Companies that use LinkedIn to grow are deliberate about planning for success.
The other day I was approached by a businessman who told me that he had not yet seen any financial results on his LinkedIn profile. When asked how often he checked his plan and networked with others on LinkedIn, he replied, “I don’t have a plan, but I visit the site every six months.” Unfortunately, this is a common scenario.
Many companies don’t know how to use LinkedIn effectively as a lead generation tool. To help solve this problem, I’ve compiled a list of LinkedIn best practices to help you accelerate revenue growth this year.
1. Make a list of 10 thought leaders
Identify 10 thought leaders in your industry who share high-quality content that is valuable to their customers. Include friends and associates who will help you cross-promote. Connect with them on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, join their Google or Triberr groups. Set up a process to review your content and republish it to your network.
2. Update your monthly LinkedIn goals
What are your LinkedIn lead generation goals for this month? How did you do last month? Now is a good time to review goals and adjust strategies and metrics. What gets measured gets done.
3. Identify 3 industry leaders
Create a list of the top 3 leaders in your industry that you would like to meet. If you’re in sales, these could be prospects. If you are looking for a job, they could be employers. If you’re a business consultant, think about non-competitive joint venture partners. Make a list and then learn about them. LinkedIn and Google are great places to start.
4. Check social boards
Evaluate the effectiveness of your current social dashboards. Are you using them effectively? Need to update settings or adjust publishing criteria? Is the expense a worthwhile investment? If you’re not already using a social dashboard, consider signing up for one. My favorite is Hootsuite. It’s easy to use, will post to a multitude of accounts, and costs less than a designer cup of coffee every month.
5. Download LinkedIn Connections
Do it now. It only takes two minutes. Go to your LinkedIn contact list and at the bottom of the page you will see “Export Connections”. Export to Outlook and save as a .CSV file. It can be opened in Excel. Why is this important? Connections are a business asset. LinkedIn has closed profiles without notice, so protect your assets. While this is unlikely, disasters are just as unlikely, but you still buy insurance. Think of this as free insurance: set a reminder to download your list.
6. Protect your LinkedIn asset
Download your LinkedIn profile. You’ve worked hard to craft the right message and have collected details from the past, such as graduation years, articles published, and achievements. Sign in to LinkedIn and go to your profile view. Right at the bottom right of your profile photo is an edit dropdown menu. Look for the ‘export to PDF’ option. Click on it and it will save to your machine.
7. Update your profile summary
Go to your profile summary and read it from a customer’s point of view. Is it convincing? Does it inspire you to reach out and connect? Is it memorable? Do you feel that it is written exactly for you, the reader? Is it written in the first person? Can you easily find their contact information? Update based on information you’ve learned over the past month about your industry or customers. Did you lead a webinar? Teach or take a class? Helping a client achieve an amazing goal?
