How to use LinkedIn for Lead Generation in 2017
March 1, 2017
LinkedIn simply rocks it when it comes to both growing an online network of professional connections and also for lead generation. Since the early days that I adopted social media marketing in my efforts to improve my business profile online, LinkedIn has always been one of my most favoured and best performing platforms. I see it as a very individual social media network, a more or less online ‘permanently in a business breakfast networking event mode‘ that you can dip in and out of whenever you wish.
What I find most appealing about LinkedIn are the connections that you can make and that results are usually down to the efforts and professionalism you share rather than fortunate viral marketing which can lead some people on social media to gather big audiences and fame purely on luck and outside of their viral success, be it a video or an image, nothing more to offer and no talent to share.
So if LinkedIn is working great for me, can it do likewise for yourself? What is in it for you by using LinkedIn and what are the efforts which you need to be making to produce you results? Let us look at some ways in which LinkedIn can help to increase your lead generation in business:
- A perfect Profile. Let us start right at the beginning and I put big pressure on you the reader that if you choose to use LinkedIn for business then you have to make yourself presentable and also find-able! Make sure you present yourself correctly via your profile from you photo to your title and including sharing your business experience, references and skills.
- Start to build your content. LinkedIn enables to to not only populate your profile with details, but allows you to also share your expertise by way of sharing educational blog posts, updates on your time lines and by starting and growing your own groups.
- Share Blogs. Start to share, as regularly as you can, informational / interesting blogging content that will grab the attention of those you are looking to network with, ie if you wish to make new leads within estate agency, share a blog on ‘how to increase new valuations via your shop window front‘ or ‘the ten best property softwares in 2017‘.
- Update your time line regularly. You have a timeline, similar to that of Facebook, where you can share regular updates, though make sure they are mostly business over social updates, ie ‘pleased to say that are regional sales records are up by 25% again this quarter‘ over ‘packing the bags this evening, can not wait to get on the plane off to an Ibiza drink up with the lads!‘.
- Groups you own and are part of. Groups are a very important part of LinkedIn and this is where most of the networking and certainly lead generation can take place for you. There are plenty of groups to choose from and it will serve you well to spend time researching them and requesting to join them. If you have a great profile and it is obvious that you know your industry well by what you have been recently sharing, then when you have joined that group you are already ahead of many others in that group who will not have the best of LinkedIn accounts. Start to engage in the group, share posts and comments on the group and do exactly as you would if you were at one of those breakfast business networking events – Make sure yourself heard. Of course, the best thing is to own these big groups yourself so that you not only can make comments and posts to the groups with authority, you can also decide what is shared and be first to act – You can also message the members once a week! Join the Estate Agent Networking Group on LinkedIn that now has over 13,400 members.
- Paid for options. LinkedIn will also allow for paid for exposure on their platform be it for recruitment purposes or by upgrading your account to ‘Premium‘ (which you can trial for free for one month). These are all good options to run with, though as with any of the social media platforms, you can start to spend a lot of money with them and not see great results or results that will surpass what you could do by just putting that bit more effort in yourself.
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