How to use linkedin to reach decision makers
How to maximise your linkedin profile.
Create an account and add your picture and fully fill out your profile. I aim to have 90% complete as a minimum. Linkedin wizzard takes you through this!
Give a full breakdown on your current position - company, position, what the company does and any unique selling points. I like to use a header with 2/3 different skill sets for my company so for instance seo specialist | social media expert. These headings are important as linkedin works a bit like google and ranks your business for these skills when someone searches for them within linkedin. Obviously you want to appear as high as possible to potential clients!
Add connections. There are a few ways to do this. You can search for similar businesses, businesses you would like to target but perhaps the easiest way to build up your connections from scratch is to look for open networkers. These are people from many different businesses that accept all connection requests. You can also cheat a little to begin with and use one of the services on fiverr that will add connections for you. But be warned Linkedin will block you from adding more connections if you have a large amount of pending connection requests. This happened to me with about 150 pending requests. After a while you can contact linkedin support to remove this but they may still block you for a couple of months from adding new connections. Which is a pain.
Join groups. Linkedin groups are business related, networking, association or fun groups. You can only be a member or pending member of 50 groups at a time so choose wisely! Once accepted to a group you can post publicly or by hitting members you can private message any fellow group member. Remember to read the group rules as some are very strict about what content you can post whereas some do allow 'soft' promotional posts.
After I've joined a number of targeted groups I find out which ones will allow me to give away a free report in public. You must make it specific to the group. So why social media is crutial to a law firm. Then write a short 10 page report on the benifits of social media - why's and how's basically. You can give the report away in a few ways. I got over 200 requests for one report by asking group members to post in my thread and request the free report. This can get crazy and is a lot of work but you quickly appear as 'top influencer' within the group on the right which brings lots of connection requests and/or help requests. The other way is to put it behind an opt-in page which you can build your list with. I have also tried giving away a video rather than a written report but found this doesn't always work as well dependant on the group being targetted. But like most things testing is the key here.
You can also pm the most influential group members with your free report offer if the group will not allow you to post your free report publicly. I've actually got invited to some private linkedin groups this way.
Hope you liked my post.
Rich
Create an account and add your picture and fully fill out your profile. I aim to have 90% complete as a minimum. Linkedin wizzard takes you through this!
Give a full breakdown on your current position - company, position, what the company does and any unique selling points. I like to use a header with 2/3 different skill sets for my company so for instance seo specialist | social media expert. These headings are important as linkedin works a bit like google and ranks your business for these skills when someone searches for them within linkedin. Obviously you want to appear as high as possible to potential clients!
Add connections. There are a few ways to do this. You can search for similar businesses, businesses you would like to target but perhaps the easiest way to build up your connections from scratch is to look for open networkers. These are people from many different businesses that accept all connection requests. You can also cheat a little to begin with and use one of the services on fiverr that will add connections for you. But be warned Linkedin will block you from adding more connections if you have a large amount of pending connection requests. This happened to me with about 150 pending requests. After a while you can contact linkedin support to remove this but they may still block you for a couple of months from adding new connections. Which is a pain.
Join groups. Linkedin groups are business related, networking, association or fun groups. You can only be a member or pending member of 50 groups at a time so choose wisely! Once accepted to a group you can post publicly or by hitting members you can private message any fellow group member. Remember to read the group rules as some are very strict about what content you can post whereas some do allow 'soft' promotional posts.
After I've joined a number of targeted groups I find out which ones will allow me to give away a free report in public. You must make it specific to the group. So why social media is crutial to a law firm. Then write a short 10 page report on the benifits of social media - why's and how's basically. You can give the report away in a few ways. I got over 200 requests for one report by asking group members to post in my thread and request the free report. This can get crazy and is a lot of work but you quickly appear as 'top influencer' within the group on the right which brings lots of connection requests and/or help requests. The other way is to put it behind an opt-in page which you can build your list with. I have also tried giving away a video rather than a written report but found this doesn't always work as well dependant on the group being targetted. But like most things testing is the key here.
You can also pm the most influential group members with your free report offer if the group will not allow you to post your free report publicly. I've actually got invited to some private linkedin groups this way.
Hope you liked my post.
Rich
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