. Find relevant decision makers, connect and develop trust, and take them off-line to provide your service or product.
Conclusion: After spending 5 solid days listening to these amazing LinkedIn Experts, I have to admit, I’m even more of a believer in the power of this tool. I’m going to use these three LinkedIn strategies in my own business during 2016—maybe you’ll do the same.
What do you think? I’d love to know how your business using LinkedIn and is it producing good ROI?
You certainly took some of the best tips and it’s great to hear you are implementing them. Focus, generous and strategic are the core pieces to be successful on LinkedIn. There are so many amazing things to learn from the 37 sessions, its tough to narrow it down to what to focus on, so good on you. Look forward to being able to teach you even more in the future.
Thanks for the kind words Liam! It was indeed a great learning experience. Also, just wanted everyone to know that they can still access the conference info at http://linkedincubator.com.