7 Ingredients to Maximize Your Use of LinkedIn

1. Impressions Are Important - Do you have a professional LinkedIn.com hero image and description in place? Think of this as your best business suit and if you farther, your elevator pitch. Many social networks provide visual real estate that helps create a way for you to introduce your brand. Be effective with that space on LinkedIn to communicate and market what you do, who you are, or any other values that are critical to getting your persona(s) across.

2. Enable Your Best Advocates - Your Employees and Connections are those you trust more than other brands. Empower and prioritize them to ensure they share your company's content, images, video and other updates with their own connections to expand your reach and relevancy - and increase overall credibility.

3. Grab Attention with the Newsfeed and Multimedia - Infographics, Slideshare decks and YouTube videos shared in status updates will play directly within your followers’ LinkedIn feed. When you use rich media you help your brand stand out - and it doesn't hurt that these types of content drive higher engagement rates.

4. Showcase Your Diverse Offerings - One way to deliver highly targeted and relevant content to your LinkedIn connections is through building LinkedIn Showcase Pages. They highlight individual brands, business units or highly important topics for your brand. Members can follow these sub-pages of your Company Page to stay connected with the parts of your business that matter most you and them.

5. Right Message, Right Time, Right Audience - Most brands offer different market sized solutions, speak to diverse buyers/customers and/or provide regional products or services. With that, it's likely you have multiple audiences. Use Targeted Updates to tailor and create content for specific audiences. Here are current and useful parameters: Company size, Industry, Geography, Function, and Seniority.

6. Share Content that is Informative, Insightful and Inspiring - LinkedIn users are seeking professional content that focuses on knowledge and improvement. Always consider "How are you solving a problem?" or "Why does this matter to my audience?" or "How does it make them better at their job?”

7. Overtime is kind of Mandatory - The majority of time that professionals invest in reading professional content takes place at home, not in the office. For example, I'm writing this content you're reading right now at 9:00 PM on a Friday! Yeah, I know, sad, but that's when my "inspiration" juice starts to kick-in. When planning your editorial calendar, don’t limit yourself to 9-to-5. Publish content in the early morning, evenings, and even on weekends and pay attention to engagement activity to identify optimal posting hours. It's about working smarter, not harder.

Could #LinkedIn "Long Format Content” Be A Game Changer for #Social Media?

Like all Social Media platforms, LinkedIn wants users to visit their platform daily, or at least weekly, as opposed to just a destination that you use for periodic updates to your resume. Given this challenge, LinkedIn is already a power to be reckoned with. LinkedIn has done many things to differentiate their offering among the competition. Let’s get the obvious reasons out of the way before we discuss this new feature "long format content", which I’ve named “magic pencil”.

1. Stock - LinkedIn (pulled July 9, 2014) has a stock price of $157.77. That’s a valuation that blows away any of the competition. For reference, stock for Twitter is at $37.95 and Facebook is at $63.97. LinkedIn is respectively about 2.5x to 4x the value, respectively for Twitter and Facebook. Clearly investors have confidence in the platform, along with other factors such as revenues, leadership, etc.
2. Leadership - It should also come as no surprise that Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, is one of the most - if not the most - driven, inspirational and ambitious leaders in the Social Media industry. Apparently many women find him to be very attractive, I have no comment or perspective on this topic. I was able to see him speak at the LinkedIn Talent Connect 2013 conference and his vision and loyalty among his employee base was unsurpassed. When you compare Jeff Weiner to, let’s say, Mark Zuckerburg (CEO of Facebook) it’s clear that LinkedIn’s leadership is exceptionally better in a multitide of ways.
3. Domestic/International Growth - In 2013, Linkedin growth was roughly two new accounts every second. While they have a long way to go, only recently surpassing 300 million users globally, they already hold the title as the largest “professional” social networking platform on the planet. Yes, I know, Facebook has over 1.4 billion users globally, but do we really believe those are all active and/or real accounts? Unlikely and with all the changes Facebook is making to their News Feed algorithm, I’m not a fan of the platform. So much, in fact, that I wrote an article about “Why it’s time to breakup with Facebook”. Personally, I believe it’s should be left up to the user as to what content I receive in my News Feed, not Facebook.

Could a little pencil really be a game changer for LinkedIn in our world of Social Media alternatives? Before we can answer that question, we need to look at what the pencil means from a basic user perspective. A status update on LinkedIn has a limit of 700 characters. For a listing of other character limitations via LinkedIn, click here. For those that write content, it’s a difficult task to explain your content in such a short amount of space. For instance, the blog post you are reading right now is over 6,000 characters. What is a blogger left to do? Simple. You are forced to linkout to a personal blog or webpage if your content exceeded 700 characters on LinkedIn. For bloggers, this is almost always the case. By the way, this holds true for many other Social Media platforms. Over the last few months, LinkedIn has slowly been releasing a new feature, called “long format content” (I prefer “magic pencil”, which I plan to lobby directly with LinkedIn), that allows users the ability to post a blog post within LinkedIn.com. Don’t have the pencil next to the paper clip when you login? Then, submit a formal request to be given access.

I’ve been blogging for many years, off and on, and I always wondered why Social Media platforms didn’t integrate with a true blog platform. Sure, Google acquired Blogger a while back, but they haven’t truly integrated with Google+...yet. Many marketers and communicators use Social Media as a way to build audiences that they pull back to their personal or professional blog - in addition to other proprietary destinations - enter ecommerce websites. While I still see the value of leveraging Social Media channels for audience building and in many cases driving that audience back to a conversion funnel of some sort, I always struggled with why we would send a reader to a 3rd party platform for more content? It never made sense to push the user to another destination to do exactly what they were just doing…reading content. Well, now that has changed. With long format content, LinkedIn has enabled users on the platform that are passionate about something to tell that story on the platform, and more importantly, keep them on the platform. I also enjoy that they have done good integration with Pulse and created other experiences to encourage users to post content and become part of the “Influencer Network”. Historically the “Influencer Network” have been isolated to 150 influential people on LinkedIn and recently that number was increased to 500. With the launch of “long format content”, anyone has a chance to join the exclusive ranks by writing content that people want to read and share. So, yes, you’re obligated to share my post so I can attain my dream of becoming an “Influener” with the likes of Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington ;-).

The most interesting of all the features related to long format content is users can now build an audience of “followers” and still keep their “connections” or profile separate. What do I mean? LinkedIn has given us the ability to build “followers” around the content we post and still maintain separation from “connections” to my profile. This is nice to have as many are more caution and careful about who they “connect” with on LinkedIn. There is much more sensitive information that a “connection” (to your profile) will have versus a “follower” (to your content). Make sense? This is a significant difference we all should be mindful of. If a user follows your content, they aren’t connected to your profile, unless they formally request to connect with you. Depending on your “Privacy and Settings” configurations this may require that you approve, validate their email, etc. I appreciate that you can separate your profile from your followers on LinkedIn. Many believe that making a connection with someone is essentially advocating that person, whereas, a follower to your content isn’t advocating anything other than the fact that they like what you write about.

5 Ways To Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Active And Relevant

Update your LinkedIn status once or twice daily; once at the beginning of the day and another at the end of the day. Factbrowser reports that 77% of LinkedIn members use the site to research people and companies, 69% to reconnect with past business associates and 50% to build new networks, so regular updates will help you get found! If it sounds like this scheduling and updating is a lot of work, it’s not. Use a tool like HootSuite to schedule your twice-daily updates from curated sources, like the Wall Street Journal or MarketingThink.com. This tool makes it easier to plan your communication strategy from the comfort of your couch! (No … two daily updates are not too much. No one has EVER complained about my volume of updates!)

Participate in 3-5 key LinkedIn groups 2-3 times a week. LinkedIn reports hosting 1.5 million groups, however, you can only join 50 of them. Even with 50 groups to join, you will never be able to activity engage in all of them. So, pick the most relevant ones and maintain a contributing and consultative presence. Your contribution formula should be 10 consultative posts for every 1 “sales-ish” post. Participating in 3-5 LinkedIn groups can get hectic, too. You don’t have to log into LinkedIn every time you check on a group since you can use tools like Flipboard and HootSuite to check the activity.

Own the conversation in 1 key LinkedIn group. It’s easy to commit to trying to be an expert, thought leader, or active participant in one group; hopefully one that is thriving and full of other great contacts and potential business for you. Active participation in a group like this will increase the likelihood a growing LinkedIn network, and we all know that a bigger network is a better network!

Refresh your LinkedIn profile’s headline, summary and job experience quarterly. LinkedIn reports that a complete profile increases your chances to be found by 40%. So, if yours is not completed then get that part completed today. LinkedIn is keyword driven, so running your profile like a PPC campaign will help you get found and make you more relevant when you are found. When refreshing your high-profile LinkedIn profile components (headline, summary, job experience) make sure to rethink if you can update keywords that are being searched for today, instead of how they were searched last year or last quarter.

Like, comment and share your network’s updates daily. By regularly engaging with your network’s updates, you demonstrate that you are an active and invested community member. Like a news update, share an interesting post or comment on someone’s new promotion! This activity is visible by your network and your contact’s secondary network. Being active with your community will open you up to endless connections and possibilities!

Like what you've read? Comment and let me know what else your interested in reading. I take comments VERY seriously and want to write about, well, what people want to read about in the digital space.

4 Steps Attract More Qualified Leads Using Linkedin Group Discussions

LinkedIn profiles and group discussions work the same way. Your success doesn't hinge on what you say. Success depends on how and when you say it. What follows is an effective way to get more qualified leads by using LinkedIn to your advantage, in four straightforward steps. In my opinion, this is the fastest, most practical way to: 1) Attract prospects inside LinkedIn groups; 2) become trusted (using a helpful piece of content); and 3) get response (convince prospects to become leads).

Step 1: Write a Magnetic Headline 

Everyone is suffering from information overload—and everything online is being reduced to a headline. LinkedIn profiles and group discussions are filled with headlines.

There are two kinds of headlines: Attention-grabbers and everything else. Effective headlines get right to the point. Ineffective headlines waste time. They try to be cute. The trick to writing magnetic headlines in groups (or on your profile) is simple: Appeal to emotional and tangible desires of prospects in ways they cannot resist acting on.

Jot down three pains, fears or frustrations your target market suffers from, or jot down a goal they're striving to achieve. This is where to start with writing a headline that has magnetism. 

Take each topic and write a killer LinkedIn discussion headline—one your prospects will find impossible to resist. They will see your headline, click to read your first paragraph and feel compelled to respond. As responses continue inside the discussion, you will open the door to generating a relationship—a business lead.

Just follow the 4 Us. Print these off and hang them on your wall. Make sure your headline is:

Useful: Is the promised knowledge valuable to the reader?

Urgent: Does the message make the reader want to read it immediately?

Unique: Is the promised message compelling and remarkable?

Ultra-Specific: How relevant is the knowledge or message being presented?

This formula will help you write headlines prospects cannot resist clicking on. 

Step 2: Get Right to the Point

In the first paragraph of your LinkedIn group conversation-starter, get right to the point. Don't ramble. Proclaim your big "aha" insight, fix or better solution.

Tell readers you've got valuable stuff they haven't heard before. Most importantly, be sure it shows prospects how to improve something important to them.

A useful how-to discussion is one of the most effective, easy and fun ways to generate leads on LinkedIn. For example, I recently chose the title, "Why isn't LinkedIn generating leads for me?" This title plays on my target market's frustration and suggests a solution could be hidden inside the discussion. Feel free to be more direct in your title. 

Here are six tips for writing effective conversation-starters that get attention (and ultimately help you generate leads on LinkedIn):

Limit your discussion-starter to 100 words.

Immediately offer a useful and/or provocative point of view.

Keep it action-oriented (problem-solving or a way to achieve a goal faster).

Explain the key to experiencing more success at a high level.

Conclude it by inviting all forms of discussion (disagreement too!).

Avoid talking too much about your product/service.

Step 3: Create Hunger for More

The best part of this strategy is how prospects respond to it. What's the magic here? Answering questions in ways that encourage prospects to ask more questions. Ninety percent of "what works" is based on this simple idea. 

When starting your LinkedIn discussion—and continuing it—be sure to focus on creating hunger for more details. Present the solution clearly, but do so in ways that make prospects curious about all the details inside your solution.

Here's how to create that hunger: 1) make your words specific; 2) be action-oriented; 3) but be incomplete. Give away enough how-to knowledge in the discussion to create hunger for a short-cut—a faster, easier way for prospects to get all the how-to details, skills, knowledge, tips or shortcuts in one fell swoop—for example, an ultimate guide ebook, video tutorial, handy checklist to get something done more effectively, etc.

Go slow with revealing all the moving parts of your solution, lesson, "better way" or fix. Always have something more to share with readers. Find ways to allude to the benefits of whatever that something is without actually getting into the details of it. Create hunger for your giveaway (lead generation tool) as you go along.

Step 4: Make a Call to Action

The benefits of this approach rely ultimately on making a call to action (CTA) that doesn't chase everyone away. The CTA should be when you invite prospects to become leads in exchange for "packaged-up" content (an ebook, video tutorial, etc.).

Your CTA asks buyers to trade insight on who they are in exchange for a faster, easier way to access what they want—a shortcut or "better way."

You can't force that courtship too quickly. You've got to prove yourself a bit first, before prospects will consider your CTA appropriate in the context of how the discussion has flowed.

Think of it as teasing prospects, slowly, with your knowledge. This will help create hunger for your call to action. This way, when you make the suggestion to take a shortcut to where prospects want to go, they are highly receptive to the idea. 

What you're asking them to do is suddenly less about giving away their names and email addresses, and more about getting what they want from someone who's already demonstrated he or she can deliver.

Like what you've read? Comment and let me know what else your interested in reading. I take comments VERY seriously and want to write about, well, what people want to read about in the digital space.