Your Three-Step LinkedIn Hack

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If you need a way to sell virtually anything, LinkedIn is the place to be! Doesn’t matter if you’re selling coaching, books, gold, or airplanes, with LinkedIn’s half a billion users, you’re going to find more leads and more prospects than you can get to in a lifetime. Well, I should qualify that last statement. If you know how to use and build relationships on LinkedIn you can do this. If you don’t know how, then quite frankly, LinkedIn will remain a mystery to you and honestly, probably will be just a waste of time. So, with that all in mind, let me show you my 3-step hack that I use to find more business right on LinkedIn than I can deal with. Ready to get started?

 

LinkedIn is built on connections and relationships. The first thing you need to do is you need to connect with a lot of people. At first, don’t worry if they’re in your target market. Your first goal is to build up your connections to at least 1,000 or so. No, don’t connect to everyone all in one day. That will look (and just is) unnatural and, among other things, will put your account at risk. Try to connect to around 50 new people every day until you get your connections up to about 2,000, then your account will build on its own.

 

Next, you’ll want to start reaching out to these connections. A great way to do this is to message people when they accept your connection request. You’ll want to say something personal and welcoming. You do NOT want to spam people with a big long paragraph about how cool you are or how awesome your product is. Just reach out pleasantly! If someone ignores you, just keep trying every now and then to see if they’re ready to engage with you. Remember, not everyone checks their LinkedIn account daily. So if you’re being ignored, it’s more likely that the person just hasn’t seen your message yet.

 

Finally, after you’ve messaged with someone back and forth for a while, that’s when you can invite them to talk with you in more detail about your offering. This shouldn’t be a full-blown sales presentation, but more of a 15-minute get to know you session. Unlike many gurus will tell you, LinkedIn isn’t a get-rich-quick platform. It’s the online version of a B2B networking meeting. So network! Connect. Say hi. Talk. Get to know them. And if once you’ve done that they’re interested in how you can help them or their business, then open up that discussion.

 

These steps are intuitive, but I’m always surprised by how many business people are actually doing them. Do these three steps consistently, and you’ll soon have more business than you know what to do with!

 

Seven Pro LinkedIn Hacks You Might Not Have Thought Of

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Okay, you’ve opened an account, filled out your profile, included a great headshot, and written a winning profile summary – as well as completed everything required to reach “All-Star” status on LinkedIn. Now what? Now’s when the fun starts. In this article, I’m going to show you seven great things you need to be doing consistently in order to reach the “Boss” level on LinkedIn.

Numero Uno: Check in every day! Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Yet, you’d be amazed at the number of people I reach out to on a daily basis who finally, sometimes after a few months, message me back saying that they just don’t check their account that often. Amazing! They obviously don’t know the power of using LinkedIn effectively.

Two: Publish an article on LinkedIn’s blogging feature, called Pulse. You don’t have to be Malcolm Gladwell. Just be you and write about what you know about. Write about what you think your target audience might find interesting. If you absolutely can’t write, hire someone to write it for you once a month. That actually won’t set you back too much and it will be well worth it!

Three: Add videos or other media to your profile. Link to examples of your work. Link to your website. Have an infographic created that shows people part of the process of what you do.

Four: Follow movers and shakers! They might not actually connect with you, but follow them anyway. Share their status updates with your audience!

Five: Connect with and send connect requests to these people and others who you think would be important to your network.

Six: You can do this one better if you have a paid subscription to LinkedIn, but given that you have that, you need to be researching who’s looked at your profile and connecting with them and messaging them. They’ve already shown that they’re interested. Follow up with them!

Seven: This one might not apply to everyone, and honestly it takes time and you might not want to do it, but in some industries, it’s going to be one of the most important things you do. Figure out who in your contacts are local to you and actually invite them out for coffee. Yep, it’s a little old school, but it works great! People do business with those who they like and trust. Taking a little time to build that rapport and a real, live, in-the-flesh connection can go along way.

Have any comments or feedback? Start the conversation and leave your comments below!

Three Daily Best Practices for LinkedIn Users

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Done right, you can get more business and leads out of LinkedIn than you can get to. You have to do some work, though. For instance, you need a complete profile along with a head shot that brands you as a professional, and you’ll need to spend consistent time beefing up your connections (things we’ve talked about on the blog before so check out older posts if you’re looking for ideas for those).

That all lays the ground work. After that all you really need to do is to spend a few minutes on LinkedIn daily. I’ve been a LinkedIn user for a while now, and am getting this down to a science. Want to know how I’m building it and how I keep my LinkedIn account humming along at peak proficiency? Here are three things I do daily with (almost) religious fervor. Do this and you’ll never have to prospect for business again.

#1: Status Updates

Just as with most social media, the first of your daily tasks is to update your status. Just like with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms, every day you need to let folks know what you’re up to and what you’re doing. Doesn’t have to be earth shattering. Doesn’t have to even qualify for interesting. You don’t have to give details if details aren’t warranted. Just say something about your normal business day. If you want to get organized about this and save yourself some time, use Hootsuite and load up status updates in advance!

#2: Accept Connections

Your next daily task is to check your network and accept inbound connection requests. The more people you’re connected to the better LinkedIn is going to work for you. Each of these requests is taking you one more step towards your goal of turning LinkedIn into a prospecting and business machine. Accept these requests on a daily basis!

#3: Message

Finally, you’re going to want to message people who’ve connected with you and who’ve accepted your own outbound connection requests. Your goal is to build a network, and you can’t do that by being a wall flower and never communicating with anyone!

There are the top three. Not too scary, huh. 😉  Do each of these tasks daily and watch your LinkedIn account become your single most important business asset!

 

Five Steps to Building a Huge Following on LinkedIn

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How would you like to be able to create leads and prospects for whatever it is that you sell almost instantly? How would you like to have prospective customers and clients finding you and asking to buy your product or your service without you ever having to lift a finger, do any follow up, or yet another sales presentation? What I’m really asking is this: How would you like to have a ready audience already pre-sold on you and your products and services? If this sounds too good to be true, you don’t really understand the amazing power of LinkedIn. If you know the steps, you can do this on LinkedIn, actually fairly easily. So, what about it? Want to know how you too can build a smashing business on LinkedIn? It’s very simple, and there are only five steps.

First off you need to have a polished profile that is not only complete, but that sells you in advance. Basically, your profile (especially the summary) is your sales letter for you and your business on LinkedIn.

Next, you’re going to have to create unique, valuable content aimed at your target audience on LinkedIn. By content I mean blog posts for LinkedIn pulse, status updates, and the like. You might want a short report accessible through a squeeze page that you can link to so you can build a list of interested followers.

Of course, none of this will matter if you’re not connected with anyone! So, you’ll need to consistently build your network. On LinkedIn, you can be connected to up to 30,000 people. Surely out of that many you can find enough customers, clients, and referral partners to build a business out of!

You’ll want to substantiate who you are and what you sell through real recommendations. Real, as in not fake, by the way! LinkedIn is a quality platform, and quality always wins out!

And finally, you’re going to have to stay on top of your industry’s announcements and news. After all, you want people to see you as a thought leader, right? So, lead!

So to summarize:

  1. Create a polished profile.
  2. Create unique, valuable content.
  3. Build your network. Make connecting with people in your target market an everyday activity.
  4. Get recommendations from past clients and those who have experience with your business.
  5. Lead by staying on top of and engage with industry news.

Have questions? Let me know in the comments below!